Lance Armstrong and God
Zach Wallens explains:
In his book It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life, Armstrong wrote about the night before undergoing brain surgery: “I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn’t pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable.”
In an interview with TIME, Armstrong said: “I don’t have anything against organized religion per se. We all need something in our lives. I personally just have not accepted that belief. But I’m one of the few.” [Humanist Network News]
So, Lance Armstrong doesn’t think very much about organized religion, but what about gods? Many theists are as dissatisfied with traditional religions as are atheists so the above quotes don't make him an atheist...
According to an article in the UK Times Online, he believes it is possible to be a good person while not believing in God. “I think we all have obligations to be good, honest, hard-working, caring and compassionate,” he said.
ET Magazine quoted Armstrong saying “If there was a god, I’d still have both nuts.”
It’s common for religious theists to insist that adherence to a religious ideology and/or faith in some god is helpful in achieving more in life. I’m sure that this make sense from their perspective, but it’s undeniable that neither religious belief nor theism are necessary to achieving more in life.
People are capable of doing far more than they usually end up doing and it’s at least as likely that religion is holding them back as it is that it helps propel them forward. That people fail to recognize this may be due to their failure to even consider a life without religion and theism.
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Comments
have fun in hell!!
I will pray for Lance Armstrong. He name is a household word. You can say Livestrong and some people may not know what you are talking about but say Lance Armstrong and they connect the two. Lance, you are doing great work in the fight against cancer and I appreciate all you are doing. I pray that you come to know Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour.
Hell will NOT be a fun place for anyone who goes there and any indication that it might be fun is shunning the truth. There will be darkness, gnashing of teeth and lonliness. Check scripture. May God soften Lance’s heart so he will accept him as his savior and be saved from such a scary place.
I pray all you christians would stop wasting 1/3 of your energy praying and going to church, maybe YOU could win the Tour de France with the spare time. If god wanted Lance to accept him, don’t you think he would have ’softened his heart’ already?
The first three comments are why people in the reality-based community think theists are mindless idiots.
yes, one can achieve earthly greatness without God or religion. but that’s not even worth comparing to what you can achieve with God in your heart. A child sitting next to me at church with Jesus in his heart already achive more than Lance in his present age.
I think Lance is an inspiration and I am a Christian.
The 1st comment makes me sad because comments (& attitudes) like that help me to understand more of why many people do not accept Christianity.
“Have fun in hell”???
These are not the words Jesus would’ve spouted.
But, also, I will say that just cuz Lance doesn’t “have both nuts” doesn’t refute a loving God who allows situations to bring us closer to Him.
I know it’s hard to understand but I’ve only got so many characters I can type here.
The VOID that atheists feel inside themselves can only be filled by God. It actually takes greater faith not to believe than to believe.
Ask God to prove Himself real to you – what can it hurt?
I applaud the last comment. So many people are turned off by Christians and our comments. WWJD is a very powerful statement and it is how we should live our lives daily, taking the church outside the walls. We have some youth at church who like Lance. It is good to have earthly role models however, Christ is the only role model that will matter in the end of our days. Earthly accomplishments and treasures are exactly that, earthly. Coffins do not come with a u-haul attachement hitch. My denomination, and thought process is not the only way to God but his son, Jesus Christ is! Let’s stand up for the truth, because it will set you free. Let’s think about the questions you will be asked when you come face to face with the anointed one. I don’t think it will be earthly treasures. Last comment, “Going to church makes you a Christian as much as standing in your garage make you a car” To God be the Glory!
Sorry, but I don’t feel any void.
It’s actually more than a little bit arrogant to simply assume that I must have one instead of asking me first. In this way you’re just treating me more as an object, filling a preconceived role, than an individual human being.
Really? Prove it.
Been there, done that. Once again, you might want to consider the value of engaging people as individuals and asking them questions instead of assuming that you already know all about people you don’t know and have never met. Drop the script, please, because it just makes you and all the other Christians following it look absurd.
What could it hurt to believe that you can fly by flapping your arms and jumping off a tall building? What would it hurt to have a senator vote based on what a bronze age novel tells him? What could go wrong if a president believed that a character in that novel wants him to do this or that? What would it hurt to tell a child their feelings are sinful, rather than natural? Or that there is a guy who lives by the north pole who brings them toys on Christmas?
I am constantly amazed at how much Christians think they know, without ever talking to me, about what I feel or how I think.
ET Magazine quoted Armstrong saying “If there was a god, I’d still be banging Sheryl Crow.”
Dan wrote:
“The VOID that atheists feel inside themselves can only be filled by God.”
I’m sorry, Dan, but it will never work for me. You see, I have a Darwin-shaped hole in my brain.
Dan said
“The VOID that atheists feel inside themselves can only be filled by God.”
It’s kind of funny to read that Dan, since any sort of void I once felt disappeared as I let go of my childish belief in a god. You might find some despondent atheists, but it’s been my experience that they would be the exception rather than the norm. Accepting reality was a very liberating experience.
“It actually takes greater faith not to believe than to believe.”
Do you really not understand how nonsensical that statement is? Or is it the fact that it is complete nonsense what you find so comforting about it – I would argue that it requires no small amount of faith to make such a contradictory statement and believe that it makes any sense. I suggest you consult a dictionary to refresh yourself on the meaning of the word faith. If there were any evidence of a god, it would not require faith to believe in one. It requires no faith at all for me to say that I don’t believe in the existence of unicorns or leprechauns – there’s no evidence to support it. If unicorns and leprechauns suddenly appear and start cavorting around then I will accept their existence, but that acceptance will still not require faith.
“Ask God to prove Himself real to you – what can it hurt?”
Once more with the assumptions – I was raised in a church and prayed many times, as is the case with a lot of atheists. Are you just a troll or are you actually interested in considering other people’s perspectives? You comment quite often, yet you never really seem to have anything new to say.
Austin (10) I am with you 100%. I have no concept of the void which Dan mentioned.
I seems that one possibility is being left out. Perhaps The God is weeding out those with too little sense to recognize a sham when they see one rather than wishing to keep those that believe. Heaven may be just a holding pen for the useless ones.
Chuck (17) Well said!
Remember that BlackAdder episode where he is made Archbishop of Canterbury, and explains that “Heaven is for those people who like the sorts of things that go on in Heaven… like talking to God & watering plants…”
Would somebody please tell me why christians are always saying they wish someone would accept Jesus Christ into their life as their personal savior? What’s the point? What’s the payoff? Save you from what?
Count me among the atheists with no empty hole that needs to be filled. I live a full, productive, happy life —a much better life than I imagined as a child when being warned of the terrible things that would happen to me if I didn’t swallow the Christian silliness I was fed by my parents and the church.
It amazes me when someone says something like “What can it hurt?” —as if, a non–believer could suddenly decide to believe in a god. If a believer thinks I can do that, then why doesn’t the religious person think s/he can suddenly become atheists by simply changing their minds? It took me about 6 years to evolve from accepting religion blindly (before I was 12) until, at 18, I decided that there probably was no god. It was a slow process that included much soul searching, much reading, lots of Bible study, and hundreds of questions no one could answer.
What’s more, after careful reading of the Bible (several times cover-to-cover) i don’t want to believe in the cruel, vindictive, sexist and murderous god depicted there. And if Jesus believed and worshipped that god, I don’t want to believe in him either.
George Believer is typical of the religious person who has nothing of substance to say, so he resorts to damning someone who disagrees with him to hell. Ho, hum. I’ve heard it before. Hell doesn’t scare me, because I don’t believe it exists either.
I have a Twinkie-shaped hole in me that can only be filled with golden sponge cake and creamy filling.
In my youthful daze I used to be a fundamentalist Christian; however, I began my decade-long deconversion when I sat down and actually read The Bible. King James Version, of course. I hadn’t gotten past the Pentateuch before the doubts started to creep in, accompanied with horror at what God had commanded his fav people to do: mass slaughter of the heathen and the enslavement of the survivors–when there were any.
Religion is wish fulfillment on a grand scale. The fundamentalist strain is a mental pathology that glorifies ignorance and the herd mentality, and which allows the zombies who follow it to justify their crimes against humanity.
I wish everyone (particularly Christians) would actually read, from cover to cover, this book they allegedly revere. Perhaps they’d see how ridiculous and barbaric much of it is. And how ridiculous and barbaric they are.
I am proud to be an atheist.
The only void I envisage is the one displayed by those “Christian” posters, and it is situated between the ears.
“WWJD is a very powerful statement and it is how we should live our lives daily…”
I have two standards that are much better, both with the initials WWCD.
In my daily life, I ask, “What would Caine do?”, Caine being Kwai Chang Caine from Kung Fu. Caine was a calm guy, compassionate, intelligent, humble, but there was the Kung Fu for people who just wouldn’t leave the innocent alone, and he demonstrated these traits over and over through several seasons.
And before someone says, “But Caine is a fictional character,” I have this response: we imbue our fictional heroes with the qualities we admire most. While it may not be possible to achieve these qualities in real life, it gives us something to aspire to. Better a fictional hero then some athlete.
My other WWCD is, “What would Carl do?” “Carl”, of course, being Carl Sagan. I try to channel Carl when I’m posting, especially since I have such a smart-arse nature. He was good at keeping his cool with people who were saying things that were fundamentally ignorant, pointing out where they were factually wrong and why science holds a particular position with resorting to insult.
“…Christ is the only role model that will matter in the end of our days.”
This would be the smug, sarcastic, holier-then-thou Jesus we see in the Bible, uh, where, exactly? Because that’s what I see from most self-identified Christians who post.
Comments 1, 3, 6 and 8 are perfect examples of what I see a great deal of from self-professed Christians. Smugly confident of their own salvation while happily assuring us of our eternal damnation.
Charming.
Dang it! The HTML didn’t close. I hate when that happens! I only wanted the two quotes from Cross to be italic.
Hope it works this time.
Nope.
Hey Cross: Your acronym holds no more power than WWSCD (what would santa claus do)! Any power you attribute is innate, therefore, any acronym could work if you need such things. If you need a catchy, inspirational motivator, the adage “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is much more insightful no matter who first said it.
P.S. – WWLD is not bad either, I have used it many times in the last decade of a century ride!
I agree with comment #7. Jesus is not pleased when his followers say things like “have fun in hell!” Jesus was about loving unconditionally. He was about caring and loving sinners. He was about the people like Lance who choose to reject Him.
I wish Lance the best of luck in everything he does. I personally am a follower of Christ and I really wish that the other christians on here would really think about what Jesus would say to Lance in this situation.
Lance is a huge inspiration for me. Atheist? Agnostic? Not really my business, but then again, I tend toward the Libertarian…
Religiously, I am an Orthodox Jew. Kosher, Sabbath, yarmulke and all. We are a non-proselytizing sort, though, by nature and Jewish law, and merely ask of our non-Jewish neighbors to hold by the Seven Noachide Laws. Can’t say though whether Lance does, but again, not my business.
Lance appears in all respects a good, moral, hard-working, generous person. Does he fear God? Perhaps not, but then again it’s not for me to look into another’s heart but his deeds. And Lance’s deeds shout loudly that he is a very good person.
(Parenthetically, were he Jewish and still professing to agnosticism or atheism, my response would probably be, ‘oy, what a shame, maybe he’ll eventually find a nice Jewish girl…’ But he ain’t, so leave ‘im be.)
Here’s me raising my [kosher] wineglass to toast Lance (currently 2nd place at 2/10 of a second back) and team Astana, to victory in France for #8!!!
Lance you have it together. You do things that are good because it is the right thing to do not because you think you are going to get to heaven because of your good deeds. Jesus is proud of you. You are doing his work. There are many religious people that don’t have half the goodness that you have. You are a huge inspiration for many people and I am one of them. You have won already in France no matter what place you come in. You will always have no breaking point on your values of life and a driven spirit that transends all sports.