I plan on going into literature and philosophy for a degree, and I have not read...

So you're delusional.

user, you have a profound misunderstanding of Christianity, but to your credit so do many believers.There is more richness to it than your strawman. I say this as an atheist.

This is the thing about religious people. They always tell that you're wrong and you misunderstand everything, but they never give a reason for why they say that.

I just google searched blumfeld the elderly batchler (or blumfeld the elderly batchler comic, I can't remember).

>"waaah please let there be something else after I die" "waaaah I'm a moral person even though I'm just being good because I'm afraid of punishment"

Yep, that's right. You're completely right. There's literally no other reason why a person might be religious. You're a fucking genious OP, I don't think you really need those literature and philosophy degrees because it's quite clear you're so sophisticated even a PhD doesn't quite reflect the intellectual capacity you possess.

Yet you don't tell me why I'm wrong, or give any reason why you're right. This is how religious people always operate. They try to hammer some dogma down your throat and hope you feel ashamed enough to just be like them, and think the way they think. "Oh we're so deep, just don't be dumb man, religion is so deep" wooooooo we're descending down the rabbit hole, oh my god deeper, deeper deeper. What's it all mean man aaaaaaah whoaaaaa damn dude that was deep as fuck I'm a christian now.

So this is the power of shitposting.

OP is baiting, but if you want some good biblical Veeky Forums, everyone should check this out. It's a fun read, even if you're a Christian (because it includes objections)

skepticsannotatedbible.com/

Yet the customs of culture and the laws of society also enforce certain behaviors and cause us to act a certain way. Religious people often twist logic around to fit themselves anyway. Arguably we all fear society's punishment, religious folks can repent or fool themselves into thinking that "god works in mysterious ways" and so of course they did the right thing.

So are you one of those people that commits a serious crime, to test themselves and see if they can truly resist evil deeds or if they do or don't take pleasure in it? How can a person be truly "good"? Is goodness inherently flawed, as it's a human construct?

If someone is raised with good parents who love them then they will be taught to be good people. I know what is right from wrong because I can understand the concept, and on a deeper level I feel good when good things happen to people, perhaps because of my upbringing. That's not to say that all upbringing is responsible for how people turn out, because people who have bad upbringings can still turn out to be good people.

The point is that you're over simplifying the question, and giving your own sort of rhetorical answer. The thing is, there's multiple explanations for the way that people are because the world we live in is not black and white. This is the problem that a lot of religious people have, in trying to think about the world around them. They say, how did we even get here? We say that there was a multitude of reasons why we're here, and some of them are so complex that we can't currently understand them with our current scientific knowledge.

What you don't do though, is rush into areas which remain unsolved and give your own fill in the blanks, mad lib answer, because that helps no one. So many religions in the world today are fighting to conquer our insignificant little rock floating in the vast cosmos, and so many people have been repressed because of their sexuality in our country. Yet all the idiots on this board have the gall to go around saying that atheists are idiots. You are the idiot, religion is the stupidest idea mankind has ever created.

Lots of people are raised well and become bad people. I didn't defend religion once.

So there's multiple reasons for the way people turn out. People are raised religiously, they still turn out to be bad people. Ed Gien grew up in a household which was extremely religious. Being religious doesn't guarantee you'll be a good person any more than growing up in a household with good parents will (although there's evidence that shows that serial killers often grow up in households where they were abused, so there is a correlation, but not necessarily a direct causation in every case).

You need to stop over simplifying things. No one is going to save you, no one is going to make everything okay, there is no celestial father figure watching over everyone making everything all right. We are the arbiters of our destiny, we have to make the world a better place ourselves.

You cannot be serious and discount 90% of the Western Canon

So not a serious thread

>I plan on going into literature and philosophy for a degree

Is there a problem with exploring some of the most interesting subject matter? Perhaps you would rather I just be a wage slave without any meaningful experience in higher thought.