Dostoyevsky on Atheism & Morality
Now assume that there is no God, or immortality of the soul. Now tell me, why should I live righteously and do good deeds, if I am to die entirely on earth?
And if that is so, why shouldn’t I (as long as I can rely on my cleverness and agility to avoid being caught by law) cut another man’s throat , rob and steal?
(Fyodor Dostoyevsky [1878], Selected Letters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, trans Andrew R. MacAndrew, 1987)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)
Martin
on January 2nd, 2011
If one wasn’t immortal, and their pleasures bloodthristy. why wouldn’t I go around killing people?
Don’t want to get caought. This however only means that their bloodlust is not their primary desire. For instance they may not want to live in our 5 star prisons. In response to this though the bloodlust only needs to gain supremacy long enough to be realised.
Frank_K
on March 12th, 2011
The social harmony of human society is rooted in our evolutionary past, not some imaginary being. With out the cooperative and altruistic impulses no human, or insect, society would have been developed or sustained. Religion hijacked this universal human impulse and attributed it to gods for the purpose of social control for political ends. Immortality, in paradise or the pits of hell, was added to coerce obedience to the priests and monarch. No matter how bad you lot in life, obey the Church and State and there’ll be “pie in the sky when you die, by and by.”