This meme that has been floating around on Facebook has more than 200,000 likes. When you read through the comments, it’s pretty clearly being looked at as a shot at Christianity.

The majority of comments seemed to be, unsurprisingly, from atheists. Here are some fairly representative comments from those people:

"I met a man like that once, the only thing keeping him from hurting others was that his religion told him not to, those folks are truly terrifying that they even exist."

"As an atheist I hear this often. "Well how do you live without morals and values?" As if living in fear of burning for eternity is the only thing that could make a person have values."

"You can still have morals and not have faith. If you need a book to tell you how to be kind to people, you are the problem!"

There are problems with this way of thinking that are worth addressing because they’re part of an important lesson that our ancestors understood very well, but that many modern Americans seem to have forgotten.

To begin with, we’re a fallen species. All of us are born bad. All of us have a natural tendency to be, in the words of the meme, a “piece of sh*t.” You don’t think so? You think babies are innocent little bundles of light and joy? Well, when a baby is hungry or poops his pants, what does he do? He screams until you take care of him. Is he thinking about whether that’s convenient for you or not? Is he worrying about your life or how mama feels right now? Is he going, “Mama sure did look tired. Maybe I shouldn’t wake her up at 3 AM just because it would be better to let her sleep?” No. He’s only thinking about himself and what’s good for him. There’s a reason you have to teach babies to share. There’s a reason my next-door neighbor had to teach their very small child that it was wrong to hit their dogs. It’s because babies are born as raging narcissists and like dogs, they have to be given rules, boundaries, and limitations to thrive.