[quote]Squiggles wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
If I walk a woman across the street because she needs help and I happen to be there and I don’t expect any sort of reward for my actions, THAT is good behavior. But if I do the exact same thing, thinking to myself that I better get something out of this, whether it be here or from the Big Scorekeeper in the sky, that is NOT good behavior. It’s selfish behavior with a good deed occurring simply as a byproduct of my selfishness.
To me, people should act well and all that good shit regardless of whether or not there is an afterlife.[/quote]
Except that most religions don’t require you to be good to go to heaven; that’s a misconception perpetuated by people who talk about religions they don’t actually know anything about (not saying that’s you, I’m generalizing). In Christianity, for example, you can be the best person in the entire world and it doesn’t matter. It’s about acknowledging God, accepting Jesus, asking for redemption and receiving it. You can be the worst person in the world and ask for it 10 seconds before you die, and BOOM, there’s heaven. There is a list of things that are good and bad, things you should and shouldn’t do, but that doesn’t determine where you spend eternity.
In Islam…I don’t know. It seems like you do what Allah (muhammed, really) tells you and you hack and slash the non believers if you want 72 virgins (probably all catholic nuns) on the side.[/quote]
Sure, but it doesn’t hurt either. No one who is living a “moral” life and does not believe in God, as Christians understand Him, behaves well or whatever in order to go to Heaven. For atheists, Heaven is not a motivating factor. For those that DO believe in God, Heaven is a motivating factor, and therefore a selfish factor. It’s the same thing as what I’ve said before. What is your true motivation for accepting God?
If you believe in God and you accept him as your Savior but you’ve been a murderous, lying thief your whole life, what is your motivation when you ask for forgiveness while on your deathbed? Is it out of genuine remorse for what you’ve done, or is it out of regret that you’re going to Hell? I suppose that there are those who do feel genuine remorse, but if they believe in God, they have the capacity to feel regret over their actions…and yet they have still lived an “amoral” life then they have essentially rejected God throughout their lives anyways and any capitulation of this attitude is disingenuous at best. You’d basically be saying “yeah, I believed in You, but I chose to ignore everything You have stood for and only now, when I am facing eternity in Hell am I asking for Your forgiveness.”
If you don’t believe in God, and you find yourself on your deathbed, regardless of how you have lived your life, what other possible motivation could there be for accepting God besides selfishness? Only when faced with eternity in Hell are you finally accepting God which, again, is pure selfishness. In reality, the concept of getting into Heaven based on your acceptance of God, having nothing to do with how you have lived your life, is even more backwards than holding Heaven in front of us like a carrot on a stick. If that’s the only criteria, then it seriously cheapens the idea of Heaven as a Final Reward for those who are religious.