On "Eli Stone" and Atheism

[mavjop]

This evening, my wife and I watched an episode of Eli Stone (a show we both greatly enjoy) called "Flight Path" and I was mostly very happy to see something very rare for American television: An atheist character

Comments

[loosestrife]

For at least three generations back, hardly anyone in my family has been religious. In the places where I grew up, that wasn't unusual.

So I was completely taken aback when one of the few religious kids in my school asked "If you don't believe in hell, what's stopping you from stealing and lying and being horrible to people?"

I think I was fourteen or so. It had never occurred to me that it wasn't completely obvious that behaving like a big jerk is a BAD IDEA. I'd always assumed everyone knew that, even thieves and criminals and rude people -- they just had some problem that made them do it anyway.

[mavjop]

Precisely. :) I think there's a lot of people out there who while they inherently understand that things are bad don't really feel any remorse about the little stuff and are only held back by that inherent feeling of right/wrong for REALLY bad things and either do all the little bad things or only don't do them because of fear of heck. Maybe we're lucky so many people are religious. =)

As mentioned, though, I don't think religion means you're likely to be less principled--just that lack of religion doesn't mean you'll be less principled either!

[urox]

I had a roommate in my senior year of COLLEGE who didn't understand why people wouldn't just go off and do bad things without the threat of hell.

[mavjop]

That's not terribly surprising to me given how many grown adults don't understand this.