The other day I was discussing about God/Religion with my theist friend. He was arguing that if every one become atheists the World will become a very Selfish World.
Is that correct? Is the World or the Organisms residing in the World not selfish (or less selfish) because of their Beliefs in supernatural God?
I do not think so.
Doing good things to others just because you are afraid of ‘God”s punishment and to attain ‘heaven ‘ can be considered as one of the most selfish of all acts.
But still some people will say even if done for a selfish purpose, it is good.
I agree that people doing good things to others is good. But is it really because of God/religion? Is it because of unselfishness?
Non believers also do good things to others. What is the explanation for their noble acts?
In my opinion all living organisms in this World are selfish. All of them are seeking their own happiness. Happiness is a certain state of our Brain. We try to attain that state constantly.When we reach that state we automatically try to share our mood with others. Our body is hard wired to share ( or let others know) our emotions. That is why we smile/laugh when we are happy and cry when we are sad. Other wise there is no purpose for smile/tears.
When some one smile or laugh in front of you, automatically you tend to smile or laugh. Mirror neurones in our Brain are responsible for this behaviour. Thus happiness becomes infectious. Sorrow is also infectious like this.
When we help others we are trying to make others happy (smile/laugh). Their happiness in turn make us happy. So the primary purpose of doing good things to others is to make us happy, a very selfish motive.
This selfishness is a very good thing and has nothing to do with God/religion.
Trying to be rational 
An interesting take… I have a post discussing religion as well. Have a look if you have the time
Guess only if one loves oneself can you love another.. if you hate yourself, for sure you shall hate another. And yes happiness and sadness is infectious.
Loving oneself can also be called selfish but there are many who blv that God resides in everyone. Religious people can be the most selfish too and hence an atheist cannot be called selfish.
I agree with you completely. Being unselfish has nothing to do with god. The morality in religion comes from humans and not vice versa because it was humans that made religion. We have cherry picked bits of our religions that we want to follow through the ages because other bits become too outdated for us. For example, I don’t think our courts would condone a man asking his wife to walk through wife to prove her chastity despite the fact that our god did it.
I think religion rather has the capacity rather to make normal people common horrific acts of violence because they believe they are doing it ‘for god’ and shift responsibility from themselves.
A person with missing intrinsic morality might donate some money to pandits when doing pujas because of religion but will not be unselfish and charitable in daily life.
Well said
I read somewhere that if you need religion to be kind and compassionate, you aren’t a very good person to begin with.
Just came across your blog recently and am an atheist too. Feels good to meet the others out there.