There’s the atheist joke that “Christians are announcing that without belief in Hell, they would be horrible people” or something to that effect.
Sad thing is that there indeed is truth to it, and it has consequences. As much as I dislike organized religion and on practical level, would align with scientific, materialist worldview, I do think that without straight forward “be good or be punished” paradigm, a lot of people will be exactly the kind of self-centered assholes we currently see in positions of power in the world.
Back in the day, rich people would fund hospitals and schools in hopes of getting to heaven. These days why bother, religion is mostly a cultural artifact to occasionally pay some lipservice to, while one fully believes that their material possessions are all they got, and even their lowest possible pleasures should be attended to with whatever resource they can spare. Scientific materialism helped get rid of a lot of assbackwards reasoning but with cold hard logic, came the ease of reducing everything to a number. Money, usually. Worth. Nothing else matters. You can’t put a number on love, care, kindness, or something as ephemeral as “goodness” - an ever moving target which is only ever defined by the person using the word, with luck at least slightly informed by (pro-)social contracts. Indeed most people would specifically reject any attempt to put a number on those qualities as it would run counter to their virtuous nature. Which just makes it easier for those with power to devalue those qualities entirely, and with power, build structures that lets them indefinitely get away with it.
Am an atheist: while I have known shitty Christians I feel pretty fortunate to have known some Christians who are among the most kind, compassionate humans I’ve ever known
I miss my neighbor Morris. I had never met him and he saw me out washing my car and we talked for like an hour and told me he leaves a hose out on the weekends for people to use and that if it wasn’t out when I woke up to come knock on his apartment door. I made myself go knock that weekend cause it’d be good for my social anxiety, and he fucking grabbed his hose, and all of his own carwashing supplies and helped me wash my car for several hours
Later when I cut my hair short he saw me around the complex and asked me why, and I don’t think he’d ever even heard or understood thw term trans before, but when I explained it was more comfortable for me with gender stuff he just wanted to understand what that meant to me, and ended up sharing a story about growing up in the rough part of NYC ages ago when he knew a gay kid and how he struggled with the way folks treated them
Sadly he bought his dream house and moved 🥹 I think he still does remote bible study with some of my other favorite people in the complex. I miss him
Morris would have obviously been a serial killer if it wasn’t for some dark ages superstition preventing it.
Very sincerely I think the nature of prescriptive morality that’s completely up to interpretation is just that it validates whatever idea of being good naturally comes to you.
For many, that is shielding themseleves from critisism and the need to self reflect by hiding behind their religion. For some people it is actually living ones life in service to others.
My life is better for having been in community with him, and I hope very badly to someday have my shit together enough to live my own version of living my life in service to others. It will not be the same as his, between the social anxiety and the atheism. But I aspire to the impact he had on the people around him.
It sounds like you’re describing a communists and not any Christian I ever met.