The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want?
And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero.
The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine.
I don’t want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don’t want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you.
-Penn Jillette
Not just that, but I’ve yet to come across anybody who has actually refrained from doing the bad thing they want to do because of some fear of God. They might be afraid of legal consequences, but belief hasn’t prevented rape, theft, envy, murder, or anything else among even (especially) the leaders of the religious.
So no, not believing in God doesn’t make atheists rapists and murderers, and believing in God doesn’t prevent the devout from rape and murder.
As an atheist and a “liberal,” I don’t kill people because I’m not a bad person.
Silly atheist, that’s just god protecting me from you 🙏
I might make an exception for you.
Sorta!
We are extremely social creatures, and have had some intrinsic social instincts honed into us from eons of evolution. When it comes to our fellow tribemates, we generally give them the benefit of the doubt, even when they’re total assholes. We see this in great effect when drivers in merging traffic will let other into their line, even though they are total strangers and are sharing a dear resource (a pathway home).
I suspect that most Christians, when they assert that only fear of God’s justice (or even state justice) is what keeps them from murder that they really haven’t put it to the test. We may be angry. We may desire, as Nietzsche suggests, to discharge our strength but we also are resistant to hurting the innocent, which becomes difficult when the enemy soldiers look like us (rather than different colored people with weird accents) and when we know they’re our own countrymen, armies infamously refuse to fight and mutiny.
It’s obviously more complex than this. We only want our tribe to be as big as our top 100 facebook friends – what may be an instinct to keep COVID-19 from running worldwide – and when it comes to large societies we have to practice putting principle over loyalty, which is why we’re prone to fascist movements when we challenge the feudal / capitalist establishment.
And yes, some rare folk are natural soldiers and don’t have to navigate feelings before killing. And rarer ones still are driven by sexual dysfunction or narcissism to ignore the interests of others, even killing as necessary. But these are very much the exception. Most of us, by far, are quite affable and have to be driven to desperation before we consider wrongdoing. The scary ones are elite deviants like the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma. In 2021 their drug marketing campaign killed 80,000 Americans, and we expect even more in 2022 and 2023. More lives would be saved, more destruction and cost prevented _by multiple orders of magnitude) if the US law enforcement ignored petty crime altogether and focused solely on white collar crime. But that’s a topic for another rant.
This is either an AI response or you’re high af
I aspire to transhumanism but no, I’m not a robot yet. But it raises questions what specifically you opine indicates either AI generation or drug use.
So do elaborate!
Choose any:
- It has nothing to do with my comment
- It sounds pretentious
- It’s overly long with no real point
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So what’s stopping atheists from just going on killing sprees then?
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Gotta keep those skills sharp, amirite?
Laws and morale (the thing parents, not god, should teach you).
Christo-fascists openly revealing that they are genuinely terrible people held together with duct tape and faith in a genocidal God will never cease to be both hilarious and terrifying.
So nothing stops this guy from killing?
No, his fear of imaginary retaliation stops him from murdering. All he’s saying is “if I could still get into heaven I’d be killing all of you.” Doesn’t matter that God is real or not, his imagination is keeping him in check (thankfully.)
This is actually what religion was meant for. Keeping those that believe it and are psychos in check.
As others are saying though, it looks awfully fake lol
His 40 virgins are waiting for him on the other-side so he has to “play” by the rules even if he doesn’t like it.
Those are for Muslims though, if this guy were real he’d hate them too lol
Someone should photoshop a Toyota logo and an Arabic translation on this. :p
I dunno if it’s fake or not but the sentiment is real.
Ok, but can I break it down a bit?
The god atheist believe doesn’t exist? Which god is that; all of them? The god described by “christians” that doesn’t align with biblical context?
Which ever way you slice it i find it hard to believe this person’s belief in said god keeps them from killing. Unless that god is preventing them from physically committing the act through some sort of psychic connection there is more at play than these people would admit.
There is a whole system of laws and a social contract that is way more intimidating then anything a hypothical god could impose. There is the human ability to empathize with others which would keep you from killing. There are also physical limitations and people are capable of defending themselves.
One could argue all these things were put in place by god. I think atheists would remain unmoved by that argument.
All that aside, christians, muslims, jews, etc have all killed in the name of god.
As far as the question of what God, “we” would say any and all God’s don’t exist. There is no “correct” religion, unless you think a bear is your God then I can’t exactly deny the existence of bears, I just wouldn’t think they created the universe and left themselves as bears lol
I’d say it’s a combination of the things you suggested as far as what stops them exactly, this person could believe that their lack of a desire to kill was God stopping them, or it could be the fear of consequences in the afterlife, but there is definitely a fear of consequences from their fellow citizens. I live with that last sentiment as well: this is all we get so I want to be “good” to all those around me, not for fear of negative consequences for me, but the consequences of my actions creating a more negative experience for those around me. If God is real and is just then he’ll judge my actions, not whether I believed he exists or not. If he does judge me for that, well I’ll take it, I wouldn’t care to be on that kind a of petty asshats good side anyway.
Either way, if I have to live in a world with religion I’m at least happy that it brings some people solace and it stops nutjobs from acting out (mostly.)
nothing stops me from killing either. OH WAIT! pesky morals and the respected value of human life.
Matthew 15: 18 “But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them”
As stated in his own holy book, he’s going to hell.
Not if he says sorry at the very last second. Those are the rules.
Saying the quiet part out loud. If you need a god to keep you from doing awful shit, you are a terrible person on a leash but we already know this.
Yeah, uh huh… This is fake.
What?!
Don’t you have individual Sans Serif letter stickers around the centre-right of your rear windscreen that you managed to line up like a text editor in photoshop but also rotated 10 degrees off centre saying literal insane shit that’s perfect for smug internet people to screencap?
No. But, I do have a rear window full of great brewery stickers, including some one of a kind custom pieces.
I love that mural. Gorgeous colors
It’s a nice piece.
My boy is proud of them stickers. :p
That face paint looks cool AF!
Yes it is…but at the same time, this pic looks like it was originally from rural Western PA, where something like this wouldn’t even be a surprise to see on the road.
The thing is its simply not true. We know what Jesus is like. (🐪🪡💰) And yet most ministries in the 21st century see the right to property as central to Christianity rather than the duty to feed and clothe the destitute.
Behind The Bastards did a recent two parter on How Capitalism Ate Christianity, starting with the ministry of James W. Fifield Jr. that reinterpreted scripture to veer away from charity and mercy and towards the righteousness of capitalism. It was largely helped after WWII by the red scare in which the Soviet Union provided a fine example of the singular alternative.
So Christianity was repurposed into the Christian Nationalist movement that seeks to turn the US into a one-party autocracy with fascist features.
Why would Adonai allow His holy scripture to be subverted to serve plutocrats? In fact it is done all the time, and has been done to advocate monarchy, to endorse slavery, to oppose war, to endorse war against specific belligerents and so on.
Dan McClellan on his YouTube channel notes scripture does not feature univocality, inerrancy or divine authority according to scholarly consensus (which commonly runs contrary to what apologists might suggest). As McClellan notes the people of any era has to negotiate with the scripture to affirm their own morality, whether that’s pacifism and charity or standing your ground and massacring degenerates.
But that is also to say the ministries will justify violence when it serves them, whether that’s torturing POWs and massacring villages during the Iraq war or forcing conversions at swordpoint as per the crusades and holy inquisition. And yes plenty of Christians when told they need to load for bear and hunt the sinners will do so, especially if they’re in precarity and fear for the security of their home, family, job, survival, etc.
Just for anyone looking for the behind the bastards episode: it’s from 03/22
Camel needle cash?
“I’m only a good person because the invisible sky daddy makes me be good.”
You’re not a good person if someone is holding you back from being a bad person.
I agree. But from a civility standpoint, if someone needs a bolt-on substitute for a conscience and do so voluntarily, I’m all for it. Good news is that vehicle stickers and t-shirts like this let people self-label which is really darn handy.
I want science, reason, and logic to prevail but clearly not everyone does okay with that.
Yes, but their “bolt-on substitute for a conscience” is only for straight white christian men, who are specifically their kind of christian.
For the most part, never try to talk people out of religion. Some people Need skycake and the boogie man to be a reasonable human being.
This isn’t even a good photoshop, it looks like it was made in snapchat
Another way to say the sentiment of this shit-kickin’ Jayzus knuckle-dragger:
“If I wasn’t afraid of punishment, I’d go on a killing rampage.”“I
readwas told about in churchsaw the cover of a book about a zombie a long time ago. I now assume what the book PROBABLY said and I also hear a voice in my head based on those assumptions. I’m VERY afraid of the voice and also it loves me and it did the Holocaust - anyways, that’s the only reason I’m not a murderer”
