For those who aren’t familiar with the term, it means believing something that probably shouldn’t be believed, or being influenced to believe something that’s not necessarily in your best interests.
For those who aren’t familiar with the term, it means believing something that probably shouldn’t be believed, or being influenced to believe something that’s not necessarily in your best interests.
I get your point but being nice to people and acting in a fair and moral way feels good to most people, myself included so I don’t personally see nihilistic self fulfillment and moral behaviour as mutually exclusive (in most cases, billionaires not included).
But at some point, when virtue doesn’t taste as nice as forgoing it, you’ll fall. And you might have not had you had some form of moral framework in place and not just our inner “noble savage” nature.
How do theists rationalise this when they do awful things like buggering children?
They don’t, those who transgress in those ways never believed in God’s judgment (or suddenly developed some brain tumor that radically changed their behaviour, but that’s mega rare, lol). They just say they do, and those who don’t know how to judge people (by their fruits!) keep getting swindled. I’m sure Trump has made allusions to being somewhat religious lol, you don’t think he believes in any of that, right?
So you’re claiming now that no Christian ever committed a sin because they weren’t really Christians anyway?
No, I’m claiming anyone who actually believes in God and His judgment (whatever denomination) will recognise their shortcomings as shortcomings and not make excuses for them, and that fundamental difference helps you avoid large transgressions. For example, if you think lusting over random women is sinful, you will avert your gaze and, even if you fail at doing it quickly enough at times, you certainly won’t be cheating (there are too many steps between lust and action, enough many moral “checkpoints” to turn your back from sin… and even if you fall, for whatever reason, you’d still not run away from the judgment and take responsibility for the fuck up). But it all starts by recognising that some things, in some contexts, are always, objectively “wrong”.
I disagree with the premise that you require a mystical beard in the sky judging everything to behave in a moral manner but you do you.
God already made us good natured, and you recognise that, I agree with you. But being rightly guided will help when the good vibes aren’t convincing enough.
You’re not converting me, you can stop
I think you need to look up what the concept of noble savage actually means.
I know what it means but I’m repurposing it because, well, it sounded nice. Perhaps I shouldn’t have. 🤷