I feel I can safely say that your child will respect you all his life for being honest with him and for letting him make up his own mind. 
Am I missing something here? Is there a list of people who feel this way? I thought I explained myself rather clearly when I said I live the way I do because I LOVE God, not because I’m afraid of him. 
But before you made that post, you said:
So, what morals would you forego if you believed there were no consequences after death?
Do I really have to tell? 
Seriously though, if I believed there was no God and no afterlife as deeply as I believe that there is, then I probably would of continued the life I had before I became a Christian. I only say that because I was on the wrong path and I enjoyed the path I was on very much. Knowing myself well enough I think I would of gone much further down that path and who knows where I would of ended up. Yes, I give God the glory and the thanks for helping me find my way out, and I love him all the more for it because I deserve to be there still. I can’t say I didn’t hurt people because I did. I’m not saying that someone can’t get themselves on the right path without God, because of course that’s not true, but for me it was him who helped me along.
I really don’t feel it’s going to make a difference on this topic if I give you specific details of my former life. I will just say that there weren’t very many people in my life to show me what good “morals” were and I don’t think I was looking for them anyway.
dreamer, sorry to press when you have made it clear that you don’t really want to share, but, as I said before, I’m really curious–not only about the general theist attitude that morality flows mainly from God, and also about your personal feelings about how your own morality changed when you adopted Christianity–particularly since you are one of those few souls for whom we have a “before” and “after”.
I have a couple of questions that I hope are not overly specific or personal.
What were you before you became a Christian? Atheist, agnostic, indifferent, Hare Krishna . . . ? And can you give us some idea of the “path” you were on? Did it involve “sins of the flesh” like drugs and sex that most atheists wouldn’t consider immoral (in moderation, of course) or was deeper character issues, like lying or stealing, which atheists would agree are problematic? I guess my main question is, do you think that Christianity was the only way you could have turned your life around? If you had encountered a strong moral role model, might you have taken a new path? What about other religions?
I’m not trying to attack your position or hijack the thread. I’d just to understand a little better where you and other theists are coming from. Also, I’m very ambivalent on the idea of religion as the great moralizer. I believe quite strongly that there is some segment of the population that will be moral, with or without religion, and some segment which will be immoral, with or without religion. (And my continuing sanity relies on the former group being larger than the latter!) But what I really wonder about is the middle ground . . . How big is it? In a hypothetical society without religion, could some sort of secular morality, with a similar framework to religion, similarly dogmatic but with the god parts stripped out, be an effective moralizing force? It might be that some people simply need some sort of metaphysical carrot-and-stick approach–whether we’re talking heaven/hell or the approval/disapproval of a supernatural parental figure. (Obviously the heaven/hell bit isn’t necessary–look at Judaism, for example.)
Also, dreamer, I am curious—could you answer your own original six questions for us atheists? We’re as curious about your mindset as you are about ours!
I was born into a non-practicing Jewish family. I don’t remember there being any discussions about God when I was a child so I guess I was indifferent until I was about 14. At that point I believe I became agnostic and then a few years later, I went back to being indifferent until I started “wondering” again. Hope that makes sense.
All of the above. There are things I’ve done that should of landed me in prison. I can’t go into detail and I hope you understand that, but it involved manipulating, lying, cheating, and stealing from other people and places. Sex and Drugs played a large part too. I was the kind of person that would try anything. That’s why I say I know I could of dove far into other things before I was “saved”. I had an abortion (though I don’t know what atheist views are on that). I didn’t think anything of it at the time, I had little care about myself actually. I was a “street kid” for awhile when I lived in Seattle and looking back I can see God was working in my life even back then. Little things here and there that lured me away from falling into worse things than what I was already into. I know this can’t be much different that other people’s stories, and I’m not saying people can’t change their lives on their own or with a friends help. But for me it was God who helped me see the light.
First let me say that God is not a “role model” to me. He is a God that accepts me with all my faults, just the way I am and loves me unconditionally. I did have a friend who came along that was a good person/role model to me and I pretty much laughed in her face for many years. She is the one whom eventually took me to church, though I went only to make her happy.
It took years before anything really ever changed morality wise, in my life after believing in God. At first I wouldn’t even stand up or clap or pray or close my eyes or anything at church. I felt like an idiot just being there, but I had this deep down feeling that I needed to be there. My attitude was pretty much “God has to prove himself to me or I’m not believing anything”.
There are actually quite a few believers that I have met that have a “before” and “after” Christian life. What inspires me about them is that they are so understanding and down to earth about life and how bad it really can be. Yet they see how good it can be too and I relate to that. I think because of that life experience they (and myself) are able to love others and have abounding compassion and even the desire to understand why others think the way they do.
I hope that answers some of your questions sufficiently enough.
dreamer, if you are an equally happy person today, or even happier, than you were before you became a Christian, and if you are now aware that you can lead a happy life without engaging in activities that hurt you and hurt others, why would you behave differently with evidence that God did not exist? Isn’t the life you’re living now, in terms of behavior towards yourself and others, rewarding for its own sake?
Isn’t it a bit troubling that so many Christians on the SDMB claim that they would behave much differently, and behave much more badly towards others, if they discovered that God did not exist; but that most SDMB atheists claim they would not behave differently at all if they discovered that God did exist?
Yeah, I’ve known a small number of Christians who fit that bill.
Also, a larger number of atheists who do, along with assorted agnostics, buddhists of various varieties, pagans, subgenii, thelemics, discordians, and others with which the topic of belief structures simply never came up.
All these things: love, compassion, understanding and empathy–they are human things. They’re part of the fabric of what people are, as people, like muscles. And exactly like muscles, these qualities strengthen or atrophy via use and disuse.
It worries me more and more that people have to try to “understand” how it is that those not of their particular beliefs can display the better qualities. It’s like trying to understand how it is that those not of their paritcular religion are able to walk or speak.
Both stem from bieng human–a quality that trumps (or rather should do so) all religion.
1. What is the “Meaning of Life” to you?
I usually say that the meaning is to make children and then die, having passed one’s genes. The ulterior motive of this action? There probably is none; and I suppose no-one would be particularly upset if this planet just blew up.
2. What is your purpose for being on this Earth?
Gotta say, there likely is no purpose. Needn’t have been me to pass on one’s genes. Could just as well have been anyone else my parents cared to conceive in their day. So I don’t bother much about my purpose and rather care what I can do with my purposeless life to make it more worthwhile to everyone.
3. Is there a Hero figure or anyone in your life that you have learned from or whom you look up to?
Sure, lots and lots of people whom I have learned from, lost of people who I admire, lost of folks to whom I look up to. What’s that got to do with Atheism?
4. What do you say to your children when they ask "Mommy, Daddy? Who is God?"
I say “Go bother Mommy.” Or else, I tell them that I don’t believe in God and believe some people are prone to say “there is God” when they run out of explanations – some earlier, some later. I for my part have no problem saying that “before the Big Bang, there was God”. I don’t know what was before; and I suppose anything that was before, if anything, can be called God as well as it can be called Marmelade.
I wondered whether I should tell them to go and check out various religions…but decided against it, because I am rather a firm believer, if not a militant, in atheism. In other words, I think I’m right, so I tell my children.
5. When a loved one dies or a tragedy happens in your life – What are the steps you take to deal with it?
I mourn the loss, and get on with my life. It will be hard for a while, and there’ll always be a sense of loss, but I’ll get over it.
6. What do you believe happens to you when you die?
I rather hope it’s like sleeping without a dream – i.e. there’s nothing. And my body decays, of course, and then there’ll be nothing FOR REAL in short order. And my family will mourn me, I hope.
Considering that having oral sex in Virginia or Arizona can land you in prison, that’s not saying much. 
(Oh, and by the way, grammatical nitpick here: It’s not “should of”, it’s “should have” – or the contracted form, “should’ve”.)
Forgive me for my grammatical errors :rolleyes:
**1. What is “The Meaning of Life” to you? **
There seems to be no obvious “meaning”. Life is what you make of it.
**2. What is your purpose for being on this Earth? **
If some other entity has a purpose for me, they haven’t made it clear. So it’s up to me to make the purpose. I’ve chosen art. I want to make movies, plays, novels, short-stories, paintings, tell jokes, and find ways to be creative and original. I want to laugh alot, play alot, and get physical with attractive women. To do all of this takes cash, so I have to work at a bank to enable myself to support these other endeavors.
Oh, and also fighting ignorance. That is to say that I want to find and know as much truth as I possibly can and destroy as many of the lies that people tell as possible (whether they know they are spreading untruths or not). I’ve had to learn that concerning many big issues the truth is unavailable at this time. I don’t feel the need to believe one thing or another in these situations. To accept that there is not enough data is a perfectly good position to take. I find people who claim to know that there is no god just as foolish as those who claim to know that there is one.
**3. Is there a Hero figure or anyone in your life that you have learned from or whom you look up to? **
Tons. Cecil Adams, Brad Nowell (lead singer of Sublime), my dad, my mom, my teachers, posters on this board, my friends. I used to think I knew everything when I was a kid. One of the best things that ever happened to me was learning that I didn’t know everything and that I could be wrong. Many people offer something to learn, and I take em up on it just as often as I can.
**4. What do you say to your children when they ask “Mommy, Daddy? Who is God?” **
No kids, but when I have em (in a decade or so), I’ll tell them that there is not enough information to know definitively. Things may have been created, or they may have just popped into existence randomly without purpose or design. Also, there could be levels of creators. Someone may have created life on earth, but been created another way themselves. Something may have designed the universe, and still have been created by someone else themself. There are many creators here on earth (architects for example), there may be many out there in this big old Universe. Or there may just be one. No one has shown me any evidence of any merit that can prove anything one way or the other. I’ll teach em to not buy any bridges, and to question everything.
**5. When a loved one dies or a tragedy happens in your life - What are the steps you take to deal with it. **
Light a spliff, crack a brew, throw on some good tunes and remember all the good times. The same thing I would want people to do when I die. I hate funerals and weddings. Throw a party when I die.
6. What do you believe happens to you when you die?
It looks like perception ends. It looks like the entity that is me ceases to be. As has been stated by others, the matter and energy that make up me will go on to make up something else. I happen to like perception, so I intend on extending my life for as long as is possible.
Some fun theories I’ve heard posit that perhaps everything that ever happens is recorded somehow. If so, then every moment is always existing somewhere. Who knows, though. If there is an afterlife, or a continuation of conciousness after physical death, no one has proved it yet. It’s all just conjecture, and we could ALL be wrong. Make the best of it while we’re here is your best bet as far as I can tell.
DaLovin’ Dj
What is it specifically that worries you?
Eve, I will answer those questions later on this afternoon.
Not any more, at least in Arizona. A few years ago Governor Hull signed a bill which basically said, “whatever happens in private between two consenting adults is fine by the state of Arizona.” So, except for the occasional doobie, I’m not a criminal any longer.
More than a bit troubling, to me, and a very good reason to keep religion out of government.
When any religion supercedes common human decency, that’s cause for concern.
The number of presumably functionally-intelligent people about in the world who think that religious beliefs are more important than the simple birthright of shared common humanity. The number of people who think of human beings as being hopelessly at-effect in their morality and behavior instead of being, themselves and together as people, at cause of them. Nescience and doublethink are worrying, because the world only improves to the extent that fewer people engage in those habits.
And that’s worrying because I’d like the world to keep improving here and now, and people have to do that themselves. No one else is going to do it for us. The narrative that it takes more than people deliberately being better people to really improve anything only hampers that.
Thank you for answering my questions, dreamer. I appreciate it, and it helps me understand where you are coming from. I am truly thankful that religion could play a positive role in your life, and I hope that it never gets in the way of your happiness. (That’s the closest thing you’re going to get to a blessing from an atheist. )
Sorry, missed this one before . . .
No . . . but it seems that if you think somebody’s in heaven, you shouldn’t morn any more than if they’re going to move away for a years (or, okay, yeah, decades. . . ) but that’s not the quality of grief one sees at funerals. You see incredible, soul-rending loss . . . just like you’d expect from an unbeliever. While pastor’s droning on and on about Jesus giving eternal life, people are still bawling their eyes out. Doesn’t seem like it’s much comfort to most people. In my experience, it seems like the believers suffer just as much as the unbelievers.
Well, I know that the person won’t be with me, but I also do not believe that they are in any pain or that they are suffering. They’ve just ceased to be. Like going to sleep forever. “At rest,” as they say. It’s comforting, in a sense, depending on the situation. When my great grandmother died after years of living with Alzheimers, it seemed a long-awaited release. It’s tragic in other situations, when, it seems, the deceased many years of happiness ahead of them, but shrug like I said, I don’t think that the grief of an atheist is any more acute than that felt by your average religionist.
If anything, the atheists I know personally seem to be a bit more . . . I don’t know, philosophical about it all. (I’m repeating that word, but I can’t come up with anything else. ‘Detatched’ is too cold.) There are a lot of questions we don’t have to wrestle with: Why did God have to take him from me? Was it someiting I did wrong? What if I was a better person, and prayed harder . . . What if he was a better person . . . etc. We don’t have to bend our grief-wracked brains around the idea of God’s Plan. We don’t have to try to see a higher purpose in a senseless death. We can just tell ourselves that the Universe sucks; bad things happen to good people; life ain’t fair and never has been.
If your loved one is struck down in the prime of life or tortured slowly and painfully to death by disease, which is easier to accept: that the death was caused by an impersonal, uncaring Universe, or by a supposedly omnipotent, omnibenevolent diety is responsible? [I can’t answer that one, myself.]
Actually, I tihnk acceptance “ease” in such things is very akin to people being decent creatures–when compared, it’s pretty much exactly equal when comparing believers and non-believers. People are people and the grieving process is another one of those common human things.
I’ll give you my take on your situation. You probably won’t agree, but since you wanted to know what atheists think, I’ll oblige:
I suspect that the reason you are having trouble imagining morality without a mandate from God is because belief in God is necessary for YOU to survive. It sounds like you were kind of lost, with nobody around to show you an example of how to be a good person. What you needed was a “jump start” to give yourself the mental discipline to pull yourself out of the situation you were in, and religion provided that for you. Now I think you have a vested interest in believing that God is real, because that’s what got you back on the straight and narrow, and so it defines you as a person. But really, it’s coming from YOU. You decided what kind of person you wanted to be - religion was just the catalyst. It gave you the means to change your situation. You didn’t really need God to tell you what was right and wrong - you already knew that. What you needed was some focus in your life.
But others may not need religion for that. They can look to other humans as examples of morality. And I think we all have an innate sense of empathy - we know it’s wrong to hurt others because we can imagine what it would be like if it were us who were being hurt. Plus, another person may not have ever been so far down the “wrong path”, as you put it, or, if they were, they may have discovered another way to pull themselves away from that path.
Just curious: would you admit that this thread is maybe just a little more about convincing yourself of your own beliefs than it is about actually understanding other people’s point of view?