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Comment by Konnstann | Hacker News Reader

Most religions are centered around the afterlife, and you can't take anything with you when you die. The dogma of most religions states that charity is good and will help get you into whatever version of heaven they believe in, hence charity.

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I’m not sure I buy it. Similar logic leads people to believe that atheists, lacking fear of retribution from a vengeful god, are more likely to commit crimes. I believe the data suggests otherwise. This suggests a moral center in atheists that comes from somewhere else.

My guess is that there are simply fewer atheists.

Similar logic leads people to believe that atheists, lacking fear of retribution from a vengeful god, are more likely to commit crimes.

I don't see how this follows. There are punishments for committing crimes that don't come from a vengeful god, like punishment from a legal system.

Generally speaking, the legal system is supposed to punish religious believers, too, not just atheists.

I never claimed otherwise.

Most religions teach the golden rule.

Treat others as you want to be treated. And if I was poor I'd want someone to feed me.

A friend of mine teaches computer science at a small Jesuit college.

He was wanting to put together a program where students would go volunteer to help NGOs do software projects in India.

Something he was surprised by was that NGOs in India are almost all oriented around lobbying the government to do things (particularly that they'd already promised to do) and not around provisioning social services themselves.

My understanding is that in some religions, we are living today in the "afterlife" of a previous life, and subject to karma based on what we've done.

If one has bad karma that has put one in an undesirable social position, it's not a stretch that Earth is a hell for those people, and we're supposed to be the demons that make life miserable for them.

> My understanding is that in some religions, we are living today in the "afterlife" of a previous life, and subject to karma based on what we've done. If one has bad karma that has put one in an undesirable social position, it's not a stretch that Earth is a hell for those people, and we're supposed to be the demons that make life miserable for them.

Can you name those religions for me. I view everything as deterministic and see the world as either heaven/hell. Although the idea of karma doesn't make sense when understanding determinism. Since everyone is destined to do bad or good depending on the life they're born into.

edit: whoever downvoted me, I'm asking a simple question and stating what I observe. Please let me know why you find the need to downvote for that.

If I’m remembering correctly, a few Eastern religions do

I get the eastern religions that reference karma but the part I'm interested in is from "it's not a stretch that Earth is a hell for those people, and we're supposed to be the demons that make life miserable for them" and because I haven't seen that expressed before. It would be nice to know the specific names that share that ideology of others being demons for some that are destined to experience a bad life this time around.

Hinduism? Isn't it the goal of all good Hindus to make sure that Dalits have a bad time of it?

Thanks, never saw this before about Hinduism.

Are you suggesting non-religious people do think they can think take stuff with them when they die?

I'm suggesting non-religious people don't bank on an afterlife therefore don't have an additional incentive to give.

This is the hypothesis that religious people are gullible, stupid, and selfish - only concerned with the threat of their own eternal torment in hell, not with the welfare of others.

It's offensive.

It's offensive to many, but it's also unquestionably true of a non-trivial portion of the religious populace. That subset of the religious demographic is also prone to making equally-offensive but less truthful accusations along the lines of saying that atheists cannot be moral because morality can only come from their god.

This is the hypothesis that charitableness can be modeled on a normal distribution, but the additional incentive of religion shifts the mean of that distribution higher for religious people than atheists. It's not offensive to believe there is a subset of the population that is influenced by the dogma of the church to do things they wouldn't already do.

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