# If I didn't believe in God **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 19, 2012, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962 "2012-08-19T14:32:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2012, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/221 "2012-08-21T16:09:50Z")
Well put **Latro** , I think you’ve put your finger on it. It sounds like Badger is ready to imagine the world without a God but he wants to make sure he (Badger) won’t go off on an amoral killing spree when he first thinks that atheist thought. It is a big step. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2012, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/222 "2012-08-21T16:11:25Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > What I get from all this is that **Badger** is in the last stage , so to speak, of becoming an atheist. > > He has already shed his Catholic conditioning, doesn’t trust the bible anymore and even doesn’t know anymore what this God thing is actually supposed to be and do. > > Yet there remains this feeling that there is _something_ and he kind of misses the big daddy in the sky that watches over him. > > I too miss that comfort sometimes. Having been raised and, to put it bluntly, brainwashed with all this loving god stuff. > Sometimes I wish I could just believe it all again and feel safe and don’t have to worry that it is _me_ that has to put in effort to make my life work. That it will all be taken care of. > > Then I remember it is just a vestige from my indoctrination. Maybe coupled with a yearning back to childhood, when there really were a father and mother that actually took care of me. > > Am I far off **badger**? You are not far off at all, yet I feel I am light years away from making that final leap. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2012, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/223 "2012-08-21T16:13:11Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > **badger** , one reason I’m asking is that at some places you seem to be saying that it would be easier to make a tough decision to kill lots of people, but in other places you say that being a believer would make to easier by helping you deal with the guilt. And sometimes you seem to be saying that killing lots of people is a tough but necessary decision that would make the world better, and other times you don’t. And sometimes you seem to say that it depends on whether there’s a god or not. If there are some contradictions it may because I am just shooting from the hip dealing with an imaginary scenario. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2012, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/224 "2012-08-21T16:21:39Z")
Good call, Latro. As an incidental note, my final step toward atheism was occasioned by the movie _Ghost_. No killing spree ensued. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2012, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/225 "2012-08-21T16:45:03Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > **badger** , I’m still not sure what your point is. I have a feeling, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that maybe you don’t actually have a real point, but that you’re just sort of spitballing—thinking out loud, so to speak, “What would it be like if I were an atheist? Wouldn’t that be different! I wonder what I’d do!” but that you haven’t actually thought it out and come to a conclusion. > > As a result, I’m still not sure where you stand on several issues: > > 1. Do you think the world right now would be better off (barring divine intervention) if millions of people were killed? > 2. Do you think there is some plausible situation in which the world would be better off if millions of people were killed? > 3. Do you think being an atheist would make you more or less likely to kill millions of people, and in which circumstances? > 4. Do you think your answer to 3 means that you would be a better or worse person if you were an atheist? Would the world be better or worse off if you were an atheist? ``` Before I answer this question as honestly as I can I would like to qualify it by saying I don't think my answer is important because I would not trust myself to make these kind of decisions. I do believe the world is approaching a saturation point in many respects. Not sure what that point would be but I believe it to be within no more than a couple of hundred years more likley less. Killing millions of people might be and probably would be a decision to go to war. Most likely over competition for resources. My side would feel the other side pushing and they would feel my side pushing and at some point someone would throw the switch. If I were in that position I could throw the switch regardless of my belief or not. ``` #3, I think it may cause me to be just a tad quicker on the switch if I were in a position of this kind of power, but only in a situation of impending war. Forcing myself to imagine a situation of basicaly culling or pruning of the species as I would do a plum tree for intstance is difficult. It takes me back to an acting class I was in and assigned to play a child mollester who had kidnapped a young child. The director screamed at me over and over, he said you don’t want us to believe your character and he was right. He would not let me off the hook, He said I could not come down off that stage till he believed I was that character. I eventually snapped and became the most evil monster imaginable. The director gave me a standing ovation and showered me with highest forms of praise. the girls in the group and some of the guys were actualy afraid of me after that scene and I eneded up quitting the class over it. This is how that question affects me because at some level I feel the answer might be yes. It stesses me out trying to come up with a real life, plausible situation in which I would have to make that decision so I won’t go there all the way. 1. I think I would be worse off as an athiest. I have enjoyed the thread, I have a bit more respect for your particular outlooks. But in all honesty just hanging this close to the edge for the last few days has left me a bit disheveled if I spelled that right. If I gave up God I feel like it would turn my life upside down. I never really relized how much I actually meditate in very short momentary shots until I started this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2012, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/226 "2012-08-21T16:52:16Z")
> [@badger5149](#): > > If I gave up God I feel like it would turn my life upside down. If you’re having this discussion, it kind of sounds like you already did “give up God” and you’re trying to find a way to rationalize it away or put the genie back in the bottle, which doesn’t really work. And it doesn’t sound like your life has been turned upside down. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2012, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/227 "2012-08-21T17:24:07Z")
By the way, if you go atheist, please go easy on the “pruning the species” rhetoric. We have enough problems already. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/228 "2012-08-22T02:21:27Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Well, it’s not much of a point to follow-up on. Aside from posting something not-especially-contributory like “Yeah, tom’s right” or “welcome to the board, badger”, what can a tolerant nonbeliever actually _do_ with such a premise? Shucks, I didn’t even mention to **badger** that I’m a believer; I merely made a point a nonbeliever promptly copy-and-pasted, agreed with, and added to. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/229 "2012-08-22T11:09:41Z")
> [@badger5149](#): > > No, I don’t recall stating that. It wasn’t a direct statement but that is what I got from it. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/230 "2012-08-22T11:22:04Z")
By the way, **badger5149** , it’s atheist, not athiest. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/231 "2012-08-22T14:14:46Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > By the way, **badger5149** , it’s atheist, not athiest. He means that the people who would commit genocide are the athiest of all. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/232 "2012-08-22T14:17:14Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > And it doesn’t sound like your life has been turned upside down. He’d like to take a minute, just sit right there. ---
**Author:** ![B.Serum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/b.serum/32/14266_2.png) [@B.Serum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/B.Serum)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/233 "2012-08-23T04:49:30Z")
**badger5149,** I suspect you are viewing atheism as some kind of nihilism. It’s easy to see why this might be the case, if an atheist rejects the main, if not only, cause for morality (at least to perception of the religious), then there would appear to be no barriers to morally dubious behavior. Part of the problem is that we’re comparing a belief system with a negation of a belief system rather than another philosophy. When people say they’re atheist, they simply are saying “I don’t believe any supernatural entity exists and therefore cannot have given my laws to live by.” But it would be a mistake to assume that atheists have no motivating philosophy. Ayn Rand and I are both atheists but that’s where the similarity ends. Her belief system is Objectivism, mine most closely resembles Secular Humanism. You might consider checking out the book [Good Without God](http://www.amazon.com/Good-Without-God-Billion-Nonreligious/dp/0061670111). I also find [Peter Singer’s](http://www.pointofinquiry.org/peter_singer_ethics_in_an_age_of_darwin/) study into ethics very thought-provoking and challenging (but challenging in a good way). So I think you’re looking at the wrong aspect of their belief system: instead of focusing on the thing they **don’t** believe, try asking what they **do** believe. Different atheists will answer the question differently. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/234 "2012-08-23T11:26:03Z")
> [@badger5149](#): > > …what would stop us if no consequences were looming? Same thing as stops religious people from fighting crusades, committing murder, molesting children, burning people as witches, sending people to jail for saying particular words and… Wait. Religious people do all this sort of stuff. Now I _am_ confused. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/235 "2012-08-23T18:15:18Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > No atheist I know of thinks he has to take God’s place… All you kids can call me “Lord Og” if it makes you feel better. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/236 "2012-08-23T20:23:48Z")
“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. **For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you**. - Neil deGrasse Tyson’s response on Reddit when asked “What can you tell a young man looking for motivation in life itself?” > **[Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes (Author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry)](https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/12855.Neil_deGrasse_Tyson)** > > 825 quotes from Neil deGrasse Tyson: 'The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.', 'For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of... ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/237 "2012-08-23T21:52:08Z")
> [@badger5149](#): > > Hitler may have proffessed to being a Christian but I doubt if he was anything but a sociopath. There are two times when you see a man’s true character. 1\> When he is in danger and all the normal concerns of the world go out the window. 2\> When he has absolute power and need fear no reprisal or punishment. I do what is right because that is my highest ideal in life. Not for fear that I will be punished if I don’t. There is a huge mental gulf between doing what is right because you know it’s right, and only doing it because you fear God. Honestly, if you only do right things because you fear God, then you need to re-evaluate what kind of a person you really are (remember that bit above?). If you really did stand before God at the end, since he knows your heart, would he be proud of you for being a truly good person, or would he know that you only did stuff because he demanded that you do it? And if you want to think about how that works, consider if you had two children. One always did the right thing. You could trust him to think clearly and be good. The other only did the right thing because he knew you’d whip his ass if he didn’t. And therefore you couldn’t really trust him, now could you. On the other hand, I will admit that there _are_ things in this world that I do not do for fear of civil punishment. This is the point of the Law. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/238 "2012-08-23T22:52:56Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > There are two times when you see a man’s true character. Tell me - Are you familiar with the works of Shan Yu? ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/239 "2012-08-23T23:17:07Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Tell me - Are you familiar with the works of Shan Yu? No, please PM me with more information. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962/240 "2012-08-23T23:23:08Z")
> **[Shan Yu](https://firefly.fandom.com/wiki/Shan_Yu)** > > Shan Yu was a psychotic dictator and poet. According to Derrial Book, Shan Yu "...fancied himself quite the warrior poet. Wrote volumes on war, torture, the limits of human endurance." Shepherd continues to tell Simon Tam that Shan Yu said, "Live... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-i-didnt-believe-in-god/631962.md?page=11)