The selfless person is held up as an ideal. Against that person you have
the egoist who helps others for some psychological reward. And the egotist who
hurts the person for their own gain.
People hold up this selfless martyr to virtue signal. "Oh we have enough good
in us to admire the selfless and maybe aspire to be like them". It is a good
distraction from how unlike the hero they may be.
If a person will not help another unless she thinks there is something in it
for her then people say that is bad. Why? Because the other person matters. Also
because one person’s interests will always be threatened and blocked by another
so the egoist will start to try to get rid of others who are in the way. And the
egoists are as good as inviting people to hurt them in self-defence.
If x helps y for y will leave them billions of pounds then x is in a way
making the money matter not y. If we are talking about something small such as
an ornament then the ornament matters not y. Oddly enough the person after the
small thing is worse than the person after billions for that though not
excusable is understandable. It is worse to be weighed up against a trinket than
billions of pounds. Everybody must think there is some tiny thing they can get
out of helping another. That is certain. All selfless people are just grounds
for suspicion. Are they what they want to seem to be?
We are told that many egoistic or egotistic people are unhappy while unselfish people are happy. If this is said to put you off being egoistic. People are telling you to not be egoistic but to be egoistic as in calculating how much happiness you might get! It makes no sense. Their own argument shows they are selfish themselves for they are telling you to be.
They are selfish in the way encouraging another to be bad is. It is not them
that has to suffer if you listen to them. They virtue signal by faking real
loyalty to unselfish principles.
The argument that we are made egoists cannot be verified or shown false. If
God makes egoists then God is amoral or beyond morality or he is evil himself.
With that principle alone, you can only expect agnosticism. There are other
arguments for and against agnosticism but if all we have is this thought, then
agnosticism is all we should espouse and endorse.
Those who say a loving God probably exists are just more proof that it is far
fetched to think society on the whole can be or is selfless. They would say that
to deflect from the truth about how self-centred they are.
APPENDIX
Being self-centered means naturally focusing on oneself, whereas selfishness means deliberately harming others for personal gain.
Since we cannot choose to be completely un-self-centered all the time, ignoring God becomes a natural consequence.
Without free will to be un-self-centered, we can safely ignore God—and arguably should—because he allows suffering for no good reason and apparently wants to be ignored.
Our natural self-centeredness makes it impossible not to ignore God, and that is how God wants it to be.
Even if God exists, he has no real relevance because we are naturally unable to put God before ourselves.
Our attitude is like saying, "I will pick God up and drop him as I please," creating habits of indifference that grow over time.
These habits will eventually lead us to treat other people the same way—neglecting and harming them selfishly.
By opening ourselves up to selfishness toward others, we are already acting selfishly.
We are connected by common interests, many of which stem from group self-centeredness.
If faith in God coexists with self-centeredness, the whole group becomes infected with selfishness.
Even the best individuals would be corrupted by this group dynamic.