There's nothing to try. Even if the premise (believers are better behaved) were true, it in no way implies that what they believe is true. A kid afraid of Santa's list may be on his best behavior, and the parents may find that convenient, but there's no Santa.

What? No Santa??? Are you serious??:mecry:

In their youth, there's less difference between the two -- in the middle of the population bell-curve, that is. The extremes are always readily distinguishable, though, viz. the religious-nerd contrasted with the gangbanger.

The difference becomes easier to see later in life, in the thirties and forties, again in the middle of the bell curve. The afterlifers try harder to avoid being jerks or worse. That, at any rate, is my observation.

And there are people like me who just don't know either way, and we avoid being "jerks or worse" just in case.

In my experience, those who don't believe in an afterlife are no more inclined to act like a jerk than those who do.....if anything, marginally less. If there's no afterlife, then this life is it...better make the world a more pleasant place to be by being nice to people eh?

And you, in your typical tautological fashion, are the exception that proves the rule. That's just ducky.

So, now that I've :stickpoke can you tell us if I'm a believer or not? Can you tell us *why* I believe what I believe? Can you tell us *why* I act the way I do?

I didn't think so. Your simplistic attempts to generalize the reasons for people's behavior are comically pompous. Not only is your logic fatally flawed, you manage to insult the believers and those still searching in the same breath. Can't I be good because I find that the best thing to be? Why does it have to be dependent on my spiritual beliefs? What of the Muslim fundamentalists against whom you rail? Their faith and belief in an afterlife is widely agreed upon, yet so many are "jerks or worse". Is that because of or in spite of their belief in an afterlife? I find your remarks disgusting, dripping as they are with their fecal afterbirth.

Why on earth would you think that other people's definition of a "more pleasant place" would be the same as yours?

How can you discount the people who feel the world would be a more pleasant place if it were all about me, if I had more money, if I had more power, if you did what I wanted? There are quite a lot of them, you know.

I don't. Nothing in my post suggests that I do. I was positing a rationale for not being a jerk, which does not require the existence of an afterlife to inspire it (as per UG's post).

You said, "better make the world a more pleasant place to be by being nice to people eh?"
I'm saying that there are a whole lot of people that would not agree that's the way to make the world more pleasant, whether they be religious or not.

The fact that there's a rationale for not being a jerk doesn't require anyone to act on it.

Or even agree with it.

Who's requiring anybody to act on/believe anything? I'm just giving what I consider a rationale for not being a jerk. It's a fairly flippant rationale, granted.

so because 3 out of 1,300,000,000 say something against their own religion, that you want to hear, they must be right. by that logic Christians must all be child raping bigots.

No, we want to hear they can say something, without being murdered.

Like I said, what you want to hear.