Respectful Questions for Atheists?

Question

I totally respect your views on not believing so please don't think this is sarcastic in any way. I am a believer but I can't stand the Christians who think they know it all on here. But would you still consider yourself an atheist if you just for a second thought that if there is a Heaven you'd want to go there? Or if after life you found out there is a God would you have remorse for not believing? Atheists are generally very well educated people who know more about my faith than I do so it's just a question. Please holy roller Christians DO NOT answer this question, you're the reason why atheists have every right to hate us

Paul I am very sincere & I hate the fact that Christians harrass you.
Thank most of you for being respectful of my beliefs. I do respect yours

Answer 1

lol.... I think you are awesome.... we need more people like you in the world...

Answer 2

That's a good question. Let me answer the two parts individually:
#1: "would you still consider yourself an atheist if you just for a second thought that if there is a Heaven you'd want to go there?" --I would still consider myself an atheist if the thinking was along the lines of "IF there's a Heaven, it would be nice to go there." Of course the idea of Heaven is nice, and if there was one, SURE, I'd like to go there. I just don't believe there is one.
#2: "if after life you found out there is a God would you have remorse for not believing?" I don't think that remorse would be the right word for it. I don't think I am doing anything that should be considered openly insulting or hurtful to God. I try to live my life as a good person, and I think I pretty much follow everything that Christians are supposedly taught by Jesus. I just live that way on my own, and not because I believe there's a deity telling me to. I would think that, IF there is a God and I come face-to-face with Him, He would be intelligent enough to understand that I didn't necessarily CHOOSE to not believe in Him; I can't control what I believe. The non-belief was not out of anger or disrespect or hate for Him. I would hope that the way I lived my life would be the important thing to Him, and not so much the constant stoking of His ego. I would have remorse for anything I might have done that directly caused someone pain.

Also--Acid Bath Slayer (above me) makes a brilliant point. I hope he doesn't mind if I quote him on that sometime if the situation calls for it. I've felt that way, but he worded it much more eloquently than I could have.

Answer 3

I am an Atheist. If there is a Heaven, I want to go there. If there is a Hell , I don't want to go there. One problem I have in believing there is a Heaven and a Hell is what I would consider Heaven, someone else may not think so. Same with Hell.

No remorse if I found out there was a God. I have always lived my life like it is up to us as to how we live our lives, and how we treat each other. It is up to us to show compassion, mercy, respect, and love. It is my responsibility to display these traits. If God did not respect that I lived like that then I have no respect for him.

I believe that Heaven is the carrot at the end of the stick that the "church" created centuries ago to try and put a control on the masses. To try and turn us from lawless masses to a civilization. What I cant believe is that people of this modern era need the controls put in place 2000+ years ago when people were so uneducated and almost barbaric.

Answer 4

If there were a god, I wouldn't be an atheist. Of course it's possible that there is a god and I just don't know about it, but there isn't any evidence for that. Believers will claim that they have evidence, but not a one of them has been able to produce any. Right here on R&S there have been hundreds (at least) of such claims by believers, with none of them having anything at all. Instead we get things like the long cut-and-pasted unsupported nonsense a couple of responses below here.

You sound like you're sincerely trying - can you see why we take the stance we take?

Now, some atheists seem to think that belief on the basis of pure faith is an awful thing. I don't - I think that faith is the _only_ honest basis for religious belief. I still think that the faithful believers are wrong, but at least they're not dishonestly claiming to have evidence. Being wrong isn't a terrible thing - I'm sure that there's plenty that I'm wrong about. But I don't lie over and over again to support my core beliefs, and I don't have any respect for the believers who do. Far far better to be honestly mistaken.

Thank you for asking nicely.
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Acid Bath's comments (below) are very interesting - thanks for posting that. I hadn't thought about it that way before.

Answer 5

But would you still consider yourself an atheist if you just for a second thought that if there is a Heaven you'd want to go there?
-- Sure I would. Why would my desires have anything to do with the truth? If there is a Heaven I DO want to go there for the everlasting joy, but I wouldn't have any respect for God.

Or if after life you found out there is a God would you have remorse for not believing?
-- No remorse. It was the logical thing to believe. If that happened, it was God who gave me this brain. I had no choice but to tend that way.

Answer 6

I am an atheist simply because god does not exist. I don't hate god or reject god or anything else. If there was a magical place called Heaven where everyone went after they died and we all lived for ever, sure I'd want to be there.

But the simple truth is Heaven and Hell do not exist. God and Satan do not exist. It's all been invented.

I spent the better part of my life on a spiritual quest for God. I used to be a Christian. 20 years ago I would have been attacking atheists on the boards like many Christians do today. But in my quest, I finally discovered the truth that God doesn't exist. I can't describe the overwhelming feeling of freedom that comes from accepting this realization. I wonder how I could have been so gullible for so long...

So there's really no way to answer the second part of your question. I will never have remorse about not believing in God because I know, deep down in my heart, backed by all the science, knowledge, and evidence of the world, that he doesn't exist. And never did.

Answer 7

What a nice way to ask this question. I'm agnostic, not quite atheist, but I guess if there was an afterlife and I was there with 'god', I'd think (rather than remorse) that our sentiment of if you're a good person and live life respectfully of others, then we were right all along (as we still got here) and didn't need to have an organised religion to tell us how to live our lives or condemn us for the way we did.

Answer 8

All athiests want is some proof. If that proof was given then obviously we would have to believe. I personally would not feel any remorse for not believing in god during my lifetime because I would not have had any solid evidence.

Opinions change through circumstance.
As a child I went to a church school in England. I was brought up to believe in god but as I got older I started to disbelieve because of things that happened in my life.
I think there comes a point in some peoples lives where they sit down and think..............What's going on here?.......Why has this happened or not?

At the end of the day, you go one way or the other. You either stick to it or not.

I hope that made some sort of sense?

Answer 9

It seems many people who beleive get the sense that atheists are the way we are because we secretly harbor hate in our hearts for God and everything Godly. This is not the case. Im an atheist simply because God does not exist, and there exist not a single shred of credible evidence to the contrary.

Being an intelligent, thinking person, I can honestly say that if Heaven truly existed as described, I probably wouldnt want to be there (it sounds awfully boring, having to worship God for eternity in perfection...but now Im philosophizing...) And, I can say that, if upon death God turns out to be real, I certainly wont feel remorse for being exactly what He created me as - an unbeliever. Instead, I would probably ask why he created me as a skeptic and then wants to punish me for it.

Answer 10

I'll turn the question around:

How would YOU feel if you spent your whole life believing in heaven and then you found out there is no god? Would YOU feel remorse for believeing?

The reason I'm an atheist is that there is ZERO evidence for any supernatural phenomenon. It's not a "Choose to believe just in case" (and, IF there were a god, wouldn't he/she/it see through that?), but a simple, empirical decision based on observable facts.

Answer 11

I don't believe in heaven but if I thought there was a blissful state I could enter into I might be tempted.
I would not feel remorse if I had to meet god. I could not respect a God who did not recognize that I tried to understand what was true.

I would say what Bertrand Russell said on the same subject, "Not enough evidence God"

Hope this helps and best wishes.