One popular idea in the US is that you can’t be good without God. Proponents of that idea often say that the only thing keeping everybody from raping and killing is Jesus. If that were true then there shouldn’t be any Christians in prison and they should be full of atheists. Of course we all know that isn’t true. This idea is prevalent enough that several atheist organizations have dedicated a lot of money to run quite a few billboard campaigns to fight this idea.

Also if the only thing keeping people from raping and killing is faith, then every atheist conference and meetup should involve someone getting raped and/or murdered. Instead everybody get’s along pretty well. The reality ends up being that the worst that happens are awkward advances and some generalized sexism. I’m not saying that atheists are perfect, but we’re not bad.

If the only thing keeping people from killing each other is faith, then when my local meetup group went to the shooting range yesterday someone should have been shot, right? Well, between the 7 of us we must have fired off a good 1000 rounds and all we killed were a few cans and a couple targets, although to be fair (and in honor of blasphemy day) we were shooting at religious symbols. Was that in bad taste? Perhaps, but it was still fun.

If you need faith to keep you from raping and killing people, then that’s your problem. If that’s you, then I do want to say that you are a very scary person and if you so much as begin to question your faith, then I want you to be sure to check into a mental hospital. No, you’re scary enough now that you should check into a mental hospital.

Obviously some criminals and deviants do legitimately turn their lives around after a radical conversion. As someone who used to be a devout religious person I know that it entails trying to subjugate the real you while you pretend to be some hypothetical ideal. Generally speaking I think that is bad, that people should be themselves, but in the case of a violent criminal maybe pretending to be someone else might be a good thing.

Of course it is a pretty arrogant position to say that I can be a good person free of faith and religion, but that THEY need religion to be decent people.

What do you think?