From: "Truth Liberty"
Subject: Re: Atheism

Ultimately people who deny the existence of God are taken down by the very hand of the one they deny. To deny God is to deny love, peace and truth, the very attributes people look for their entire lives.

I've seen quite a few Christians deny that qualities such as love, peace, and truth can exist independent of their god — as if nonbelievers in any gods and nonbelievers in their particular god were somehow unable to really experience what those qualities are. The astounding arrogance and self-centered attitude such claims display is rather pathetic. It betrays a real lack of empathy for others and a real inability to imagine how others might be different.

A person might as well insist that those who don't share one's race, ethnicity, gender, or hair color are unable to experience truth love, peace, or truth. Such claims may sound extreme, but at their heart they are no more extreme than what we see here from TL. I can understand that someone like this may believe that their god is the source of love, peace, and truth, but they need to get out of the house more and experience what it is like to be among people who don't already agree with them — people who are compassionate, peaceful, and loving without adopting the same religious or theistic beliefs.

 

To many christians today experience church and not God, hence why people leave.......going to church doesn't make you a christian, just like sleeping in a garage doesn't make you a car. It is a renewel of your heart and mind.

TL has something close to a point here, but it is made in an utterly self-serving manner. It is true that merely attending church doesn't make one a Christian and that some leave Christianity because of unpleasant experiences with their churches. However, vague and unverifiable ideas about hearts being "renewed" really aren't an adequate definition of what it means to be a "Christian."

For one thing, even if we were to grant that such a definition could be valid, it would be impossible to verify that any particular person really is a "Christian" with renewed "heart and mind" outside of observing their actions. The idea that one can be considered a Christian merely observing their actions is, however, basically what TL is denying. So where does that leave us?

Basically, we are left with accepting people's self-reporting as to whether they are Christians ore not. We may in some cases have fair grounds for being skeptical about their claims, but ultimately we have to accept the validity of such self-labeling in all but the most extreme cases. This is especially true if we were to adopt TL's idea of what it means to be a Christian, but it's also true if we are more sensible and note that most of the "definitions" Christians use conveniently exclude a great many of those who consider themselves Christian.

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