this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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Atheism
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It gets worse, because that’s what people use to justify the argument that people being evil is a part of human nature. Because they genuinely believe that being evil is the default state of humans despite centuries of evidence otherwise.
It's also the reason that religious people can contentedly do horrible things - because they have no ability to make moral judgments on their own, so if their religion tells them that something that anyone with even a minimal ability to reason morally would recognize to be obviously wrong is actually right and proper, they just slavishly believe that it's right and proper.
Well... Some cannot make those judgements but some can. Those who can, and some who are told to do or believe things that contradict their sense of morality will refuse to do so. And end up having to question their leader, church, even their entire belief system. I'm speaking from experience here.
I dunno, I don't believe in a god, but I also don't believe humans are good either. We're pretty fucked up creatures.
Wars, capitalism, climate change, rape, murder, torture, religious extremism, mass starvation while we throw out food because someone failed to buy it, etc.
Fuckin lmao 🤦
We are a very mixed bag.
There are a range of people from altruistic to greedy sociopaths. And few if any are so simple that "good" or "bad" is a sufficient descriptor.
Humans evolved to be cooperative, on average, only to such a degree to enable us to survive. On the surface we can mostly not maim and kill each other enough to work together on things.
But we have many competing motivations and instincts. We aren't far enough removed from our violent ape ancestors to my taste. As one can see by reading the news on any given day.
To quote MIB: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
I think it applies pretty broadly that individuals are decent but organized into society, we mess up quite a bit.
I always say that the idea of civilised society is something we tell ourselves to make us feel better about the fact that we're living amongst wild animals.