​Why are atheists sometimes better behaved than religious people?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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sometimes atheists are very good, nice people religious people don’t follow basic principles of courtesy see there are we could say ultimate values and there are functional values so now ideally speaking both should be in harmony ultimate values means what is the ultimate purpose of life say if I understand that all of us have come from God, we are meant to return to God, I am a spiritual being at my core, I am a soul, these are all ultimate values if people are atheists, they think that life begins with birth, ends with death their ultimate value is that there is no value this is a question of ultimate values and there are functional values, functional values means how we live in this world how we function in this world so when Srila Prabhupada the founder of ISKCON, when he was asked how do we identify devotees of Krishna so Prabhupada said they are perfect gentlemen, perfect ladies and gentlemen that means he said that that their devotion should transform into good behavior that their devotion should manifest as good behavior so that was his expectation and that was what he taught now that is not always the case it is true that sometimes it is just people they become either self-righteous or they become self-absorbed and they neglect others, self-obsessed it’s possible because we have to see that that people’s functional values right now they don’t match necessarily with their ultimate values why is that? because people adopt certain ultimate values for various reasons sometimes somebody may be just religious because their parents were religious or they may be religious because simply that makes them feel good they may not really have an understanding of the philosophy or the practical transformation that is meant to happen through spirituality so you know atheism is often caused most by religionists who are superficial, hypocritical, fanatical you know by such people people’s examples, other people get alienated and then they become atheistic so atheism is often a reaction to irrational or fanatical believers there is no doubt that believers can actually cause trouble and they can be troublesome to some people, that’s true so now if you look at the atheistic world view itself and I’ll first explain from the spiritual perspective how we make sense of this see all of us are at different points some of us may be born with a phenomenal memory some of us may be born with average memory some people are born in very wealthy families some people are born in middle class families some people are born in poor families now from the spiritual perspective we understand that we are actually souls on a multi-lifetime journey and the point where we begin in this life is determined by what we have done in our previous life so that’s why some people may be born wealthy, some people may be born poor but somebody may be born wealthy and they may squander their wealth and they may become poor some people may be born poor and they may work hard, invest wisely and they may become wealthy so the starting points are not our destiny starting points are simply starting points so just as there can be starting points in terms of wealth or memory similarly there can be people who from their past life they have a starting point where they are by nature courteous because not just our finance, our psychology is also shaped by our past life so some people by their past life they have a nature of being courteous, they have a nature of being gentle they have a nature of being sensitive and some other people by their past life they have a nature of being insensitive they have a nature of being discourteous now these people who have this nature of being courteous and sensitive they may because of certain circumstances become atheistic as I said they may have seen superficial or fanatical religionists and they may have chameleoned it, so their functional values will be determining their behaviour and those functional values can have come from this life’s upbringing they can have come from previous life also both ways, but their functional values are not because of their atheism there is no causal relationship actually speaking if you take atheism down to its essence atheism itself does not itself gives any reason to be nice what do you mean by that? if I am atheistic this life is all that I have this life is all that I have and life is meant for enjoying and I should enjoy as much as possible and if other people come in the way and if I can push them out of the way, why should I not do that? there is no ultimate reason for not doing that if say if ultimately I am a bag of chemicals with no ultimate meaning to my life, you are a bag of chemicals with no meaning to my life, to your life then if you are coming in the way of my getting something what I want, why can’t I push you out of it? so now, I am not saying all atheists will do that, many atheists may not do that but their atheism itself does not give them any reason to be good you may say no no we all want to live on this planet peacefully so we should be good but actually, the resources of this planet are limited and our desires are limited so quite often the reality of this world is there is competition so if I take something from you, I get more you get less so atheism itself does not give any reason for being good in life, atheists can be good that can be from their upbringing, that can be their past life nature, but atheism does not give them any reason to be good now religion, it tells us that we are accountable for our actions what we do, there will be consequences for that specific points about how the consequences come up that is intricacies but the principle is there is understanding that we are accountable for our actions now, that can inspire people towards virtue whether it does that in real life or it makes them righteous, that’s a different issue, so religious people can also be bad but more often than not when religious people are bad that is in violation to their what their own world view is what religion teaches and the way people act so religion gives people reason to be good but in spite of that because of their past nature because of their upbringing because of their short sightedness they can be bad so in terms of ultimate values religion gives us reason to become good or to become better if we are bad now, towards good atheism does not give us that so functionally and ultimately the there has to be a congruence and when there is not congruence then there can be a lot of confusion and alienation so certainly atheists can be good people but they don’t have any ultimate reason to be good it is by their natures coming from their past upbringing or past life that they are acting good religion is sometimes if their past nature or past upbringing or past nature was bad, they may carry that into their religion also and then they may act bad and sometimes within religion also if they are more sentimental and they are misguided by leaders who are sentimental, then they may further become worse so rather than focusing only on only on the behavior of people, certainly the way we understand anything, any people the far first interaction to people is through their behavior how do you act, that’s what we see but along with their behavior we also need to look at their ultimate ultimate values what is the foundation for those ultimate values so it’s true, it’s sad when this happens they are, I saw one I saw one holding sometimes people put some message on their billboards it says God save me from your preachers so the idea is that some preachers are very self righteous very moralizing very condescending, you are all going to go to hell unless you follow what I am doing so if their people are like that naturally people feel alienated so that is very tragic very sad when it happens but we shouldn’t generalize just like we don’t generalize we won’t say that people of a particular community are all evil even with religion also, we shouldn’t generalize there are people who are bad and there are people who are good also does that answer your question