I consider myself to be more agnostic than atheist and would counter by confirming my belief in a loving higher power. The god of Christianity and the faith itself are not very loving at all. Upon my death, if I'm to find Christianity is the divine truth then I have the backbone to stand by the consequences of my beliefs and decisions. If the Christian god would deem me unworthy because I am bisexual or because I've chosen to never marry and so forth, I would be okay with that. That isn't a god I will support and don't mind if I'm uninvited to his heaven.

I think if I was a deity that evidence couldn't prove existed, and had people following me just for eternal insurance, I'd be insulted.

I suspect that the second option is false. If there's no life after death, then there's no way you're going to "find out" he doesn't exist. I think it's one of those propositions where you can leave the world thinking God exists, and never know that the premise was false.

Well ok.... its your choice to be. Fear works in mysterious ways. Kind of like god. Wheres the truth and why the mystery?

I would tell them about skado’s wager which says that since the only god that I’d want to spend eternity with would be a loving god, I’d rather trust him to forgive my honest error than to live the one brief life I have in preparation for one which god has shared no evidence for.

My response is this....so you are going to live your life based on rules that are misogynistic and just plain stupid, make important decisions based on prayer?! Yeah, you are a dumb ass i don't respect willful stupidity on any level. Now get out!!

A genuinely harmless person will never need the threat of anything, outside their own rational conscience, to prevent them from harming others.

To me, it is simply a lack of courage. A hedging of the bet, but not a big deal.

I tend to believe in evidence and science and when I look around at the world and see all the suffering I have a hard time beliving there is a grand all knowing all powerful all forgiving deity let all that bad stuff happen

A very weak form of Pascal's wager. What a waste of limited and precious time that you have on this earth to participate in things "Godly" that have clearly been created by man for man. To misquote Hitchens and others "If there is a God he will have a lot of explaining to do before I would ever want to believe in him"

I'm buying in to Kreig's class action suit. Seems like a perfectly logical way to handle it.

It would seem that someone with that view doesn't do good because they actually want to do good, but because they are afraid of what happens if they don't do good. Which make me wonder just how good of a person they really are.

Just like we don't hold a person respnsible for what they do if someoen puts a gun to their head and threatens them with death unless they do wha tthe person with the gun wants, do we think that the threat of hell making us do good is really all that important as to what we do or don't do out of fear?

Doesn't this hinge on the presumption that belief is a choice. Belief is a matter of being convinced. A person might wish to believe in a god or an afterlife, but a person cannot make themselves believe. We need a reason, a cause, to make us believe. So, what you would rather believe doesn't really make any difference.

If there is the god this person believes in, one who is both omniscient and omnipotent, then he knows the exact trajectory of your life, right? And if this is true, God would know at birth whether you are blessed, or damned, and your choices are immaterial.

If, in fact, it turns out that there is this 'God' which so many people say created me, demands that I show obedience to him/her and will torture me for the rest of eternity for disobedience; that God can go to Hell. (Pun intended) Nothing has the right to behave that way.

"I have chosen to believe in Flying Spaghetti Monster. His heaven is way cooler than your god's!"

I apologize for a comment I made and have deleted it. I mistakenly thought that this was from a religionist, rather than from someone asking a question about religionists. Atheist pages on FB have been infiltrated by religionists and they are no longer a safe place for skeptics to share ideas and ask questions.

I'll take my chances not thinking about it until the time comes. he is all forgiving anyway.

either way you are DEAD

I’d rather leave this world believing gods/goddesses don’t exist and finding out they do, versus being disappointed in the end.

"What a waste of a life". That's what I'd say. All those amazing things you could have done, but were deflected from because of your religious beliefs.

I believe there is no god; it gives me focus, and ensures that I live each day to the full.

His message was poorly delivered. How was I to pick the right one, when every religion all said they were the right one. If he wanted me to understand he should have just shown up daily clearly.