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.
Yes. But only if they believe God will judge them for it, and aren’t completely poop eating crazy (as in, murdering whilst cutting themselves because “pain is good” or whatever, not just a sociopath but actually mentally broken).
Christianity/Trinitarian beliefs have the whole “anti-imperialist rabbi Jesus of Nazareth was captured, tortured and killed by the Roman empire, the creators of Trinitarianism, who then established a whole manworshipping polytheistic religion around him, God (the Father/Creator Jesus refers to and prays to often) and the Holy Spirit, and if you believe in this creed your sins are absolved and you’re saved regardless” so it does not work. And ofc people will find “scholars” and act stupid to allow themselves to act however they want in both Judaism (weird Talmudist/non-Mosaic beliefs, for instance) and Islam (eg Hadiths=>Qur’an confused fools), but that basis is not even there in Christianity.
Don’t ever be surprised by all the misery European “men of God” have inflicted in the world countless times (from the days of Rome to the new Satan, America, which even name-drops God on their money, lol, many of those will burn), as it was a Frankenstein pseudoreligion meant to poison the well. If Christians believed like Jesus instead of in Jesus, whatever the fuck that means, everything from the Crusades to the East India Company, from America to Israel (Western settler colonies), would’ve never taken place since they require entire cultures to be behind them. But since they believe they’ll be “saved” regardless, they can act like demons and rationalize their immorality and lack of humanity. But don’t ever worry, for God will give everyone what they deserve. 😉