This is such a deeply disturbing viewpoint.

When someone says that a lack of religion leads to a lack of morality, what they're necessarily really saying is that they're so deeply sociopathic that they not only can't reason morally, but can't even envision the possibility of doing so. They're effectively stating outright that they can't even imagine arriving at sound moral judgments through the application of reason, empathy and concern for others, and that the only way they can even conceive of morality is as a set of rules laid down and enforced by some enormous daddy figure who's going to punish them if they break them.

It's astonishing really. And sobering.

In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.

Christopher Hitchens

i dont need the threat of eternal punishment to be a good person

wtf is wrong with these people (rhetorical question)

Isn't a person that is only kept from doing evil by being threatened with damnation ... just an evil person?

I remember when I told my mother I was an atheist and she asked me "then how do you know right from wrong?". She is a nice person but religion was so core to her upbringing I suppose she never questioned it

The religious are over represented in prisons.

Lot of good that religious moral compass did them

I really like the way Jmike put it at 20:40 in this show

In 1 Samuel 15:3, when god commands the Amelekites to be–infants to be slaughtered, that would be "good" under your view. That would be a good thing. So long as it's commanded by the thing–that's not morality at all, that's obedience. There's nothing there about what someone should or should not do. The moral facts can just change on a whim. I don't understand this high ground of morality from theists when theirs is so vacuous and devoid of anything intrinsic to the actual actions. It's actually an extrinsic thing. What makes, like, throwing someone off a building "wrong" is if god puts this extrinsic notion that it's wrong, this command, not that the intrinsic action had anything to do with it, right? It's so divorced from how we actually deal with ethics. So I don't get this move of putting the theist at this high moral ground, I dont get it.

You don’t need any religion for a “moral compass”, but basic ethical principles.

For the most time religions were (and are still) used as a means of power to either suppress your own population (see most islamic countries today) or divide people and justify wars (see catholics and protestants / orthodox in the past).

Countless people were killed in the name of some “religion”.

• I'll kill this guy!
• *realizes religion forbids killing*
• Sheeeeeeet

That's exactly how religion works, right? RIGHT??? 😅

I don't know... seems to me like there's no sin enumerated in Bible that believer would be unable to somehow explain as a pro god action. God's mercy and 10 commandments are concepts that appear to be paradoxical to each other.

Christians have 10 commandments and can't follow them, most often even won't pretend to, because... checks notes ... god will forgive them... Imagine the talk with saint Peter after death — ”so what do you have to say for yourself?“ — ”well, I went to church and shit, and God forgives“ — ”in my experience he really responds to arrogance and taunting“.

I love the story of the 10 commandments — so he went up a mountain, sat there for way too long (I guess good clubs up there, after all he comes back later), came down with the tablets (something about killing or not written on it), didn't like what he saw, smash the priceless religious relic and proceeded to murder everyone. Any true crime podcast would tell you that is destruction of evidence and premeditation, also clearly psychotic tyrannical religious cult leader kind of situation. Appears to me he ”saved“ them from Egypt for his own amusement.

As an aside — Jews have over 600 commandments sourced from the VERY SAME BOOK.

Or are all those who spread terror and hatred for religious reasons simply not religious enough. Of course, religion does not necessarily have to degenerate into violence, but it is not at all suitable as a measure of morality, as history shows us.

Erroring.

Kindly f&!k off.

Buuuuuurn