Religion doesn't always correlate with ethics.

SpikeVertical · 6 months

I was waiting for this to correlate to mustaches somehow.

a5htr0n · 6 months

Most people would say, they weren't REALLY a Christian. Or they weren't REALLY a Muslim.

Johnx014 · 6 months

I have seen this posted atleast 10 times in this subreddit.

aceist · 6 months

So true.

Also atheism doesn't correlate with science.

My friend Tony (Catholic): Gets straight As on physics, science, chemistry..etc

Le me (atheist): doesn't like science, prefer leading a life of licentiousness and debauchery, and ingesting hallucinogens to escape reality

ConorMaximus · 6 months

You should also include 'being an atheist doesn't mean your smart'. The amount of atheists on here who act like scientists because they don't believe in god is amazing. Once an argument breaks out they will be the first to quote Hitch and act smug as if they invented the quote themselves.

derpy669 · 6 months

I'm not sure Malcolm x can be counted as a good guy , he was pretty militant and and massively prejudiced against whites at least in his early years.

pngwn56 · 6 months

Really? Malcom X was the best muslim you could come up with? The violent civil rights leader...

noam_thwompsky · 6 months

Uhhh I'm confused... You mean people who take religion to an abstract extreme do not correlate with ethics? Isn't the vast majority of most religious texts talking precisely about how ethically one should live? Religion may not follow the majority's standard of ethics at a given time, but it most definitely correlates with an ethical boundary as set by that religion.

dcbriccetti · 6 months

Yes, very good. Saying “post-Microsoft Bill Gates” would improve this.

DMagnific · 6 months

But no true Scottsman errrrr.... I mean Christian would do anything evil!

kadmylos · 6 months

.....but facial hair does?

Blarpblorp · 6 months

2/3 of the good guys wear glasses. I think we're nearing a breakthrough.

jbhak4 · 6 months

Historically, this has been a problem with religion being cultural. People participate not because they believe it, but because they were brought up in it. As we have become more knowledgeable, we have better exposure to different ideas and there is less passive religion, but there are still isolated cases of people who have their own ideas about their religion. Osama Bin Laden, as an example, thought himself a Muslim, but his idea of Islam was radically different from most Muslims. People rush to say that Osama Bin Laden wasn't a true Muslim, Hitler wasn't a true Christian, etc. because they recognize that the mainstream religion does not condone their actions. In any case, those religions specifically call on their followers to be ethical. That is not to say that their followers do so.

seesharpy · 6 months

Religion doesn't correlate positively or negatively with ethics.

fixed

stoogebag · 6 months

This is not what 'correlation' means.

krangles · 6 months

Does anyone else notice that every good religious person on this post is American and every evil is not only not American but a former enemy of the US? I'm guessing it's just to appeal to the American majority on reddit...... BUT WHAT IF IT"S NOT!!!!

MexicanAtheism · 6 months

Yes, however the majority of religious zealots infringe upon everyone's rights. They're essentially a pestering child advocating their ridiculous "morals" of slavery, adultery, abuse, damnation, murderous intentions. So no I'm not going to stop portraying for what they really are. In fact, we're giving them way too much leverage to spew their trash.

green_marshmallow · 6 months

Really? Malcolm X, an american convert, was the only muslim you could think of? You should probably learn a little more about foreign cultures and people. What's the point of posting in a subreddit dedicated to knowledge if you just repost the same image featuring widely referenced historical figures that even a middle schooler knows about

UnknownArchive · 6 months

Anyone seeking more info might also check here:

title	comnts	points	age	/r/
To end the religion/morality debate	24^coms	29^pts	3^dys	atheism
Evil or not evil?	218^coms	613^pts	20^dys	atheism
Get over it	15^coms	6^pts	1^mo	atheism
Can we all shut up now?	140^coms	384^pts	3^mos	pics
Religion does not always correlate with ethics	992^coms	750^pts	4^mos	pics
Hey /r/atheism, I made something for you. Hope you guys/gals like it.	1565^coms	1181^pts	4^mos	atheism
A friendly reminder	9^coms	2^pts	1^mo	atheism

source: karmadecay

Lucifers_Friend · 6 months

fucked up people, do fucked up things.

Zideburnz · 6 months

Malcolm X as an example of a good muslim? Oh lordy. I love reddit.

ulber · 6 months

Correlate? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

ShockedSystem · 6 months

So morality is determined by facial hair?

rogersmith25 · 6 months

This argument is vulnerable to the very common, "No true Scotsman fallacy."

This logical fallacy is an example of the mental gymnastics people will go through to prove their untrue preconceived notions. It states that any counter-example to a rule does not violate it because, by definition, the counter-example would never violate the rule.

In this example, Hitler isn't a "real Christian" because "no true Christian" would ever do what he did.

Though I admit I am guilty of this as well -- "No true scientist would ever deny evolution." But what about that geologist who thinks the world is 6000 years old? "Well he couldn't be a real scientist, because a real scientist would never believe such a thing!"

quantumapoptosi · 6 months

I've got a problem with defining good and evil. No one does something in the name of evil. I'd say that the good/bad binary is that of monotheistic construction. There are both chaos and order, but each brings about the other. But, something that is purely good, or something that is purely evil can only be observed if you are projecting what that something is into your own ethical understanding. People do things because they think they are the right thing to do, not because they think it is bad.

LymphaticHeaddress · 6 months

I'm sorry, but while this isn't technically wrong, it does give the wrong message. The evil people living with religion did the evil things BECAUSE they were religious. The evil people who did things without religion did NOT do what the did in the name of non-religion. There is a HUGE difference. Understand?

MrBurglar · 6 months

Malcolm X, good? Are you fucking kidding me? Get out.

KingMotion · 6 months

I think Hitchens's quote is pretty apt here:

"Good people do good things. Evil people do evil things. If you want a good person to do an evil thing, that takes religion."

Frank769 · 6 months

I'd argue that what seems like a bad religious in today's standards could really not be so bad religously-speaking. IDK if you heard the Shafia Trial in Quebec, muslim dude that killed his daughters because of the way they were behaving (being teenagers in Canada) that kill would've been justified in a deeply religious country. The REAL religous people is what we have to be scared of, I have yet to meet any (and I've talked to my share of supposed christians. You don't fit in the guidelines yet you pretend to... sorry, you're not.

bigpoppastevenson · 6 months

I don't think that you understand what "correlate" means. Two things can't sometimes correlate.

NrwhlBcnSmrt-ttck · 6 months

Um, Bill Gates subjects millions of people to wage-slavery.

komi90 · 6 months

lets see, hitler killled "JEWS" religious group

Osama started "jihad" religious war

Stallin, i am pretty sure he didn't go around killing folks cause they weren't atheist

i never liked this pic cause atheist don't start wars because people dont agree with us .now on the other hand religion....well u get the point.

mouseparty · 6 months

You can tell which people are good and bad in this one by figuring out who is American. Yay, nationalism!

kingoflurk · 6 months

I love how each is identified by their beard or lack thereof. xD

Archer007 · 6 months

Mustache area and evilness clearly correlate.

Senor_Wilson · 6 months

I think this post is good, but not great. It's missing some key components.

Instead of a hole, paint one.

First, if you build a birdhouse without a hole in the front, the birds can't get it. I understand that it will be comical and what not, but the birds may get confused and commit suicide.

Since birds like to nest on my roof, they'll be able to nest on the birdhouse roof instead.

Second. I agree, birds enjoy the slanted covers on your home, but a bird house roof would not be big enough to be called home to a bird family. Unless the bird was divorced, or had no kids, the size of the roof would be unacceptable.

Please don't be mean to the birds, they don't understand trolling like us Homo sapiens.

IAMWastingMyTime · 6 months

At what point does a post become old enough to post again? Just seems like an easy way to get karma.

PogOtter · 6 months

I would say religion doesn't correlate with ethics. period.

Talk to any religious person about their beliefs, and shockingly the ones they cherry pick from their chosen holy scripture reflect their own personal ethics. (or at least an idea of what their personal ethics are)

wonka088 · 6 months

But as for facial hair...

bassplayinfool · 6 months

I don't care for the art's change from "Good vs. Evil" to "Ethical vs. Evil" at the end. It seems like a disingenuous shift.

The wrap-up is "Religion does not always correlate with ethics." A majority of religions popular in the world today attempt to instill ethics into their practitioners, whether those ethics be deigned "good" or "evil" by whomever is doing the defining. As to whether religion correlates to the adherence to any sort of ethical code, it is true that it does not. Clearly, there are great cases for both sides.

Is it a failure of religion to instill those ethics or is it a failure of the person to follow those ethical teachings? Or, alternatively, is it a failure of the society surrounding that religion that warps those messages into something deviant and perverse?

Quite a pickle, that.

burnoutz06 · 6 months

ugh, easily the 6th time I've seen this. guess that makes me a seasoned reddit veteran now!

r2d2quotes · 6 months

Fucking love it

Darkstrategy · 6 months

"Bad people do bad things, only religion makes good people do bad things."

Camnontheist · 6 months

but when it does, everyone gets stoned to death at the gate.

Jeeraph · 6 months

This is posted easily twice a week.

Nincro · 6 months

These points are mute... Terrible Argument, But I agree Religion doesn't ALWAYS correlate with Ethics... But let's see... Martin Luther King and Malcolm x are civil rights leaders which have nothing to do with religion, But good people. Hitler and Osama killed because of there beliefs, Stalin killed for political reasons, and Bill Gates is a Computer Designer who has donated to over 50 billion dollars to multiply charity's.

WoollyMittens · 6 months

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

thesorrow312 · 6 months

The people may not be all able to be generalized, but the problem is that religion claims to be the source of morals and ethics. Religion claims to be the authority on such matters, and when it comes to what it does say about such matters, it is not surprisingly barbaric and primitive, seeing as they were written around 2000 years ago. We have had 2000 years of advancements in all sectors of human thought since then. To believe that religious morality and ethics hold up today, is to discount the entire field of philosophy, in which people rationalize their beliefs and defend them, as opposed to claiming a celestial authority and having punishments for non belief.

Beiz · 6 months

Yeah, let's take two bad guys on the atheism comparison and pretend it's equal to the religious comparisons.

ragegage · 6 months

There's nothing wrong with the point this is making, that religion/non-religion doesn't make you good or bad. Except...........2 things

Religion does make good people bad in some cases.
Malcolm X did great things for African American right's, but was also a racist who inspired riots and violence.

Psychonerd · 6 months

That's putting it nicely. In Arab world, most religious have usually worst manners, are rude, grumpy (despite prophet saying smile is a good deed), and don't even think of driving near them

ulber · 6 months

Yes, if our sample is skewed, e.g., our sample set is {MLK, Stalin} then we certainly can get all kinds of wacky correlations between being atheist and being ethical. In the example we would have a negative correlation. Technically, this does justify the statement "Religion does not always correlate with ethics." However, that is also utterly uninteresting.

What is interesting is the correlation between atheism and being ethical in a large representative sample. For me, the sample would preferably be from some nordic country, but I think any western country would still be very interesting too. Does anyone know of such research?

ashmole · 6 months

The worst people, and I mean THE WORST PEOPLE, are those who insist that you cannot be moral without being religious. They're basically saying that the only reason that they're not going on killing sprees is because they don't want to go to hell.

Sugreev2001 · 6 months

Stalin only wanted to perpetuate his own agenda of establishing a personality cult,like almost all dictators.It had almost nothing to do with his belief in no ultimate creator.

kylebutts · 6 months

Malcom X was more chaotic neutral than good

TheHanyo · 6 months

The atheists didn't do anything IN THE NAME OF atheism.

ChrisQF · 6 months

this will probably get buried but I really need to point out the Hitler was not a Christian per sé, he used Christianity as a means to justify his actions whilst maintaining a quiet loathing of organised religion of any form. Offering conflicting statements to various audiences it is hard to really define what his opinions were; raised to be a member of the church he still broke away from a devout lifestyle very early on. The best quote to summarise (which I'm afraid I've lifted from wikipedia) would be from Goebbels whose opinion was that Hitler was "deeply religious but entirely anti-Christian." He believed whatever he wanted to believe, but did not ascribe to the teachings of any particular religion. Richard J. Evans book more directly refutes any claim that Hitler followed a religion as it outlines; "Priests, [Hitler] said, were ‘black bugs’, ‘abortions in cassocks’. Hitler emphasized again and again his belief that Nazism was a secular ideology founded on modern science." regardless, it is unfair to refer to Hitler as a Christian, terrible things have been done in the name of Christianity, but the actions of the Nazi party cannot be included.

ace_productions · 6 months

and eating doesn't always correlate with being full.

dgdsbs · 6 months

I'm not saying anything about religion being good or bad here, I'd just like to point out that this isn't about a correlation. All this shows (if we perfectly accept the evidence) is that the correlation is not "1". That doesn't mean there isn't one.

gigashadowwolf · 6 months

You know this actually makes atheists look bad. Bill Gates is a great guy and all but he's no MLK and Stalin's death count is higher than everyone else's combined.

L33T_BEANS · 6 months

Ethics may or may not correlate with religion but IQ does.

[deleted] · 6 months

This one has been posted a few times before and Malcolm X wast a very good person from what I have read....

HungarianFever · 6 months

Seriously...this has been posted fifty times already.

crackills · 6 months

This reminds me of a quote, "Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things -- that takes religion."-- Steven Weinberg

TheLateJC · 6 months

Who the fuck wrote this? Bill Gates himself? He used to be viewed as one of the most morally devoid people on this rock, and built his fortune through it.

lupin_the_third · 6 months

read ALL the fucking comments, can't believe noone has yet pointed out that stalin was, actually, a drop-out priest (sorta like tom cruise), and was deeply religious until his very death.

satanist · 6 months

...however, it DOES correlate with stupidity.

stickmaleboy · 6 months

The thing is though, more often than not, those evil actions are inspired by religion, while no evil action can be inspired by atheism, a belief that has no doctrine.

MasterAndMargarita · 6 months

I don't like the hate on Stalin. Uncle Joe was the man

Labut · 6 months

MLK JR was a notorious adulterer. I don't know if that's the "ideal" christian to make your point with.

rspeirs · 6 months

I think r/atheism forgets the part about there being good Christians.

2old2care · 6 months

Since when is Bill Gates ethical?

driverdan · 6 months

Reposted again?

dementedsnake · 6 months

I know. It's just that most religions encourage bad stuff, even though the people usually ignore it. So it's hard to not speak too broadly. I'm trying to be good about it.


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