Are Religious People more Moral than Atheists? Here are the Facts - Phil Zuckerman

[ItsjustMe]

[msongs]

1. in my experience the more people talk about their religion the less moral they are....

when someone starts talking about their religion at you and you didn't inquire, get ready to run the other way

[2naSalit]

2. Nope.

[MenloParque]

3. Not at all!

Life is too short to deal with these conspiracy theorists. I paint those who believe in sky daddy nonsense with the same broad brush as Trumpers. I don’t want to engage with these types of people.

[Skittles]

9. I hear you

I also think people who can be made to believe such stuff can be made to believe anything.

[JoseBalow]

17. That pump is certainly primed

A sheep is a sheep is a sheep...

[jfz9580m]

12. While I try to be respectful of people

Certainly it is not a worldview I understand at all.

That said I try to be respectful of people with mild forms of faith. I still don’t get it.

It was when I had a severe burnout of sorts at work a decade back that I realized I was an atheist.
I found that (practically speaking) one just could not bring oneself to believe comforting nonsense (that one knows in one’s heart is pure drivel) to console oneself. Not even when so much seems out of one’s control. In fact when that stuff is essentially somehow deeply
viscerally aversive to one, it is not even comforting. I found comfort instead in a kind of bleak, sobering realism that bound me to sanity at the worst times. It can be embittering, but I choose it over more forced delusions.

There is nothing worse for one’s sanity than various culturally accepted irrationalities. I find religious faith downright depressing. It gives me a sense of nightmare as all irrational or rather incomprehensible and or primitive things do.

I am not fond of anything depressing and so I avoid religion as much as I can.

[Think. Again.]

4. Thank you for posting that....

...I'm going to buy myself a gift; a copy of Zuckerman's book.

[Chainfire]

5. The speaker's message is in sync with how I view the communities.

I grew up in the Deep South, bible belt, in a Methodist church. The more religious the people pretended to be, the less morally they acted the other six days of the week. There was some damn terrible things that went on in our small town and they weren't the work of secular people, but the deacons and the ones who put the most in the collection plates. Even as a child, I knew something was rotten. By the time I was 16 years old, I had put that hypocrisy behind me. I think that I am a better man for it.

[alwaysinasnit]

6. k&r for visibility

[Jeebo]

7. Define "moral"

Religious people's definitions of that word will include tenets of their religion. An atheist's definition would not, except those tenets that are in alignment with ANYBODY'S ideas of morality -- do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, etc.

-- Ron

[spooky3]

10. He provides his definition in the video. nt

[Skittles]

8. "religious" folk seem to be more judgemental

I guess "judge not lest ye be judged" escapes them.....

[PurgedVoter]

11. This is kind of obvious if you think about it.

The one place we entirely accept racism and sexism is in religion. If you are religious, you are obviously going to be inclined a bit more to accepting external authority to tell you what your ethics should be. That is bad from the start.

What I would be curious about, would be the morality and ethics for deists. Those who believe in the divine, but don't think churches have any more clue about morals than your average person in a place of unquestionable authority.

[jfz9580m]

13. What I notice

About religion is how many of the its determined adherents manage to incorporate some of the worst aspects of our technology heavy society into their worldviews, neatly skipping any science that is inconvenient (evolutionary biology, ecology). The religious also appear to side-step the philosophical or ethical sophistication that should go with access to the tools science provides us with.

Not that there are no crass/nihilistic atheists/agnostics but still..it is a bit noteworthy how often faith and destruction go hand in hand-use of the tools modernity provides sans any of the enlightenment that should go with access to those.

They skip the parts of faith (most faiths have some stuff about not hating other people e.g.: turn the other cheek; not being cruel to animals e.g.: ahimsa; not being greedy or crass..effortful stuff that gets the axe first) that are effortful or inconvenient while retaining all the superstitions, the parades and hatreds.

Even as an atheist I appreciate ahimsa for instance as a vegan. Jesus himself seemed like a cool person- he was basically a reformer and crucified for that.
But again, the effortful stuff gets the axe first.

[Farmer-Rick]

23. Good points

It's as if they pick and choose what science they are going to believe, like they pick and choose what parts of the bible, or other religious manuscripts, they are going to believe.

We are not going to believe in evolution but we are still going to use modern medicine which is grounded in evolution. Do they think it was just a coincidence that modern medicine uses animals in many of their life saving drugs and procedures? It's because we are all related in our evolutionary development.

Some Christians picked this part of the bible to believe: “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father…” — Ezekiel 18:20

Others chose this part to believe:
“I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation…” — Exodus 20:5

Some Christians picked this part of the bible to believe: Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 quote Jesus as crying with a loud voice, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Others chose this part to believe: Luke 23:46, his final words were, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

And yet others have chosen this part to believe: John 19:30 the last words were, “It is finished.”

Picking and choosing to cobble a piecemeal world view together seems to be a habit of the religious.

[jfz9580m]

25. Great examples

I don’t have that level of familiarity with the Christian religious texts, but even I know that Jesus said (and I am not using the exact quotes): turn the other cheek; love thy neighbour as thine own self; let he who is without sin cast the first stone; etc.

And yet all I see in the news relates to coerced childbirth, homophobia and so on. Ditto with all the other religions as well.

I am cool with the real part of religious teaching even as an atheist. But the bullshit and hatred/tribalism seem more popular..shrug..most wars seem to be about resource stresses and religion in combination.
Religion and tribal loyalties determining how we determine which group to go with as we scramble over a diminishing pool of resources thanks to industrial overgrowth and human overpopulation.

[twodogsbarking]

14. I care about people. If they are religious then that is their problem. Have a nice day regardless.

[GiqueCee]

15. I think it was Voltaire that said...

"... anyone that can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."
There is little in the realm of human experience more absurd than the belief that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. Or that penguins waddled thousands of miles to board Noah's floating zoo, while ignoring completely the fact that many hundreds of civilizations thrived at the same time this supposed flood was taking place. Or that the Earth is flat, though that little tidbit of idiocy doesn't have any obvious religious foundation.
It was unthinking, unwavering "faith" that led Jim Jones' followers to commit mass suicide, and led to the tragic standoff between David Koresh and his followers, and the FBI. Fanatical belief in imaginary deities and/or false prophets has fueled more acts of unimaginable depravity than anything else in all of human history. The Crusades were a prime example of monstrous religious hubris, the consequences of which echo throughout the Mideast to this very day.
Without exception, the vilest perpetrators of unspeakable evil polluting the halls of Congress always wrap themselves in the blood-soaked cloak of extreme religiosity, and the stochastic terrorism that results from the verbal vomit spewed by those people proves, yet again, that religion is the greatest fomenter of hatred and intolerance in the history of humanity.
"God spoke to me", should be the klaxon-horn warning that a fanatic is about to justify its evil because Jesus.

[Old Crank]

16. Goes right to the problem of religions

The most devote are the most exclusionary. And the most judgemental.

[LittleGirl]

18. Thanks for sharing! eom

[FuzzyRabbit]

19. ItsjustMe, thanks for posting this video.

Of course, many of us have been aware of these ideas for decades. It is nice to hear it presented again.

[AZ8theist]

20. Bullshit

[BigmanPigman]

21. Another scam by hypocrites

Religious people often hide behind this facade to get away with murder. Everyone knows they are a sham.

[Grins]

22. At one of the Claremont Colleges...

…LOTS of true-believer conservatives at Claremont. Surprised they have found a way to get rid of him.

Nice clip; long, but nice.

[twodogsbarking]

24. Are atheists more moral than religious people? Yeah.

[elleng]

26. ENTIRELY UNRELATED.

[doc03]

27. In my many years I found the more religious people are

they are less moral, more judgmental and prejudiced to the "other".