Religion
In reply to the discussion: The two big things I think religion provides that secularism does not. [View all]Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)it is the other side of the stick I was referring to: the one that gets you punished for eternity, and the vast majority of christian religions incorporate heaven and hell as part of their methodology for making their adherents behave. Be good, go to heaven, be bad go to hell.
It is odd that whenever this comes up, suddenly hell is not au courant among our christian believers. The cherry picking that goes on is amazing.
Your thesis that religion motivates good behavior by offering a positive motivation is rather incomplete. How do you know that the positive motivation is the actual motivator, rather than the hellfire and brimstone dire consequences for doing bad?
Anyway I reject the whole thing. We do good because we have evolved as social animals to be empathic and altruistic. We can do better than that, we can live an examined life and consciously act, but most of us never do, religion or no religion.