This post starts where my post on loosing faith ended.
So, some Christians believe all Atheists believe in God, I’m certain this is more of the poor, possibly dishonest, reasoning that plagues people in pews. What I’m also almost certain of is that most Christians don’t believe in the God they claim to believe in.
People will probably say I’m full of it and there’s no way I can get into people’s heads and say what they do or don’t believe, this is true. The thing is, beliefs influence behaviour, and this is an observable phenomenon. Children do things their parents don’t approve of, yet they try to hide those things from their parents. They try to hide their mischief from their parents for fear of retribution or disapproval.
This applies to adults as well. Sure, people commit crimes, but the vast majority of criminals don’t commit them in front of the police. People living in oppressive nations do horrible things that they are told to, and often won’t stand up for what is right for fear of reprisal. The key here is, if there are consequences that people are aware of, and there’s a high risk of being caught, people tend to abstain from the behaviour that would result in that reprisal. We have the entire of human history to speak to this.
So, Christians all claim to believe in an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient God. This God is not only aware of everything that happens, He’s present when it happens. This God is also likely to punish you in some way for what you do wrong. This God isn’t just likely to punish you, he’s likely to stick you into a fire till you no longer exist, or (as most Christians believe) He’s likely to stick you into a fire without the option of ceasing to exist. Given the scope of God’s knowledge and the punishment He can mete, you’d expect that Christians would never lie or sleep with their neighbours spouse. You’d expect that they’d never cheat someone in business. You also expect that they’d take what their Bible says about studying the Bible very seriously. You’d expect them to live completely selflessly like Jesus. This is what you would expect if people believed in the Biblical God. This is, of course, not the case in the real world.
Sure, Christians will claim that they won’t be punished, they’ll just repent and God will forgive, provided your wishful thinking can bring you to believe the outrageous. This is obviously the cop out, since personal testimonies are used to evangelise to people the change God can make in your life – that you’ll be better. Fortunately Christians always have the cop out, “not everyone who claims to be a Christian is.” Please could someone enlighten me to what makes a real Christian, as far as I can tell it’s believing that God came to Earth, abandoned himself and died, but somehow didn’t die, all so that you could believe in him. He was smart enough to record these in texts that aren’t consistent with each other.
Basic evidence of how people behave normally, and of how Christians behave speaks to the fact that they don’t believe what they’re preaching.
Your thoughts?
Small Doses 
I don’t come from your branch of Christianity; given what you say in some other posts I am not entirely sure that you consider me to be Christian because I am a Mormon.
Not all atheist believe in God; There are certainly those that do but match that with all the Christians that don’t believe in God but say they do and it more then evens out.
Given that Jesus said it is not those that say “Lord, Lord” but that actually help others and do the right things in their own lives then, as you say, many Christians show a lack of faith and many atheist “shew the work of the law written in their hearts”. ‘God renders to every man according to their deeds’ so we can rightfully expect that that Christians that don’t do what they know they should are much worse off then atheists that do the best that they know how.
Fear of punishiment though isn’t why God wants us to obey; For God so Loved the world that He sent is Son, not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him. I mean the gospel is supposed to change us from having hearts of stones to having the law written on our hearts so that we don’t need the harsh task master of the law but instead strive to become better ourselves because that is what one does and what is right, regardless of any punisment or reward. We are all supposed to have the Spirit and all supposed to be prophets, having the testimony of Jesus and having our very nature changed.
However, like the foolish virgins too many have let their oil go low by having a dead faith which lacks works. Too many pastors have led their sheep astray teaching and teach for doctrine the precepts of men. While each of us always fall short of the glory of God and need forgiveness ourselves and to forgive others, we also need to repent and sin no more, or at least try, for God to forgive us. In fact, according to modern day prophets sinning with the intent of repenting latter is dangerously close to the unpardonable sin, as one is putting Christ to open shame and purposefully crucifying Him anew in ones heart, as it is His atonement which allows for repentance.
Anyways, your idea of Hell is completely different from mine, but I already knew that. If we got down to it, I am sure your idea of God is very much different then mine as well. I suggest continuing to seek God diligently and see what He has to say to your doubts and concerns, as I know He will answer.
The previous post was where I talked more about atheists who believe in God. I don’t think atheists believe in any kind of God, but that is simply because I classify atheists as people who don’t believe in any supernatural stuff, there are other names for other groups.
The problem isn’t what you believe really, the problem is how that belief has an influence on your life. There is little from the Christian world to show that Christianity has anything practical to offer the world. It doesn’t make people better people, or make them less hostile (it made me more hostile), it doesn’t promote the things it should. So perhaps people who claim to believe in God do, but “actions speak louder than words” as they say. It’s this lack of change in people which I’m getting at. If we were testing something, and the predicted result failed over and over, we’d say our theory needs reassessing. Well, the success of the gospel to change people sits at a very low percent, any other theory, and we’d reassess it, but fortunately Christians can blame the Devil.
I’m not sure if that addresses what you’re saying, but thanks for the input, I appreciate it. I’m sure we do have very different ideas of what God is supposed to be like, as different as our concept of Hell. We recently moved house and the Book of Morman we had is in a box somewhere, I’ll try to find it and give it a read.
I will not here trumpet statistics on my faith, or beliefs of my faith on the subject, as I think you are being too hard on Christianity. Yes, it has problems but it has helped many people to be better. Whatever problems Mother Teresa had, and whatever she was lacking, she still spent her life serving others, and there are and have been many more that have given their lives to trying to help others. Slavery is mostly gone from large parts of the world because of the efforts of Christians. A lot of the foundations of modern Science come from the efforts of Christians seeking to know the mind of God. Yes, there are bad pastors and bad priests but generally I think it best to assume that, like most people, pastors and priests are trying to do the best they know how despite their imperfections.
Reassessing the idea that Christianity is especially favored by God simply because of belief, or that Christianity as known is the way God intends it to be, or that Christians that don’t love their neighbors are somehow better then others who believe differently but do try and love their neighbors, is a very good idea.
As always seeking God is a good plan, I wouldn’t give up on things just yet.
Hi smidoz. I’m one of those atheists who actually has no gods (like the other 99%+). I’m also a former Christian minister (for about a decade until the age of 31). When I left the faith and after a several month long period of withdrawal, to use a C.S. Lewis meme, I was surprised by joy. I had no idea how liberating and fulfilling nonbelief would become. Further, I was surprised by the significant increase in empathy that this process developed. Go figure. It sure wasn’t what the propaganda predicted.
Good to hear from you. My biggest issue at the moment is worrying about how the relationships I’ve built up since converting are going to suffer, I think some already have.
I don’t believe atheists believe in God, it’s a bad idea. Some people call themselves atheists because they don’t believe in the Christian God, but even those people don’t believe in God, they may be deists and not atheists, but they don’t believe in God in the sense that Christians have painted the picture.
As an atheist, I would say that an “atheist who is rejecting god” is actually just still a theist – albeit a confused and guilt ridden one.
I agree with you, I was simply pointing out, what I’ve been told by many Christians, and what makes theological sense to them.
“they’ll just repent and God will forgive”
That’s the reason I rejected christianity at the age of 13 or 14. The idea of the devout catholic Pinochet repenting on his death bed and going to heaven while his atheist victims who fought for social justice wouldn’t looked so unfair to me. Save me from that kind of divine justice.
That’s a long time ago. Since then I have come to the conclusion that christian heaven isn’t any more attractive than hell. As a Dutchman that’s an important point for me as the majority of Dutch christians do not believe in hell anyway.
MNb,
Your answer explains some questions you asked me earlier; sorry for being confused about that when I answered them, I obviously didn’t have the reason for the questions or the whole story behind them.
I’ve heard theories as to why the Christian Heaven isn’t a great place, wasn’t convinced, but it didn’t bother me since I was (remarkably) never motivated by Heaven or Hell. I don’t see being moral about being rewarded. Since you brought it up, could you elaborate? I’d like to see why you don’t think it’s much better than Hell.
The repenting thing should bother anyone, it’s a free hall pass for everyone who can guess the teachers password.
Different poster here, but I’m glad for an excuse to pontificate. I think the Christian Bible describes an abusive deity who deliberately tortures those he claims to love (and this holds even if you deny Hell!) So let’s say that a lot of the Bible is true. This should lead us to expect that God’s behavior will resemble that of human abusers. He may claim he’ll stop “testing” us when we make it to Heaven, may claim it’s all going to be better soon, but empirically we should believe the opposite. Therefore we should try to get as far away from God as possible.
Happily the point seems moot, as God does not exist. But if you believe in modern Macrocosm or Multiverse theories, there may be copies of you in some other world with someone who resembles a Biblical God. And a random copy seems more likely to benefit by fleeing this alleged “God” than by seeking him out.
Congratulations! Apparently it takes unusual courage or honesty to admit the truth. I agree that adult Christians don’t seem to have a mental picture of the world, used for making predictions about what they will or won’t find when they go to the store, in which God exists as described. (In particular, they don’t expect to go down the street and meet angry Cherubim, nor a prophet who will punish them with divine power if they don’t follow orders.) Possibly some of them have a picture of the world containing a “God” completely unlike the one they profess.
(Incidentally, my mental picture of the world does not include any disinterested deities. I don’t expect to see any events like those in the TV show Heroes that look like interference from a powerful mind of obscure purpose.)
I suspect that the vast majority of believers simply picture themselves as “believers”, part of a tribe that protects them. They think professing belief has good effects in the real world, so they do it. Hopefully now that you’ve come out against this, you’ll make new friends who admire your genuine good qualities.
If you take the Jewish/Christian/Muslim theological Gods – all powerful, omnipresent, all knowing, etc. – NO ONE has ever believed in such an ‘entity’. I put entity in scare-quotes because it’s actually a non-entity. An ‘omnipotent’ being is a nonsense non-being. People talking about such a ‘thing’ are not actually talking about anything at all. No one believes in the God of the philosophers anymore than they ‘believe’ in squared circles. All they can really do is lie about believing in it, which is called hypocrisy. The same thing goes, though in a less blatant sense, for all the contradictory nonsense in the creeds and Bibles they are supposed to believe. Anyone who claims to believe in a ‘merciful eternal torturer’ is talking idiocy. It’s not even a question of theodicy or whether Hell is justified, it’s just that ‘merciful eternal torturer’ are contradictions in terms. Most religious beliefs are so blatantly retarded -as Tertullian was well aware – that the only reason people even pretend to believe in them is because they’re complete toolbags – unreflective, non-critical pukes who rationalize whatever bullshit their herd vomited into their brains.
All Christians – and any theist whose God isn’t just a super-powered person or alien – are hypocrites and a liars.