A Question of Western Faith.

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It's not strict, it's about Tikkun Olam--Mending the World-- In the Jewish faith, it is up to the people to start rectifying things and making it better. Only then will the Messiah come. It's not part of our faith to sit around wondering if G-d will fix it for us, we have to take an active role in making the world a positive place.

I don't think anyone is arguing against that. It's all the other ridiculous stuff that's a problem. Say you helped 613 people not kill themselves. Basically you're saying by doing that you're still not good enough because you didn't fulfill the UNKNOWN requirements.

I help people all the time, for free, but I laugh at any god who thinks I need to do it for him or fill out his bucket list.

What if your job is a counselor on the Suicide Hotline? Just what you're good at? Then you aren't really going out of your way are you? And beyond that, it's 613 DIFFERENT good deeds. And it doesn't at all mean we aren't good enough. It just means we haven't finished growing and learning. Which is the point of it.

Well, my job isn't on the suicide hotline, but I've helped 7 people not kill themselves, I've volunteered at soup kitchens, helped my old neighbors, but that's only 3 things, good thing I hold the door open for others and sit up straight at the table.

What if those aren't on the list? It doesn't matter because I'm sure 10 of them are relative to knowing and loving god and the torah, all 10 of which are completely unnecessary/arguably detrimental to being a good person.

One is not going out of his way doing any of the 613 goals for god, therefore it's impossible to be a good person if one follows that idea, and that was using your logic.

I'm not understanding where you come to the conclusion that it is impossible to be a good person based on the Jewish belief of Mitzot. Can you re-explain?

The club is so darn exclusive, even the members don't know the requirements.

You said above that, for the example, because one works at the suicide hotline doesn't mean he's trying to do good things on your own. Well, how can one try to do good things on your own if one is doing it because it's part of his religion? One would still doing it for the wrong reasons.

Now I know not all religious people do good things only because of god so let's say we have someone who is religious and does good things because he wants to rather than because it's dogma. He wouldn't "qualify" for heaven because he's not doing it for the Jewish faith. Basically, no one can get in that heaven ever.

It seems like doing something with a reward in mind isn't very selfless after all.

It depends on what you mean by "a reward." A sense of personal satisfaction in having done a good deed is a reward, but it's not a tawdry, mercenary one: it is simply the natural culmination of a good deed, rightly earned.

I'm not sure that it makes sense, WT, when you say that if one is doing something "because it's part of his religion," that therefore one is not doing it "on your own." You choose your religion--and choose to adhere to it--"on your own." And all that stems from it is part of that choice. You might as well say you're not doing good when you do anything good, because you always do so in some broader moral framework that tells you it's better to do it than to not. Ergo, according to this logic, good deeds do not exist.

I see good deeds and religion as mutually exclusive, and I cannot coalesce them in a way that makes it ok, spiritually, for a good deed to stem from doctrine. Just because doing a good deed is a choice and religion is a choice doesn't make one, in light of the other, the same choice. I already said above that there are still religious people that do good for pure reasons of just wanting to, and I don't have a problem with that at all.

I meant doing good deeds so you can go to Heaven.

I really don't get the reasoning for Christian good behavior. They talk out one side of their face about being like Jesus and helping the world, while out the other side they speak as if everything is doomed, anyway, and they're mostly just killing time til God shows up and does His judgment thing.

Seems like Christian motivation is about scoring points with God and making sure they're still on His good side up until the big finale.

But a person who tries to make a difference and who doesn't want the world to end in some armageddon, they might be doing it for the "selfish" reason of wanting to live in a sane and peaceful world, but that probably isn't considered "good enough" by the holier-than-thous.

Explain it to us, Yoda. Why do you try to be a good person? Would you act different without your belief?

I don't know how most Jews view it, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm not doing it for my religion. I do it because I know what it's like to need help. And if I don't make my Mitzvahs, so what? I just get to come back and tally up more. It's not a race to the finish.

They're not the same choice, but they influence one another. I'm not sure I see the daylight between the choice and the impetus. You seem to be suggesting (correct me if I'm wrong, of course) that a good deed done because your religion tells you to do it isn't really good, because you're doing it for the wrong reason. But I don't see how doing something for religion is fundamentally different than doing it because of anyone's own moral philosophy. Either way, you've decided you believe in a set of ideas, and you're seeing them through because you believe you should. The dichotomy here between a choice done "for religion" and a choice done "for morality" seems like a false one, to me.

Well...why does it seem like that? This doesn't describe me, and I honestly don't think it describes the Christians I know. I know there are some who act like what we do here doesn't matter, but you have to misread the Bible pretty terribly (IE: very selectively) to think that way.

Conversations like this make me honestly wonder how many skeptics (which is a very broad term here, but you get the idea) are largely skeptical because their direct experience with Christians is extrapolated like this. Where are all these crazy doomsday cults that I keep hearing about in Internet discussions of religion? I never seem to run into them, but apparently they're running around and making lots of people think Christians are insane.

I think that's an impossible question for anyone to really answer. And it's especially complicated because my belief in God includes the belief that we're all imbued with a level of innate moral understanding, so the hypothetical me that is not religious at all would still be subject to that. Even if I didn't believe in God, the me you're asking that of thinks he would exist anyway.

So, I suppose I'd say that I probably wouldn't act too different without my belief. But rationally, I think I ought to. While there are plenty of self-interested reasons to be a "good" person even in a pitiless universe, there are lots of instances where there's no reason to outside of instinct.