Better neighbours: Christians or unbelievers?
Posted on: May 11, 2009 - 7:49am
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Better neighbours: Christians or unbelievers?
Better neighbours: Christians or unbelievers?
Once upon a time a Christian lived next door to a non-Christian he tried hard to evangelize with no success, so he gave up and stopped talking to him. One day, the Christian’s house caught fire while he was away. If it had not been for the non-Christian’s quick action to call the fire people and help putting the fire out the Christian’s house would have not been spared.
Moral: an unbeliever can be your most important friend!
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The belief in god or religion isn't what's in question, it's the belief in assisting neighbors that comes into play there.
I believe in assisting neighbors. It's part of community social cohesion that makes life easier (so long as they help back, insert game theory and evolutionary social psychology here).
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
Wouldn't most christians be more likely to give the credit to all that envangelizing they did before ? Or just go "God made you do it" ?
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
People can't be good for 'goodness sake'. They give credit for good deeds to a gawd that doesn't exist, but who do they blame for the bad times, or . . .
The point here is that if it were the unbeliever’s house that burned down, the believer instead of helping would say it was God’s punishment for resisting conversion!
Apply that to other belligerent religions, too!
You really can't do the religion=bad argument, because religion isn't (a) monolithic, and (b) religion is a facet of culture, which itself is not monolithic. As this addresses the topic: A given Christian may take the tenet "love they neighbor" as more important than "believe or be punished", and thus would be more likely to call for help. Likewise another Christian might not consider the religious tenets at all and call for help because their culture/society sees it as civic duty.
There are no absolutes - absolutely!
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
pfffft. The atheist was probably the one who set it on fire in the first place.
Pineapple probably doesn't think so, but she and I fall on the same side of the fence when it comes to a lot of these arguments. Look, most Christians are good people and most atheists are good people. Most Christians do good in spite of the behaviors recommended by their bibles. They are human, and have human kindness and compassion. The danger of religion is not that it makes most people into raving anti-social lunatics. Rather, it frays the edges of human kindness, and every once in a while, erupts into blind madness. It is not the cause of all human ills. It is a cause of a specific set of human ills, and one contributor among many to various general human ills.
Most people who are vehemently opposed to abortion for religious reasons are usually genuinely good people. If you took everything they do in a given year, probably 95% of it would conform to an atheist's view of "good neighbor." The 5% of their actions that involve throwing fetus blood on 19 year old girls outside of abortion clinics is the fringe where their religious beliefs have overridden their human decency.
Also, please remember that religion is not the only cause of human depravity. While you won't find a lot of atheists picketing abortion clinics, you will find quite a few doing things that are downright evil. I have no doubt that many of the people involved in the recent American "Big Bank" scandal were atheists. They knowingly and willingly screwed everyone in the country to make a buck. They didn't need religion to do that. Just greed.
Religion is one cause of people's antisocial behaviors. Supposing you lived next to a fundamentalist who was so entrenched in religious nuttery that he genuinely believed he should not call the police if his atheist neighbor's house was on fire, you could say, "Gee, having a religious neighbor is bad." My next door neighbors are a nice retired couple who go to church on Sunday and have never failed to be good neighbors to me. I'd rather they weren't theists because I'd rather nobody was a theist, but I don't see how their theism has any effect on their desire to be good neighbors.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
People that worship a corpse by symbolicly eating it scare me.
Good fences make good neighbours
For the record, I have been giving my stance on religion and cause more thought, as shown by my last couple topics, yet I still pretty much remain where I was.
Pineapple, I think you've misunderstood my position on religion and cause. There are some people who pretty much blame religion for every ill in the world. I don't. I think religion exacerbates many ills and causes only a very few. I don't think religion caused the Crusades or the Inquisition. I think it gave people permission to do things they would not have done within the Crusades and the Inquisition, and allowed them to rally support in ways they could not have otherwise done.
I don't think religion causes societal dysfunction. I think it exacerbates the problems. If it caused sexual repression, for instance, we should expect to see virtually no sexual repression in countries where nearly everyone is nontheist. We do not. What we do see is that religion takes the inclination towards sexual repression in patriarchal and other male-dominant societies (virtually all societies) and runs with it. Sexual repression strongly tends to be worse when it has religion behind it.
I've said many times that I don't believe eradicating religion would eliminate all or even most of the problems with humanity. I believe it would lessen them significantly. It would take away the only remaining justification many cultures have for various misdeeds and practices. Humans would still desire to do harm to one another, but they'd have to work a lot harder to justify their misdeeds.
The reason religion -- Christianity and Islam in particular -- are so successful at facilitating societal ills is that they tap into the bad parts of human nature and call them good. Without the religions, we'd still have the human nature. We just wouldn't have the illusion of bad being good, or the justification of "revelation" and "faith." People would be held accountable more readily when they did bad things.
I think maybe I need to do an official post about this. Keep your eyes open.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Rubbish. All of it.
Have you never known any religious person that didn't
proselytize you?
I've NEVER lived next door to ANY Christian that even attempted to proselytize me with their religion.
I've also never been so fortunate to always have met Atheists that were more caring of my own physical well-being than any religious person.
No. No group "is your friend." That mindless mindset is for Theists, sheep, and Borg.
Quoting:
People that worship a corpse by symbolicly eating it scare me.
That was a great statement! Loved it!
It's a parable; you should have noticed it.
(Whatever liquid you were drinking should have spurt out of your nose by now. If you were not drinking, you should be trying not to suffocate.)
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Contradiction!!!!!
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare