I feel the subtlety of my last response was missing or lost My ultimate point, or conclusion under Christianity, is kind of simple. It demonstrates that one is either to receive a reward or punishment in the afterlife, based upon their belief and/or actions in the conclusion of this life - as this resolution is clearly inferred from the Bible itself.
My hypothetical then asks the following, in so many words...
If it was universally known that Yahweh exists. If it was also universally understood that Yahweh wishes for humans to follow His commandments. If it was also universally known Yahweh wishes for you to seek a relationship with Him. And yet, if it was also understood, all along, there instead exists no afterlife, would many humans bother seeking a relationship and following God's word?
In another topic (Is Belief a Choice), I made a side comment about 'selfishness'. My point was mentioned in passing. And yet, rather than addressing the heart of the other topic, they instead wanted further clarification for this term. So I then created this topic to address further.
In conclusion, to answer the above underlined question with a (yes or no), appears fairly simple.
Most might answer 'no'. In such a case, it may be fairly safe to surmise such an answer indicates 'selfishness', as the choice means that without the result of a reward or punishment, the effort to follow such a known agent becomes superfluous.
This modern belief that man only acts from selfish reasons, that he only acts to accrue pleasure or escape pain, or from the demands of 'selfish genes' is utterly facile.
CS Lewis covered this nicely in Pilgrim's Regress, where the maiden Reason faces the Spirit of the Age. She asks him three riddles: What is the colour of innards you cannot see? If an enemy is pursueing you, must your wife destroy the bridge you must cross to stop the enemy, or leave it standing for you? By what means can you tell an original from a perfect copy?
For instead of following what people give as their reasoned answers, there is always an attempt to 'get behind' what they are saying - trying to decide what the reason is they are thinking in this manner, in which way there is pontificating on inner workings not clearly visible. It is not a man, but an abstraction of man then, like a corpse cut open to expose his innards is not the same as a living person.
In like manner, as per riddle two, the position that they aren't selfish is dismissed as merely wish-fulfillment or what they desire to be the case - but the same is true of those that demand that all is 'selfish' and altruism an ulterior motive. They are just seeking to justify different positions.
So the third riddle, that all 'good things' are always thought to be copies of 'bad' ones. Honour is merely seeking fame, Love merely seeking lust, etc. Why not the reverse? That the virtues are primary and the other copies?
You can always find some 'self-interest' in any action, but that is because you are assuming the doctrine before-hand and then deciding what appropriate base motive to apply 'subconsciously' or not, to someone else. So Love of God is just fear of hell or expectation of heaven. Certainly either of these can follow, but they need not necessarily be the primary cause. It is merely a priori assumption to say so. Saints are merely sinners chasing a different kind of 'high' to such people, Religion an opiate.
This pseudo-scientific Total Depravity of denying goodness as a concept really has little grounds to do so beyond conjecture. It is because the modern world is so jaded, that all noble actions are treated as suspect. Regulus returned to captivity and death out of honour, or after Poitiers Edward III released many French captives knowing they would go home and send their ransoms back to him, or Jean II returning voluntarily to captivity when France reneged on the terms of his ransom. Today all kinds of other motives, social pressure or whatnot, are placed here - which may be the case in many, but certainly need not be universal.
I spent last night nursing my sick daughter, and it can always be said to be Oxytocin or my Selfish Genes at play - for Familial Love is such an abhorrent concept to be beyond the pale. No, we must lay open everyone and assume the inner workings of all their actions without evidence beyond conjecture. They are merely masses of hormones and nerve depolarisations, not reasoning creatures - merely automata lumbering forth at the whims of a selfish cascade of self-continuity - that nothing greater than base instinctual concepts dressed in moral window dressing exists.
Men and women have been sacrificing themselves for ideals and others for millenia, but now we get to pour slime on their examples and drag them down to our level. That is merely wish-fulfillment in my mind. Why are we so much more clear-headed than they?
Love of God is even more at play here. Many groups Loved God or their form of the divine, with no hope of reward or punishment - such as the Sadducees in Judaism, Hypsistarians or philosophic schools in Greco-Roman culture, or certain Bhakti cults in Hinduism. Sufi saints or flagellants, those suffering with Christ as the early Church taught, certainly gained nothing but beatific visions and ideals. You can certainly denigrate that too, if you wish, creating some facade to justify it, but that remains at heart a presumed doctrine built on the axiomatic assumptions. As long as you are presuming others' motives, you can always presume until it fits whatever framework you want.
Ps: You can change the thread title by using the edit thread tool above the OP, if you want to correct the typo.