A Poll for Christians on Three Beliefs that Infuriate Atheists

This is a spin-off of my last post in the "The Claim of Hell Isn't Real" thread.

I've come up with three beliefs that Christians tend to hold that are infuriating to atheists (and most likely other non-Christians).
I hold that there is good reason to find these beliefs infuriating and that it's ridiculous that we are expected to just accept them, especially in the context of religious debate forums.

Here they are, the top three (and I'm not making them up-- these are the reasonings I have received from evangelicals in the past to explain things):

3. Lack of faith in God is a conscious decision undertaken to offend God (implications are that belief is conscious choice and lack of faith is malicious).
2. All people who commit any sin deserve to suffer eternally, but only lack of faith puts you in danger of that suffering (implication is that lack of faith is what really demands punishment, as all sins are forgivable).
1. Faith is required for one to truly do good works (implication is that the unfaithful are incapable of real good).

I think these are all false. Number three is, in fact, demonstrably false to me (sadly you can't read my mind).
I also think that if Christians really do not believe these things that there is really less reason for the common animositiy in atheist v. Christian battles.

So this thread serves a few purposes:

A. A poll to see how many Christians on this forum actually believe these things
B. Christians to either try to defend these three beliefs or to provide alternatives.
C. Non-Christians to supply more articles of Christian faith that are as infuriating so that they can be put up to debate.

All in all, I think the three I mention are most infuriating because they go beyond just beliefs I think are wrong (creationism) and contribute to an incredibly bigoted attitude toward non-believers that most Christians don't seem to be conscious of (because the implications are usually glossed over).

 

you apparently got an "A" in theology.

 

I believe we all deserve Hell for transgressing the laws of God
I believe that Faith is a Gift from Good
I believe that good works that are pleasing to God comes by faith

 

One question that never seems to be asked is "Why?" I suppose equally important is "What is Hell?"
Given the traditional definitions, does saying God's name in vain really warrant eternal suffering? When we follow laws, don't we typically think about whether or not they make sense, whether there is either a utilitarian or retributive reason for the law and if the punishment fits the crime?

This sort of goes to points made in the "Is God Evil?" thread. It's one thing to say, perhaps, that whatever God does is good since he invented good.
But "deserves" is a much harder term to reconcile. It demands a rationalization, I think.

Why does He only bestow it on some people? And if this gift is the only way to salvation and He alone decides who gets it, how can we really say anything about what people "deserve?"

Okay. But then doesn't that just mean that works are inconsequential? It's the faith that makes them pleasing to God, after all.
This implies that the world itself is meaningless.

This unfortunately creates a situation where those who believe the world does matter must question what good are works done by faith. While any good is a good to the materialist, there is something worrying about people who consider good without any basis in consequences. That's potentially dangerous.
And I don't think very many people actually make their decisions (at least not many of them) without material consequences in mind.

 

Explain why we should obey the (supposed) laws of God in the first place.

That not all are gifted with this faith gives God a bad name. God's an elitist!

This is about the same thing as saying that if Hitler says 2+2 = 4, then 2+2 actually does not = 4 because it was Hitler who said it.

 

Well, with the exceptions of the commandments associated with His worship, the rest are pretty much common sense, and are needed to keep social cohesion of a community.

1. I am the LORD your God. You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.
2. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
3. Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day.
4. Honor your father and your mother.
5. You shall not kill.
6. You shall not commit adultery.
7. You shall not steal.
8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
9. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's goods.


I grant the first two are arbitrary. The 3rd is common sense, in terms of making sure that people have a day of rest in the week. The 4th keeps a community together. 5th, 7th and 8th don't need explanation. 6th good for community cohesion, 9th and 10th similar.

 

And it's true this one does (*)(*)(*)(*) me off. He's saying that if two people, one with faith and one without, did EXACTLY THE SAME good works, only the faithful one gets any credit.

 

Here's the thing. I agree that I should not steal. But it has nothing to do with God saying so. When I steal, I am not disobeyoing God, I am doing wrong. Right and wrong have nothing to do with God.

 

Only two voters so far... and I realize a flaw in my poll.
I should have included None of These... Oh well.

I do want to analyze the first two because I've noticed neither voter believes all three.

One (who I've held for a long time to be one of the more reasonable theists out there) believes 1 and 3, but not 2. This certainly tones down the whole issue because it suggests either that eternal (*)(*)(*)(*)ation is not something anyone deserves or that faith is not the only deciding factor.
The question I have is on #3, the idea that lack of faith is rebellion against God.
I happen to know that I lost my faith and actually tried to fight it slipping away. What it comes down to is that belief is a secondary mental impulse based on observations and experiences... I hold that it's impossible to actually believe something when you perceive (involuntarily, a complex mix of social and possibly genetic phenomena) the world as evidence to the contrary. You might want to believe. But wanting to believe is not the same as having faith.

The second voter, one who is pretty new to me, accepts only the first two...
Now that position confuses me.
If you believe that only works through faith are good and only those with faith can be saved from sin, doesn't the belief that faith is not a choice really divorce justice from the entire conversation?
Is it really just God deciding who He likes and who He doesn't and then that determines whether the person's actions are pleasing and whether the person will be tortured?
This sounds like God as a crony capitalist... which, I suppose is how many gods in old polytheistic religions were viewed. But I think this makes God seem far less good.

 

The fact that this upsets you shows your outward rebellion to God, so yes He is Just in what He does.

 

No, in order for it to mean that, he'd have to actually believe God was the source.

What it is is open disagreement with religious doctrine (it can't be rebellion, as the doctrine has no authority over him and it can't be against God as the religion is a creation of humans).

 

I think I can answer your question, but I promise you wont like it. We are born into direct rebellion to God, we hate everything about Him. He is a Just and Holy God, the fact that He doesn't send you to Hell immediately after your 1st sin, is His Mercy. If there were no Hell, then grace and mercy would be robbed of their meaning. The fact that He, even though He hates you and your sin, sent a way for you to be reconciled with Him, is a very generous and loving act. He could have done nothing at all, and just let everybody go to Hell, but His kindness, grace, mercy, and love superseded His anger, and He has made a way for you to be reconciled with Him. And its an easy way. But, most do not want it that way, because life then becomes about Him and not them.

 

It upsets me that PEOPLE think morality can be constituted of mere obedience. it has nothing to do with God.

 

Well, If you don't believe God to be the source, then christianity, God, Heaven, and Hell, shouldn't even bother you.

 

Then don't worry about God, Heaven or Hell. Shed that worry from your mind, and move on to things that you consider to be of more importance.

 

1) I'm only trying to help you! 2) A lot of bad comes from PEOPLE believing these things.

 

You do keep your promises.

What bothers me isn't the concepts but the effects of other people believing them.
Exclusivist religious ideas lead to the demonization of other peoples, with real consequences.

Furthermore, when people who worry more about religious ideas than the material world gain power, the effects are dangerous for the rest of us. And it's not symetrical.
If an atheist runs things according to science and preserving the earth, it does not harm your spiritual ascension if you are correct.
However, if a theist runs the world in accordance to principles and metaphysical concepts above science and material, we all face the physical consequences.

 

Such as........

 

Do you have any examples?

 

Well, I would argue that your own ability to think ethically has been damaged by your beliefs. What else am I to make of someone who thinks that there is a difference between a believer doing good and a nonbeliever doing good? Is there really a difference between you giving a poor person food and clothes and me giving a poor person food and clothes? Isn't the real issue that this poor person now has food and clothes?

 

Regarding 1, I don't think there is as much of a distinction between faith, works, motivation, and one's standing with God as most seem to believe. In other words, I think God judges us on all these metrics at the same time, or at least doesn't separate them the way we do. That makes more sense to me from a theological perspective and resolves the otherwise apparent dichotomy between Romans and James in terms of faith v works.

Regarding 3, I lean against the notion that unbelievers make a conscious, consistent decision to blatantly reject God. I can't really know for sure - given that I don't think that way - but I have no reason to believe otherwise. Instead, I believe that it is a small, almost imperceptible rejection of the notion that there is something bigger, something better, than the world that we see, feel, and taste. I think that is what the Bible means when it says that God has put eternity in the hearts of men.

 

In the material world, we have a stake in science.
That means we have stake in kids being scientifically literate and able to understand science (as more of our issues going forward will be complex scientific issues).
Now not all Christians get in the way.
But a certain subset believes in trying to force non-scientific concepts into science courses, thus ensuring that at least a portion of the population (which votes) will be stunted in its understanding of scientific method. To denote a scientific theory as the equal to a doctrine-based assumption is not a service to science.

Another issue is global warming. I can't figure out why, but it seems a lot of the same Christians denounce it as an article of faith.
The problem with this is that, unlike with more secular skeptics, evidence cannot change their minds. And they aren't even willing to talk about what we can do to adapt to the problems if we can't stop them because they simply don't believe this is a big problem in the grand scheme of things.

In foreign policy, evangelical Christians sometimes take stances on the basis of culture rather than pragmatism or universal human rights. Since their stance is based on faith, it is not based on the actual conditions on the ground.

And that's the main fear.
It's not that they disagree, but that they place principles over effects.
This, I think, is what happens when you consider the consequences of the "next world" more important than those here.
It transfers to non-religious things (a lot of right-wing economics these days is disproportionately centered on evangelical Christians... who traditionally oppose social darwinism-- it's just that they've come to believe the government is an agent of evil and has to be shrunk no matter what the effects on people).

You could say the same thing for adamant communists, I suppose.
Relgion isn't the root of this kind of trouble, but that doesn't keep certain religious beliefs from contributing to it.

That's the reason the culture war is so fierce. One side is fighting for an intangible soul, the other for the material world.

 

This makes sense. I believe that Paul would be disturbed by the more extreme ideas of faith over works because he seemed to advocate that good works were the evidence of faith (I think statement #1 is a telephone-game version of that, which developed over the years because it's more convenient).

On the flipside, we tend to think there's a tendency in people to look for something bigger (and more anthropomorphic) when it's not there. I'd actually like to believe in something bigger (though preferably not something so human-like) but I just see less and less evidence as I go on.
(I've gone from Christian to Universalist to New Agey Stuff to Deist to agnostic to atheistic-leaning agnostic, all based on how the world appears to me).

 

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/African-American-Atheists-Political-Liberation/dp/0813033187/]African American Atheists and Political Liberation[/ame]

One thing that javaBlack and I have both poked at is the idea of "chosen people." This book has a lengthy discussion of how damaging this idea is.

The idea that faith somehow defines goodness above and beyond works is an example of the "chosen people" belief in action. Two people might do the exact same things, but because one of them is "chosen" he is somehow intrinsically better than the other. I would hope it's not necessary for me to explain how much destruction has been wrought on this planet by people who have thought themslves inherently better than other people.

Of course, this idea in its widest meaning is not limited to religion, but religion by its very nature is soil perfectly fertilized for the growth of it.

(And, interestingly, the last time I linked this book on a website [though it has been a while] the author himself showed up and joined the discussion!)

 

True; this is akin to the argument of this world was perfectly designed for humans versus humans evolved in accordance to this world's characteristics.

To each their own; we all have our reasons for our positions.

I understand if this is too personal but do you mind sharing the ages that you were during this transition? I have noticed a few trends and wanted to see if you fit with them.

Also, I would suggest that you can still pray to a God you don't believe in. For example, my aunt once prayed, halfway flippantly, as an atheist that if God was real, then He just needed to change her heart / mind about the matter. He did.

/inbeforeanecdotelol