_"When we're raising children, we want to raise our children not to say, "I don't want to do this because I'll be caught", you want to raise them to say, "I do not want to do this because it is wrong."_ ~ *Penn Jillette*
Bottom Line: Morality is dictated by those with the power to enforce it. Every individual has a different view of morality based on what he or she wants. To get others to go along with your view, you either have to convince them through argument or the use of force. The only things that are objective in relation to morality are physical realities. For instance, we know objectively what causes suffering and death. If you want more or less of those things, you have to convince enough people with enough power, to enforce laws that will objectively make what you WANT happen. Luckily, most people want less suffering and death, so it's usually a consensus to make that happen. But not always. If you want less suffering in other countries, and the people with power in those places disagree, you have to decide how much you are willing to sacrifice in your own blood and treasure to change that situation. It doesn't change the fact that morality is a matter of opinion. Saying you need religion in order to do good, is like saying you need to wear a blue hat to do good. Totally irrelevant.
Nope , religious family members lie , cheat steal , commit adultery , but God has forgiven them . They proclaim their regrets and ask for forgiveness....then do it all over again ! Lather rinse repeat .
Morality outside of spirituality is what the people in power agree to. If we are able to draw a line to distinguish between what is moral and what is legal, that line lays on the side of spirituality. Outside of it, whatever is judged moral, just changes with time. Like the thousands and thousands of abortions happening everyday… is abortion moral ? Or mutilating children in the name of affirmation ? Look… for those who stumble upon this video and are looking for the truth. Open your heart to Jesus-Christ and let him change you. Amen
It's sort of like how I don't believe in God and I still don't get a thrill from shooting defenseless ducks that are minding their own business. Of course, Phil Robertson not only gets off on that but makes money on that. That is pretty much the definition of selfishness. But God didn't say anything about that, so he can feel that he's right in doing it. This is what (Abrahamic) religion does.
Rationalific I am guessing you are vegan. I do not eat duck but don't call those who do selfish.... And those of us who believe the Bible is God's word, "....and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air....".
D AF I am a vegetarian who used non-dairy milk (though mostly dairy ice cream occasionally...but I had non-dairy ice cream just yesterday) and when I buy eggs (about a dozen eggs per year), they are at least cage free...but I am not a vegan. I'm not sure what you are getting at, but you probably thought that I am a hypocrite. Let me tell you that I do not make sport of hurting animals, nor do I make money from it. And yes, Bible believers can believe in God's word, no matter if it is "....and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air...." or "If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death" (Deuteronomy 22:23-24), or "If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives." (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). Yes, there is a lot of crazy shit in that book that only idiots can believe as 100% absolute truth and the greatest moral guide. Also, even for Bible believers/thumpers/etc, I wonder how "Having dominion over" means "murdering for fun". Parents often have dominion over their children, and kings have had dominion over their subjects, but when parents or kings slaughter their children or subjects for fun, we don't simply say, "Oh, they had dominion over them, so it's OK!" Well, you might say that, but not me.
I agree with most of that. But I don't see what's greedy about living forever. Greed isn't just wanting a lot of something, it's when that prevents others from having some that it's greed. If living forever required you to take others' lives, like a vampire draining others blood for instance, then it's greed. But if it's not taking anything away from others it's not. Would you call it greed if you wanted to live for a 100 years instead of 50?
Another angle of introspection is; How do these theists know that their god's commandments are moral? If they say "Because they are from God", then they are merely drones, doing anything that is ordered to them from an authority figure, which can and has included inexcusable acts of absolute evil. If they say "Because I know God is good" then they have used their own judgement to decide that which is moral and that which is immoral, not their almighty god's. And we're back to square one.
It’s not blind following. When I think about God’s commandments I think about how and why those are good commandments. For example, “honor thy father and thy mother”. Some would say this is a bad commandment because what if your parents were really bad to you. How could you still honor them if they did something like beat you or something like that. Well, a big part of the Bible is forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn’t just set the guilty one free but it also sets free the victim. Also being good to anyone unconditionally is a good thing to do.
@@dolphinjeans663 In what way would “have no other gods but me” and “remember the sabbath to keep it holy be construed as “moral”? Perhaps a more pertinent thing for “god” to have commanded (presuming she both exists and is moral) might be “don’t rape people” or “don’t allow slavery”, and yet the bible not only fails to prohibit these things but actively delights in them. Some moral code, huh?
@@alfrede.neuman9082 Well serving false gods will do you more harm than good. Some might even say you are lying to yourself when you do that. Keeping the Sabbath holy is likely to install a day of rest for the Israelites (the Sabbath is also the day God rested so it makes since). It was a good and moral thing to do so that the Israelites all took a day off from the hard labors of everyday life, especially back 4 thousand years ago. Nice try trying to say that God is a woman. That is just flat out wrong though. We were all created in the image of God. Of course God came to Earth as a man (Jesus). The Bible doesn’t make analogies about Jesus being the bridegroom and the church being the bride so that you can call him a woman.
@@dolphinjeans663 Nice straw man 👌🏻👌🏻 Completely avoiding the point I made about how a prohibition on rape or slavery might’ve been more a more worthwhile addition to the (allegedly) definitive moral edict of all time, instead of arranging people’s fukken weekend plans! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 But what I love MOST of all is the absolutely STAGGERING, breathtaking arrogance, the PURE hubris that only a theist could summon to PRESUME that THEY know which gods are “false” and which aren’t. You people are absolutely hilarious! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Oh, and since you claimed that “forgiveness is a big part of the bible” and that’s why “you should honour your father and mother” regardless of abuse, couldn’t Yahweh have forgiven something as minor as, say, eating a fukken apple??? Or, whilst we’re at it, WHY would he need to lend (not sacrifice) his alter ego/son/Freudian schizophrenic persona (Jesus) to be crucified (in a bizarre auto-erotic crucifixion NO ONE asked for) to forgive all sin, if he could JUST FORGIVE THEM??? As far as gods go, Yahweh is empirically the shittest, most incompetent, most vengeful (least forgiving) and outright pathological cumt on all mythology. I don’t know if a single other creator deity that did SUCH a positively shit job the first go that they had to stage a genocidal flood and start all over again! I mean, this “Yahweh” is about as much good as a marzipan dildo 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Um, who thought it was a threat? I just thought it was batshit crazy, myself - and a weird kind of violence-porn fantasy that he should have kept to himself (given the elaborate, and completely unnecessary, details in the thing). As a thought experiment, it was FAR creepier than it needed to be, showing too much of Robertson's inner self, I'd say. But did ANYONE think it was a threat? Not that I saw. Penn Jillette seems to be arguing against a strawman here, don't you think? The rest of his comment was fine. I have no problem with that. But defending Phil Robertson from the charge that he was threatening atheists? I haven't seen a single atheist charging him with that. It's certainly possible. We're a diverse bunch, after all. But that certainly wasn't why I criticized Phil Robertson.
I'm worried about the recent trend of people like Jordan Peterson and the rise of new age Christianity. Psuedo retrospective psychological analysis is in danger of pushing the marginal back to bible, and organised religion.
The problem I find w the argument this so called believer puts forward is that even if the father were a true believer in Jesus and "saved". I don't know how that'd help him in any way. He can't petition the Lord with prayer to save his family or himself, he doesn't know for certain whether the killers will go to hell or have a deathbed conversion. And the deed is done which brings suffering, they'll hopefully go to jail and our laws don't come from the bible, they come from common law. Either way it's sliced, the believer position sucks more. It wouldn't bring me any more solace hoping perpetrators get judged and go to hell.
Christians make up roughly 31% of the world population and Muslims make up around 22% plus or minus a percentage point for both. Which means that between 50-53% of the world population is either a Christian or a Muslim. Which means the majority of the population is monothiestic. And worshipping the same god, in slightly different ways.
im not slaying this. but why do we need him to explain to us that thats what the guy meant? Robertson is clearly touched in the head but are people really that dumb and offended by some hobo
Penn's argument sounds good but it is myopic in nature. Morality, although often unacknowledged, has been rooted in societal standards.... standards which in the West (primarily and as way of example) have been shaped by a Judeo-Christian framework. You lose the framework and society, along with its standards, devolve over time. The argument "I don't believe and can be moral" is not equivalent to "society does no believe and is moral OVER TIME". I'm open to hearing a secular grounding for morality but I'm afraid Penn's argument is insufficient.
How do you figure society “devolves” morally as it rejects religion? I happen to live in Australia, one of the single-least religious western democracies in the world with ~60% identifying as “no religion” as ay our most recent census, and that number is increasing by about 10% every 5-10 years at least. And yet, aside from crime NOT increasing, what HAS happened is a strong march towards compassion, mutual respect and DESPITE religious influence. I shall provide examples: Abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, women’s suffrage, aboriginal suffrage, and even working on Sunday (because apparently historical Christian lawmakers were unaware that the sabbath is in fact on Saturday) have ALLLLLL been legalised over the last 100 years DESPITE Christian “morality” and its imposition on our laws. Indeed, ALL of these things were opposed, and some still are, vehemently by Christians. This influence has been steadily dismantled, to the point where I’m free to blaspheme, work as an openly lesbian, aboriginal, female, gay-marriage celebrant on Sunday whilst voting and having an abortion the same day and accessing voluntary assisted dying (provided I meet the strict criteria), if I so choose. So really, we have made TREMENDOUS leaps in morality with the decline of religiosity.
Srry but judeo-Christian is a made up word after the holocaust to make the Jews feel included in Christianity bcuz before that they were separate and many hated Jews bcuz of the Jesus situation just to clarify
Only materials exist for atheist. Question, how much does hate weigh? Is there an atom for love? What's the chemical composition of the murder molecule?
Penn doesnt get that that is mankind's proper place. he doesnt understand humanity. It is more prideful and selfish to take the shrimp and prime rib than it is to assume the proper role in the order of things.
Penn made one point really, so I want to address that. He said you want your child to do the right thing, Because it is right. Not because being caught is bad or a reward is waiting. That ideal is right on! I Love that as it is repeated in the Bible over & over. He did make a few things clear when talking about this you cannot miss. One is you have to Teach this. If it was, in fact universally true, as he claimed (self evident), then you would not need to teach it. Unfortunately, morals, like common sense, are not so common. The idea that it is not right comes from scripture. That is how morality is Biblical, not just something you know is right. Of course there are some people that just make these correct choices without help, but that is not the norm. Second, everything you do has a gain or punishment that comes with it. Some immediate, some not so much. Some in your face, others that take discipline to see the effect. In truth, you have needs & how you meet them determines your future. So can you be good for goodness sake? Not truly, but you can be less self centered. That is why it is called an ideal situation. It is not truly obtainable unless you do not need anything ever. Third, (& this one gets a lot of flack) Jesus tells you that to think it is just as bad as doing it. Thought crime is the term many use. Without the knowledge that at some point EVERYTHING you do will come to light, it is hard to do good for goodness sake. In other words, if you believe you CAN safely get away with it, it encourages you to do so. You may then think, nope I am a good person. Try this. For a day, take every action with intent towards other peoples well being. You will notice all the things you compromise, ignoring your ideals normally. Why? Because only you know if you lied. Only you know if you took two when they said one each. Only you know who disobeyed the rule you think is unfair. Only you know if you did your best to earn the reward given. Without God, there is no reason to be moral unless you want to. That is the problem. To know Christ is the way to know God & morality. Shalom
@@DiggyDiggy1919 I try to give charity to every response. In that spirit, I was wondering what specificly you meant. Elaborate & describe or be dismissed as making a vague statement without context. Either way, you earned it. What would you like?
Damn, so close. You nailed it on morality and missed completely on greed. For the real Christians who died making our world a better place and the 2 or 3 who live today, it's not greed but gratitude.
What are you talking about? Gratitude? For what? Christians want to get into heaven, that's why they try to avoid sinning (behaving badly). Gratitude has nothing to do with that.
Dig, What I mean by gratitude is someone who did what I believe in better than me. "Love your neighbor as yourself". He and others where a little better on the "or else" side of that.
![State of Play | September 24, 2024 [ENGLISH]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/fVs0suPHAX8/mqdefault.jpg)
If they need a THREAT or a REWARD to act a certain way, then they are a child in an adult's body and deserve to be treated with suspicion.
_"When we're raising children, we want to raise our children not to say, "I don't want to do this because I'll be caught", you want to raise them to say, "I do not want to do this because it is wrong."_
~ *Penn Jillette*
Bottom Line: Morality is dictated by those with the power to enforce it. Every individual has a different view of morality based on what he or she wants. To get others to go along with your view, you either have to convince them through argument or the use of force. The only things that are objective in relation to morality are physical realities. For instance, we know objectively what causes suffering and death. If you want more or less of those things, you have to convince enough people with enough power, to enforce laws that will objectively make what you WANT happen. Luckily, most people want less suffering and death, so it's usually a consensus to make that happen. But not always.
If you want less suffering in other countries, and the people with power in those places disagree, you have to decide how much you are willing to sacrifice in your own blood and treasure to change that situation. It doesn't change the fact that morality is a matter of opinion.
Saying you need religion in order to do good, is like saying you need to wear a blue hat to do good. Totally irrelevant.
Ethics is what you’d do if you know you won’t get caught.
Religious morality is not doing it cos the sky-god is watching.
Unless you believed you shared views with this sky god. Then any number of immoral actions would be if not permitted, enjoined or enshrined!
Nope , religious family members lie , cheat steal , commit adultery , but God has forgiven them . They proclaim their regrets and ask for forgiveness....then do it all over again ! Lather rinse repeat .
Penn, you are an amazing person, you say the things that are always at the tip of my tongue. You remind me of Christopher Hitchens.
May he live forever in his works.
Love it. Love Penn. Hope he writes another couple of books!
Morality starts with motherhood, caring for another. Most mammals care for their offspring.
Aristocrats!
Awesome vid
Morality outside of spirituality is what the people in power agree to. If we are able to draw a line to distinguish between what is moral and what is legal, that line lays on the side of spirituality. Outside of it, whatever is judged moral, just changes with time. Like the thousands and thousands of abortions happening everyday… is abortion moral ? Or mutilating children in the name of affirmation ?
Look… for those who stumble upon this video and are looking for the truth. Open your heart to Jesus-Christ and let him change you. Amen
It's sort of like how I don't believe in God and I still don't get a thrill from shooting defenseless ducks that are minding their own business. Of course, Phil Robertson not only gets off on that but makes money on that. That is pretty much the definition of selfishness. But God didn't say anything about that, so he can feel that he's right in doing it. This is what (Abrahamic) religion does.
Rationalific I am guessing you are vegan. I do not eat duck but don't call those who do selfish.... And those of us who believe the Bible is God's word, "....and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air....".
D AF I am a vegetarian who used non-dairy milk (though mostly dairy ice cream occasionally...but I had non-dairy ice cream just yesterday) and when I buy eggs (about a dozen eggs per year), they are at least cage free...but I am not a vegan. I'm not sure what you are getting at, but you probably thought that I am a hypocrite. Let me tell you that I do not make sport of hurting animals, nor do I make money from it.
And yes, Bible believers can believe in God's word, no matter if it is "....and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air...." or "If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death" (Deuteronomy 22:23-24), or "If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives." (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). Yes, there is a lot of crazy shit in that book that only idiots can believe as 100% absolute truth and the greatest moral guide.
Also, even for Bible believers/thumpers/etc, I wonder how "Having dominion over" means "murdering for fun". Parents often have dominion over their children, and kings have had dominion over their subjects, but when parents or kings slaughter their children or subjects for fun, we don't simply say, "Oh, they had dominion over them, so it's OK!" Well, you might say that, but not me.
I agree with most of that. But I don't see what's greedy about living forever. Greed isn't just wanting a lot of something, it's when that prevents others from having some that it's greed. If living forever required you to take others' lives, like a vampire draining others blood for instance, then it's greed. But if it's not taking anything away from others it's not.
Would you call it greed if you wanted to live for a 100 years instead of 50?
Another angle of introspection is; How do these theists know that their god's commandments are moral?
If they say "Because they are from God", then they are merely drones, doing anything that is ordered to them from an authority figure, which can and has included inexcusable acts of absolute evil.
If they say "Because I know God is good" then they have used their own judgement to decide that which is moral and that which is immoral, not their almighty god's. And we're back to square one.
Hahaha you nailed it!
It’s not blind following. When I think about God’s commandments I think about how and why those are good commandments. For example, “honor thy father and thy mother”. Some would say this is a bad commandment because what if your parents were really bad to you. How could you still honor them if they did something like beat you or something like that. Well, a big part of the Bible is forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn’t just set the guilty one free but it also sets free the victim. Also being good to anyone unconditionally is a good thing to do.
@@dolphinjeans663 In what way would “have no other gods but me” and “remember the sabbath to keep it holy be construed as “moral”? Perhaps a more pertinent thing for “god” to have commanded (presuming she both exists and is moral) might be “don’t rape people” or “don’t allow slavery”, and yet the bible not only fails to prohibit these things but actively delights in them. Some moral code, huh?
@@alfrede.neuman9082 Well serving false gods will do you more harm than good. Some might even say you are lying to yourself when you do that. Keeping the Sabbath holy is likely to install a day of rest for the Israelites (the Sabbath is also the day God rested so it makes since). It was a good and moral thing to do so that the Israelites all took a day off from the hard labors of everyday life, especially back 4 thousand years ago.
Nice try trying to say that God is a woman. That is just flat out wrong though. We were all created in the image of God. Of course God came to Earth as a man (Jesus). The Bible doesn’t make analogies about Jesus being the bridegroom and the church being the bride so that you can call him a woman.
@@dolphinjeans663 Nice straw man 👌🏻👌🏻 Completely avoiding the point I made about how a prohibition on rape or slavery might’ve been more a more worthwhile addition to the (allegedly) definitive moral edict of all time, instead of arranging people’s fukken weekend plans! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
But what I love MOST of all is the absolutely STAGGERING, breathtaking arrogance, the PURE hubris that only a theist could summon to PRESUME that THEY know which gods are “false” and which aren’t. You people are absolutely hilarious! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Oh, and since you claimed that “forgiveness is a big part of the bible” and that’s why “you should honour your father and mother” regardless of abuse, couldn’t Yahweh have forgiven something as minor as, say, eating a fukken apple??? Or, whilst we’re at it, WHY would he need to lend (not sacrifice) his alter ego/son/Freudian schizophrenic persona (Jesus) to be crucified (in a bizarre auto-erotic crucifixion NO ONE asked for) to forgive all sin, if he could JUST FORGIVE THEM???
As far as gods go, Yahweh is empirically the shittest, most incompetent, most vengeful (least forgiving) and outright pathological cumt on all mythology. I don’t know if a single other creator deity that did SUCH a positively shit job the first go that they had to stage a genocidal flood and start all over again! I mean, this “Yahweh” is about as much good as a marzipan dildo 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Um, who thought it was a threat? I just thought it was batshit crazy, myself - and a weird kind of violence-porn fantasy that he should have kept to himself (given the elaborate, and completely unnecessary, details in the thing). As a thought experiment, it was FAR creepier than it needed to be, showing too much of Robertson's inner self, I'd say.
But did ANYONE think it was a threat? Not that I saw. Penn Jillette seems to be arguing against a strawman here, don't you think?
The rest of his comment was fine. I have no problem with that. But defending Phil Robertson from the charge that he was threatening atheists? I haven't seen a single atheist charging him with that.
It's certainly possible. We're a diverse bunch, after all. But that certainly wasn't why I criticized Phil Robertson.
Thank you
I'm worried about the recent trend of people like Jordan Peterson and the rise of new age Christianity. Psuedo retrospective psychological analysis is in danger of pushing the marginal back to bible, and organised religion.
Isn’t that a Bible story?
The problem I find w the argument this so called believer puts forward is that even if the father were a true believer in Jesus and "saved". I don't know how that'd help him in any way. He can't petition the Lord with prayer to save his family or himself, he doesn't know for certain whether the killers will go to hell or have a deathbed conversion. And the deed is done which brings suffering, they'll hopefully go to jail and our laws don't come from the bible, they come from common law. Either way it's sliced, the believer position sucks more. It wouldn't bring me any more solace hoping perpetrators get judged and go to hell.
But the God of the Bible allows this a LOT in the book.
Why do so many minds need God? A minority worldwide BTW (monotheism).
Monotheism is close to half of the world population.
Nonetheless, a minority.
Tsnore actually i was wrong 53% of the human population practice some form of monothiesm. Thus making them the majority.
Christians make up roughly 31% of the world population and Muslims make up around 22% plus or minus a percentage point for both. Which means that between 50-53% of the world population is either a Christian or a Muslim. Which means the majority of the population is monothiestic. And worshipping the same god, in slightly different ways.
MosesBad The jews don't even make up a full percentage point. Which is why I didn't include them.
im not slaying this. but why do we need him to explain to us that thats what the guy meant? Robertson is clearly touched in the head but are people really that dumb and offended by some hobo
No, I think he meant that it should be done to atheists. I can't see how Robertson could've meant anything else.
Penn's argument sounds good but it is myopic in nature. Morality, although often unacknowledged, has been rooted in societal standards.... standards which in the West (primarily and as way of example) have been shaped by a Judeo-Christian framework. You lose the framework and society, along with its standards, devolve over time. The argument "I don't believe and can be moral" is not equivalent to "society does no believe and is moral OVER TIME". I'm open to hearing a secular grounding for morality but I'm afraid Penn's argument is insufficient.
How do you figure society “devolves” morally as it rejects religion? I happen to live in Australia, one of the single-least religious western democracies in the world with ~60% identifying as “no religion” as ay our most recent census, and that number is increasing by about 10% every 5-10 years at least.
And yet, aside from crime NOT increasing, what HAS happened is a strong march towards compassion, mutual respect and DESPITE religious influence. I shall provide examples:
Abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, women’s suffrage, aboriginal suffrage, and even working on Sunday (because apparently historical Christian lawmakers were unaware that the sabbath is in fact on Saturday) have ALLLLLL been legalised over the last 100 years DESPITE Christian “morality” and its imposition on our laws. Indeed, ALL of these things were opposed, and some still are, vehemently by Christians.
This influence has been steadily dismantled, to the point where I’m free to blaspheme, work as an openly lesbian, aboriginal, female, gay-marriage celebrant on Sunday whilst voting and having an abortion the same day and accessing voluntary assisted dying (provided I meet the strict criteria), if I so choose.
So really, we have made TREMENDOUS leaps in morality with the decline of religiosity.
Srry but judeo-Christian is a made up word after the holocaust to make the Jews feel included in Christianity bcuz before that they were separate and many hated Jews bcuz of the Jesus situation just to clarify
I think phil meant that we have innate morality because of god? I dont think he was trying to defend atheists.
sam harris wouldnt use the word zillion
Name one other animal that has morals like humans..... anyone? Anyone?
Only materials exist for atheist. Question, how much does hate weigh? Is there an atom for love? What's the chemical composition of the murder molecule?
Penn doesnt get that that is mankind's proper place. he doesnt understand humanity. It is more prideful and selfish to take the shrimp and prime rib than it is to assume the proper role in the order of things.
Penn made one point really, so I want to address that. He said you want your child to do the right thing, Because it is right. Not because being caught is bad or a reward is waiting. That ideal is right on! I Love that as it is repeated in the Bible over & over.
He did make a few things clear when talking about this you cannot miss. One is you have to Teach this. If it was, in fact universally true, as he claimed (self evident), then you would not need to teach it. Unfortunately, morals, like common sense, are not so common. The idea that it is not right comes from scripture. That is how morality is Biblical, not just something you know is right. Of course there are some people that just make these correct choices without help, but that is not the norm.
Second, everything you do has a gain or punishment that comes with it. Some immediate, some not so much. Some in your face, others that take discipline to see the effect. In truth, you have needs & how you meet them determines your future. So can you be good for goodness sake? Not truly, but you can be less self centered. That is why it is called an ideal situation. It is not truly obtainable unless you do not need anything ever.
Third, (& this one gets a lot of flack) Jesus tells you that to think it is just as bad as doing it. Thought crime is the term many use. Without the knowledge that at some point EVERYTHING you do will come to light, it is hard to do good for goodness sake. In other words, if you believe you CAN safely get away with it, it encourages you to do so.
You may then think, nope I am a good person. Try this. For a day, take every action with intent towards other peoples well being. You will notice all the things you compromise, ignoring your ideals normally. Why? Because only you know if you lied. Only you know if you took two when they said one each. Only you know who disobeyed the rule you think is unfair. Only you know if you did your best to earn the reward given.
Without God, there is no reason to be moral unless you want to. That is the problem. To know Christ is the way to know God & morality.
Shalom
A lot of evasion and distraction in your comment. Typical of a religious perspective.
@@DiggyDiggy1919
I try to give charity to every response. In that spirit, I was wondering what specificly you meant. Elaborate & describe or be dismissed as making a vague statement without context. Either way, you earned it. What would you like?
Damn, so close. You nailed it on morality and missed completely on greed. For the real Christians who died making our world a better place and the 2 or 3 who live today, it's not greed but gratitude.
What are you talking about? Gratitude? For what? Christians want to get into heaven, that's why they try to avoid sinning (behaving badly). Gratitude has nothing to do with that.
Dig, What I mean by gratitude is someone who did what I believe in better than me. "Love your neighbor as yourself". He and others where a little better on the "or else" side of that.