Godless utopia meme8/5/2023 ![]() ![]() So, is this because of a fear of godly retribution? Of course not. I’ve already mentioned how we seem to have an innate sense of justice and feel pangs of guilt when we do bad things (as long as we aren’t sociopaths) so it would follow that we just wouldn’t be typically engaging in these sociopathic activities and Ariely points out that this big stuff is much more rare than the small stuff. It looks like now we’ve crossed over into the big stuff. So, this sentence about “believing we can get away with it” – that technically applies to everyone, not just atheists and only accounts for the small stuff. Which brings me to the next assertion: That includes rape, robbery, murder, torture, pedophilia, tax evasion, racketeering, theft, arson, embezzlement, drug distribution, kidnapping, lying, cheating, etc. Even our fellow primates have an innate sense of justice, as demonstrated in this video where a Capuchin monkey gets noticeably upset when he is given a lesser reward for the same work as a monkey next to him. He goes on to explain that the aggressive cheaters in his experiments were few and far between and the reason we deceive ourselves into thinking it is okay to cheat a little is because we know, innately that it is wrong. This means that we’re off to a good start in our effort to improve our moral fibre. ![]() ![]() ![]() Yet we pass up the vast majority of these opportunities every day without thinking that we should take them. In any of those situations, the SMORC thing to do would be to take the money, laptop, or bike or not mention the missed item. Maybe a grocery clerk missed an item in your cart or you passed an unlocked bicycle on an empty street. Maybe a stranger in a coffee shop asked you to watch her laptop while she went to the restroom. Perhaps a colleague left her purse on her desk while she was away for a long meeting. Consider how many times in the last few days you’ve had the opportunity to cheat without getting caught. In fact, seen from a purely rational (SMORC) perspective, we humans don’t cheat nearly enough. …human beings are, by and large, more moral than standard economic theory predicts. Although Ariely’s book was about dishonesty, he reminds us that: We gloss over our failures, highlight our successes (even when they’re not entirely our own), and love to blame other people and outside circumstances when our failures are undeniable (Ariely, 240)Īriely’s book leads us through several experiments that show how people cheat on little things when they think they can get away with it and how they justify their cheating to avoid the pangs of guilt that emerge from seeing themselves as bad people. We persist in deceiving ourselves in part to maintain a positive self-image. Well, all humans have a little bit of the cheater in them and a profound mastery of self deception as Dan Ariely, the behaviour economist who wrote The Honest Truth About Dishonesty points out: Now let’s look at the assertions one by one.īelieving that if you can get away with it, it must be ok. The negation is in the α known as the alpha privative which is the Ancient Greek (and probably modern Greek) way to negate a word (like the “un” or “non” of English). We know it means this because it negates the word, θεος which means god. Instead of pointing out the questionable ethics in the bible (books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus) I thought it would be more useful to refute the meme using science.įirst of all let’s clear up what the word, atheist actually means. Atheist comes from the Greek: ἄθεος – no god or without god. Like many internet memes, I have no idea of its origins but I hope it’s not indicative of what people really think about atheists (i.e.: atheist = sociopath).īut just in case, I thought I’d go through this meme’s assertions sentence by sentence. This gem popped up in my Facebook feed today. ![]()
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