Chris8187 wrote:I'm not going to make a really long post, but I have one interesting thing to say. No matter who you are or what you do, it is always for a selfish reason. Try to disprove that one. It isn't possible. If someone helps another needy person, he feels better about himself or maybe it helps his self-esteem. That is only one example, but everyone is selfish all the time.
-edit, The reason faith is needed is because everyone has done something wrong and the punishment for "sin" is death. This is where Jesus and faith in Him is so important to the Christian faith.
Yep, this is an old one and not as hard to argue against as you think. Someone who helps another certainly feels better about himself and is a happier person for it. That is a universal truth and is observable everywhere. When people act selflessly out of compassion or fellow feeling for others are they always calculating the benefits to themselves? I don't think so. Of course that will sometimes be the case. But by no means always. The benefits of acting selflessly arise as a consequence of a kindly act but are not necessarily the origin of it.
There are many examples that could be cited, but take an act of heroism. The soldier who throws himself on a bomb to save innocent civilians is a rare figure, but a known and genuine one. When he acts is he calculating the chances of his feeling better about himself? He is much more likely to be driven by a sudden feeling of empathy for others. One thing that drives us to act selflessly is our ability to identify ourselves with the needs and vulnerabilities of other human beings.
Claiming a unconsious self-seeking motivation for an seemingly selfish act is a circular argument. It assumes that the unknown unconscious motivation is a selfish one, but that is what you are trying to demonstrate. In evolutionary terms altruistic behaviour is completely explicable.
Now if you get very sophisticated about all this you can pick apart each case and claim some self-interested reason for every act, just as you can claim the opposite. But there are a couple of good reasons for not thinking in these terms. It's a very crude way of looking at human behaviour and more importantly it encourages people to act in harmfull and anti-social ways.
By using the word 'selfish' you are lumping together two very different things: acts which are intended to benefit the perpetrator and which are either consciously intended to harm others, or careless of their needs, and acts which are intended to bring comfort, aid etc to others. And this is not only confusing, it is dangerous.
Confusing the two allows people to argue that all human behaviour is 'selfish' and therefore genuinely thoughtless and selfish behaviour is justifiable on the grounds that it is 'human nature'. What they mean, in fact, is that all human behaviour, whether 'selfish' and 'selfless' is self-referenced, which is a very different thing.
On your edit: in some societies, for example Northern Buddhist societies there is no concept of Sin and no experience of guilt. Tibetan's, for example, are simply confused by the Christian notion of guilt. Feeling bad about oneself is a cultural thing and simply doesn't exist in their society. The idea of self-hatred, so common in our society simply horrifies them. Nevertheless this is a religion and a culture that holds compassion as one of their highest values.
But beyond that, I challenge your notion that faith is needed to turn someone into a good person. I know many, many good people who would claim to be atheists or agnostics or who run very cool about their religion.
