Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

But one thing for sure: it's a major knock on Atheism. Atheism can't be rational. It cannot even hope to acquire the evidence it needs for its fundamental claim.

Lack of rationality is traditionally an accusation that has been thrown at religion;

Ironic, isn't it? The most common reason it's been "thrown" is simply to prevent further thought about the problems in Atheism. The blithe assumption has been, "If some religion is irrational, then Atheism must, by default, be rational."

But you don't need me to "try" to convince anybody of that. Any person who looks at it objectively, and who can do basic logic, can see that an Atheist cannot provide adequate evidence for his case. It's always a bluff.

That's my point: whether or not you feel it matters has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not it ought to, and with whether or not it's a bad idea to treat it as a non-issue.

I've got that covered: Besides feeling that it doesn't matter, I also feel that it shouldn't matter, and that it isn't a bad idea for it not to matter.

I don't question that that's what you "feel." I question whether it is true...or wise...or safe.

in other words, believing doesn't make things either real or unreal.

Perhaps you haven't given enough thought to the implications of that regarding your own situation.

No, I'm fully aware of it.

I've never, for one moment, suggested that believing things makes them real. I would only say that we are wise to believe in what is already real, and not to imagine that disbelieving in the real somehow banishes it from existence: that's manifestly not true.

Well, it would be hard to say, wouldn't it? If you've gone through life completely disregarding God, it wouldn't be apparent what it would be like if you had. It didn't happen, so far. But if you did decide to start considering Him, you might well find it makes quite a difference.

But which God would I consider? Your God, henry quirk's God/gods , Fish Pie's God? I'm spoiled for choice.

Nobody said you could do it without thought or effort. One has to decide which view of God is the right one. One cannot have them all, since they are all different, and in mutually-contradicting ways. But equally, one cannot get around the problem simply by declaring it a non-problem.

I suppose that a falsehood the magnitude of, "values are objective", demands to be rectified. How could one just ignore it?

"Demands"? Who's doing that "demanding"? It seems to me it should remain a "non-issue," if that's what it really is.

The untruth is the issue, not its content.

Untruth isn't an issue either, in a Godless universe. Why should truth be regarded as objectively more moral, desirable, and demanding of our allegiance than comforting delusions would be, if the universe itself is indifferent to such matters? As Solomon puts it, then "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." That's the limit of that worldview. Nothing really matters, because death ends all. What care any of us for what happens between the womb and the tomb, so long as we are happy? Let us delude ourselves, then. Untruth is no issue at all, so long as it makes us happy.

I don't believe that. But then, I don't have to, because I do believe that this life is not the end. But I can't presently see a rationale that defeats it for Atheism.

Really? Is there no kind of evidence that you would consider capable of changing your mind?

How can I know the answer to that?

Rather easily, I should hope.

If one says, "There's no evidence," then surely one should know what particular "evidence" one had been looking for, or open to, in the first place. How else would one know one hadn't found what one expected?

Well, what did one "expect"? What was one open to? What was one looking for, and what did one fail to find?

I cannot begin to imagine what form such evidence might come in, though.

Well, then, how can one fault there for being a lack of evidence? One hasn't even the foggiest idea what evidence, if it existed, even looked like? One wouldn't know it if the evidence jumped up and bit one on the butt, because one has no conception that what was biting one was evidence.

It's not unacceptable at all. And maybe it's all you and I can do, as you say. What's great is we can still treat each other reasonably and respectfully while we do.

I agree. We are all stuck here in the world together, so our immediate concern should be each other,

Heh. "Should"? Sounds rather moral-objectivist.

In any case, what form "should" our concern take? Should it be concern to help one another, as say, Jesus Christ taught us, or should it be concern to eliminate and defeat our survival rivals, as say Nietzsche, Rand or Darwin would teach us?

I'm not sure whether or not I want others to become "concerned" with me, in some ways.

Respect, IC.

And to you. Not the slightest offense taken.

Anyway, here's an interesting guy to listen to, if you ever decide you're interested in the possibility of an intellectual person being a Christian. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMBQwGzn_TE

I see the video is on a channel that promotes Christianity, but I'm sure their approach is impartial.

What would you expect? That an Atheist channel would post how one of their own scientists simply "left the fold"?

It's just one man's story. It doesn't have to be yours. And I think you'll find it will stand on its own two feet, regardless of where you find it.

[Belinda]

God's will is a form of determinism.
I'd say that Jesus, among others, demonstrates how to align our lives with God's will so that we retain a measure of freedom. This, Jesus accomplishes by living according to kindness or understanding to all comers including prostitutes, worldly failures, socially despised individuals, brain -washed brutes, and those in the depths of despair. This is how Jesus gives us freedom to accomplish a better world. HowJesus does it is by remaining faithful to those principles even though he was tortured to death because of them.

His death is the part that always stumps me. I can see his execution, and his willingness to face it, as a testament to his committment to the principles he preached, but, to Christians, there seems to be much more to it than that. The crucifixion itself seems to be what makes our "salvation" possible, but I have never been able to understand why. I have asked the question, genuinely, on a few occasions, but have never had an answer that I have understood. I am left with the sense that it is because I am looking for rationality in the explanation, whereas the answer has nothing to do with rationality.

The death of JC is like many people's deaths who die for a good cause. For instance, did you see the film 1917 , on i-Player right now? Here you have examples of soldiers who give their lives for a cause. Self sacrifice is not strange. The reasons for the self sacrifing behaviour of soldiers varies from robotic obedience to orders like the German pilot, to the soldier messenger who tried to save the German's life , not to obey orders, but from merciful pity, and whom the German pilot killed in cold blood.

The death of JC (for an unbeliever like me) is a story that stands for all other people who have given their lives for some good cause.

Christians subscribe to a supernatural doctrine called 'Atonement' which for
many has an element of actual human sacrifice.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Are we goin' any where with this, AJ?

I am not sure where I would take it -- and you have already made your position clear.

The distinction between the way The World (Nature) works, and how the assertion of a higher and a very different morality are exclusive to men, and only because there is a god that imposes this -- that is interesting to me.

So within that model man exists in, is subsumed in, a World that plays by very different rules that the one you adhere to (of total right of sovereignty). This is largely how I see things as well. If you examine the World (of Nature) and write out its Book of Rules, you quickly see that its rules are horrifying.

Allow me to illustrate.

This is *the rule* that runs through the physical and biological world from top to bottom.

Something enters the World of Man however and proposes -- insists on? -- behavior diametrically opposed to the way the world is.

Yet what I say, and what I think is evident, is that no matter what 'god' has said or recommended (or insists on), the fact is that The World will remain what it is for as long as it exists.

There will be no Magical End to the world as the Christians hallucinate. I used to sit on a small cliff overlooking the Caribbean when I lived on the coast of Venezuela. The sea water there. It had been lapping those shores just as it is now for millions and millions maybe even billions of years. And it will go on doing the same for millions and billions more. There is no end to it.

The fact of the matter seems to be this: We are indeed subsumed into The World described in the mongoose-devours-rabbit video. And that World reaches up through us and imposes its will even against our highest ideals.

Be that as it may we still have Harbal: a wee rabbit calling out for a pack a mongooses.

[Immanuel Can]

Your excuse for God, that He has to allow some suffering to exist ,

It's not an "excuse." It's just the obvious admission of an obvious fact: that God has, in fact, allowed that some latitude for suffering will exist in the world.

But while you are without explanation for this fact, I'm suggesting there could be an explanation for it. And I think that you, yourself, have provided at least part of the answer, in that most of the "evils" you mention are not even potentially God-caused. They're manifestly the evils created by men themselves.

So as a starting point, we might ask, is there any reason a good God could stand by and allow men to do some evil? And it's a question I'm prepared to respond to.

This world is totally either made by God or made by Nature,

No, that's mere Determinism. It fails to account for the very evils you, yourself listed. It turns them all into mere phenomena, mere "happenings" inside a rigid and closed Determinist system. As such, they cannot actually BE "evil," only things-that-happen, devoid of moral quality; and then the question itself turns unintelligible. For "evil" can only exist where its opposite "good" can be otherwise expected; and nothing but what-happens can be expected inside a Deterministic system. So there is no "evil' existing at all, then.

Moral evil as committed by fallen man can be explained by man's fall.

But in a Determinist system, there's no "Fall." Nor is anything man does "evil" -- it's just "what man does." So as you rightly intuit, you'd have to be a Christian, or at least adopt a Christian-style suppositonal value structure, in order even to lauch the question, "Why would God allow evil?"

...you consistently ignore, the fact of suffering that is not manmade;

I protest: I do not. I have repeatedly pointed out to my interlocutors that there are two types of things human beings tend to call "evil." One is human-caused, and the other is not. And I have insisted that any good theodicy should have something to say about BOTH.

You really should read what I have written, B., before investing in a false claim about what I "consistently ignore." That's verifiably false.

Unfortunately for us, looking to ourselves for the remedy is what we are burdened with, for better for worse.

Then we are doomed -- especially if secular Determinism is true. For man himself IS the problem, or at least half of it, and man is nothing but an accidental, helpless, programmed product of the same universe that generates so readily the non-human kinds of "evils."

Your problem, B., is that you think you're a Determinist, but don't really know what Determinism would entail. You want the easy half of it, but think you can get away from the nasty half without paying any price. But let me spell it out for you.

Determinism would entail that there is, and can be NO ROOM AT ALL for human freedom or responsibility. So human beings cannot "fix" anything. They are simply pre-programmed to do whatever it is they do: be it giving ice cream to orphans or butchering millions of innocents. And there's no longer any objective value-difference between the two, because there are no objective values.

But the "latitude" that God has allowed for suffering is a million times worse than any monstrous man could inflict.

That's debatable. Man's responsible for an awful lot -- even some things that we might mistake for "acts of God," such as diseases caused by overcrowding or gene-manipulation, or cancers issuing from our own bad diets or smoking, or climate events as caused by human engineering.

But there are events -- like maybe earthquakes -- in which no direct human hand seems to be involved. And you're right to point out that we need to talk about those, not exclusively about the human-caused evils.

Harbal, though, says those aren't "evil." I would kind of tend to disagree, but I have to concede his point: that when we call and earthquake or tidal wave "evil," we're using a metaphor. Tidal waves don't hate anyone, and earthquakes don't plot murder. So if we define "evil" as malevolence, there's none of it in natural events.

But I'll go with you, on that: let's call them "evil," if of a different sort, and let's concede that they need some accounting from the Theist.

Let's go at it from this angle: try to imagine how a world would look, in which man is alienated from God, but the natural world is not. That is, try to imagine how human beings could be granted moral freedom, but their world be kept absolutely impervious to "evil" of either kind, or both. Can you depict such a world for me? How would it work?

It's true that as a determinist I believe every event was a necessary event.

Then there is NO evil. There is only "The Necessary," and nothing that is not Necessary happens. (I capitalize the "N," because it's a totalizing explanation: nothing is allowed to be excluded -- it's the pseudo-God of Determinism)

"The Necessary" cannot be good or evil. It can only be The Necessary. There's no point objecting that anything different *should* have happened, if things were "good," because nothing different ever *could* have happened.

That's what Determinism entails: you lose all right of complaint: to object no longer even makes rational sense.

Note the past tense. It's also true that men, possibly alone among all the animals, can exert free will

Then you are no Determinist.

See, this is your persistent difficultly here, B. You can't be a "part-Determinist." It's a totalizing view. It does not allow for ANY free will. No "will" can change what is predetermined to happen. "Will" is not a causal force. It's just a delusion.

Men can voluntarily make changes in natural and moral futures.

Any real Determinist will utterly deny this, on two counts: first, that nobody's volition ever "changes" anything -- what happens, happens -- and second, that there is no such thing as "moral." Both "moral" and "volition" are delusions. It's just us misunderstanding how predetermined things are.

This fact is the basis of the moral value of human freedom. It's therefore the most immoral act to deprive any individual of their natural human ability to choose without hindrance from any sort of oppression.

Now you're talking like a complete anti-Determinist.

Sorry, B....but rationally, you have to "pick a horse and ride it." If you're a Determinist, it can only be all-in, or you instantly deny Determinism. So which "horse" are you trying to "ride" here?

Many God-ideologies are based on inculcating a belief in one's own guilt and for that purpose tyrants invent so-called 'sins' for which they offer a means of restitution to God for those so-called 'sins'. This is a form of oppression.

That's your narrative, of course. But I think it's skewed, and not the right narrative.

But here's theirs: rape, slavery, child abuse, racism, wife-beating, genocide and so forth are actually evil. Objectively evil. And when God tells us that, He's being both honest and kind with us. We need to be told, because we humans actually sometimes choose to do these things. And that evildoers feel "oppressed" by being told it is on them. But the point of them feeling that feeling of guilt is THAT THEY SHOULD DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. That is, that they should see that they are doing evil, and repent, and ask for the forgiveness that God offers them. And this is not "oppression," but the high road to liberation from evil and sin.

So pick your narrative. And when you do, maybe ask yourself whether or not you believe that rape, slavery, child abuse and so on are actually "evil" or not.

Your mental picture of determinism is a block of time that includes future as well as past.

It's not my "mental picture." It's what "Determinism" means. That's what I can see you don't get. You think Determinism just means the routine observation that "some" material causality exists in "some" cases. But it's not. As I said earlier, Determinism is an all-or-nothing philosophy.

See?

de·ter·min·ism
/dəˈtərməˌniz(ə)m/
Learn to pronounce
nounPhilosophy
noun: determinism

the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. Some philosophers have taken determinism to imply that individual human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions. (emphasis mine)

But it's more than simply "some philosophers," as Oxford puts it. The view itself absolutely requires that it must be so. It's logically entailed. ANY philosopher worth his salt knows it.

God is more than His history and is an ongoing effort by men.

That just means that what you mean by "God" is a delusion. And that's why "He" is such a plastic concept that can be manipulated and refashioned by men. Non-real things can be endlessly manipulated. But reality cannot be endlessly manipulated, and rather "pushes back" against our wishes.

If God is real, then He's not whatever men want Him to be. He is who He is. And that's the most fundamental declaration of Judaism and Christianity on that: God is "the I AM," the self-existent One, the fixed reality on which all reality actually depends. He is not a plastic concept invented by men.

Sages such as Jesus show that goodwill is important

You call Him a sage, but deny the truth of all He said. How astonishing.

Jesus said, "Unless you believe that I AM, you will die in your sins." (John 8:24) Here, he uses the Hebrew name of God to describe Himself. He is יהוה, in Hebrew, or YHWH in English characters, ἐγώ εἰμι in the Greek. He is the self-existing God.

But you deny that. How then do you call Him a "sage"?

[Lacewing]

You do real eyes that different time and places always exist?

I'm working on navigating that. What do you know about it?

So Y don't U allow your 'passionate pagan beast' eat from the fruitful land that is this firmament, and allow your loins be girded.

I'm girded with another pagan beast by the light of the moon under a cloak of stars. The Heavens are rejoicing and raining blessings upon us. May all find their greatest paths along eternity road. Amen.

[Lacewing]

I no longer have the viking helmet, btw.

You wore it well.

[Immanuel Can]

Anyway, here's an interesting guy to listen to, if you ever decide you're interested in the possibility of an intellectual person being a Christian. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMBQwGzn_TE

Okey dokey.

We’ve got a biologist who came to realise that stuff happens in biology that can only be accounted for by including some sort of intelligence and purpose in its origin. He does not seem to be questioning evolution, but only the origin of life.

That's a big one. Without biogenesis, there's no "evolution" even possible. In fact, there is not merely one, but at least five non-starter points for the progressivist, evolutionary narrative. Another is "How does consciousness emerge?" Another is, "How does the universe have order?" As we realize how big and serious the questions completely begged by Darwinian narratives actually are, our credulity in Darwinian explanations has to reduce accordingly, does it not? At most, we come to see Darwinism as an incomplete narrative, an attempted explanation that fails even to recognize, let alone comprehend, the questions it leaves without answer.

I do not have an opinion on the origin of life; I am not well enough informed to arrive at one, but I am certainly not closed to the idea of there being intelligence and purpose at the root of nature, or even physics in general, although I know of no reason to think there is.

Well, that's honest and fair of you to admit. I respect that.

But, supposing it were the case, that does not leave any kind of God as being the inevitable conclusion, let alone the Christian God.

Quite so. And it's a legit objection, that any Theist has to address, for sure.

But the "What kind of God?" problem remains a secondary one, a follow-up question to the first problem, namely, "Is there ANY kind of God?" So until we have some reason to think there is A "God" of some kind, there's no reason to ask "What kind of God ISN'T there?"

If some kind of intelligence did turn out to be a property of the universe, it is certainly beyond me to account for how it came to be there, but probably no more difficult than it would be for anyone else to account for how God came to be there.

Right.

But what would you expect? That you, or I, would be capable of answering such a question? Or would our lack of an answer count against the existence of God? It's hard to see how it would.

But the Bible says that God didn't "come to be" at all. And by definition, that's what Christians and Jews mean when they speak of "God" at all...not a being that "came to be," but the always-existing God.

In short, I attribute this man’s adoption of Christianity to human psychology much more than rationality.

What convinces you of that?

[Lacewing]

“Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.”

~ Tagore

I love this truth!

[Dontaskme]

“Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.”

~ Tagore

I love this truth!

[Lacewing]

The death of JC is like many people's deaths who die for a good cause.

Christians subscribe to a supernatural doctrine called 'Atonement' which for many has an element of actual human sacrifice.

Good points, Belinda!

Right or wrong, many people die for their causes.

And human sacrifice has gone hand-in-hand with religious beliefs for many civilizations. It's very odd... and seems so primitive. People catering to 'gods' who apparently demand such brutality before sending rain for crops, or salvation for souls. These ideas about the vicious nature and demands of gods reflect the demented natures within humankind who seek excuses and control.

For example, a human 'ruler' facing unhappy crowds (whether he has any control over the situation or not) can claim that their problems are due to a god's displeasure with them. Therefore, they (the crowds) are responsible and must make their own sacrifices to appease this god. Only if their sacrifice is good enough, will the god bestow blessings on them. This 'ruler' will tell them what the god wants, and they will treat the ruler with more respect and kindness for being their intermediary to the god.

[Immanuel Can]

God's will is a form of determinism.
I'd say that Jesus, among others, demonstrates how to align our lives with God's will so that we retain a measure of freedom. This, Jesus accomplishes by living according to kindness or understanding to all comers including prostitutes, worldly failures, socially despised individuals, brain -washed brutes, and those in the depths of despair. This is how Jesus gives us freedom to accomplish a better world. HowJesus does it is by remaining faithful to those principles even though he was tortured to death because of them.

His death is the part that always stumps me. I can see his execution, and his willingness to face it, as a testament to his committment to the principles he preached, but, to Christians, there seems to be much more to it than that. The crucifixion itself seems to be what makes our "salvation" possible, but I have never been able to understand why. I have asked the question, genuinely, on a few occasions, but have never had an answer that I have understood. I am left with the sense that it is because I am looking for rationality in the explanation, whereas the answer has nothing to do with rationality.

May I horn in? Let me have my poor try at helping out with this, if I may.

I've given this a fair bit of thought. And it seems to me that the skeptics (quite rightly) suggest that there are two opposite "problems," morally speaking for the idea of a good God.

They rarely pose these questions together, since they are really opposites to one another, and then seem to tend to be thinking of only one of them at a time. But I think we can put them together, and see that they constitute a kind of "double bind" or "catch-22" from which God is alleged to be unable to extricate Himself.

First, there is the one Belinda is raising in other words, namely: "If God is good, how can He allow evil?"

The second is, "If God is kind, how can He allow judgment?"

Now, why this is a double-bind is because the first accuses God of being insufficiently just -- insufficiently firm on dealing with, or even preventing evil. But the second accusing HIm of being too harsh on evil...of not being sufficiently merciful, tolerant or loving.

So if God doesn't judge, He's not righteous or good. But if He does, He's cruel and arbitrary. And it looks like we've got God in a vise from which He cannot escape.

But what if God DID judge sin, but not instantly? What if judgment was coming, and thorough judgment, but that it was not coming quite yet? Would that make God unrighteous or not-good? It would depend on the circumstances, wouldn't it? Was the judgment of God, when it comes, going to be thorough? Was it going to deal with ALL evil, COMPLETELY fairly, or to wink at some evils, and let them slide by? And what would God do in the meantime?

I think we can see it would be complicated, but not necessarily impossible, for God to arrange something like that. If He were thorough and fair enough, and didn't let even one thing slide, He could end up being vindicated as truly good and righteous...but He'd have to get things really, really right. He couldn't let Hitler get away just because he immolated himself, or fail to deal with Jeffrey Dahmer just because his cell mate already killed him...He'd really have to sort it out, and get the equation bang-on. It would take a God's wisdom to do.

But we've still got the second problem: if God does that, He's finally vindicated as just; but He's not loving. Sure, He gets the justice issues right, but are we so sure we're going to end up on the happy side of such an equation? And if we can't, then doesn't it show that God created us simply to destroy us? Where then is the love of God?

Hold the fort, though. What if God could create some way that justice could be fully executed. Every last injustice could be paid for. The rightful consequences of every evil could be avenged, visited on the perpetrators to the full extent of rightness. But what if He could, with that, still make a way that the perpetrators, we who have actually done the crimes, could be forgiven and restored to Him?

"Such a thing cannot be," we may say.

But what if God were to take the punishment due to us, in its full measure, on Himself? What if nobody could ever say, "God didn't hate sin enough, and He never did anything about it," but also, nobody could say, "God condemned us all without mercy, and created us only for destruction"? And what if, on condition that we would let Him do it, He would free us from being perpetrators in the first place, and make us new kinds of people, and then restore us to Himself?

Would God then fail in respect either to justice or to love?

But if that were the solution, who would bear the cost of the judgment justice requires, and how would mercy be extended to people who have only perpetrated the crimes that called for judgment in the first place?

The Bible says, "For God so loved the World, that He gave His only-begotten (unique) Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16) That's the Atonement. In Christ, God is establishing the righteous standard of the Law, and, at the same time, making an offer of forgiveness and redemption to mankind. God is demonstrating both His justice and His love.

The cross is the public offer of that. And if both God, who is the Righteous Judge, and we, who are the perpetrators, are willing to agree to the terms of the solution, then who is left to complain? Where is the court that shall find the arrangement unjust, since we are glad for it and God finds it adequate to the task of demonstrating His justice? And is He ever going to be wrong?

But if we, who are half that equation, refuse the terms and insist that God will still be unrighteous if He does not judge all evil absolutely, then what shall be done? How shall righteous judgment be satisfied, on the only terms we are prepared to recognize or accept?

So if the terms of the deal (or "covenant," to use Biblical language) are not acceptable to us, then what will be the outcome? But if they are, then what will be the outcome?

And you can see: all is fair and equitable. And yet, God could not give us a more eloquent demonstration of His love for us than that He has already taken the full punishment for all sin on Himself. All that remains is for the deal to be confirmed by both the involved parties.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'm girded with another pagan beast by the light of the moon under a cloak of stars. The Heavens are rejoicing and raining blessings upon us. May all find their greatest paths along eternity road. Amen.

Hoo boy. Things are really picking up around here!

Though perhaps intoxicating pin-pricks of a billion points of light would have been more dynamic.

Or nighttime diamond eyes.

Just thinking out loud. Carry on …

[Alexis Jacobi]

All that remains is for the deal to be confirmed by both the involved parties.

But you can’t sign with disappearing ink Harbal. (I know how your mind works!)

Salvation as a sort of commodity exchange. I like it! Very Jewish.

[Immanuel Can]

Salvation as a sort of commodity exchange. I like it! Very Jewish.

Well, a "commodity exchange" supposes that both parties have something, some "commodity" to give to each other.

What have you got, that the Righteous God should want? I'll be interested to know.

[Harbal]

Ironic, isn't it? The most common reason it's been "thrown" is simply to prevent further thought about the problems in Atheism. The blithe assumption has been, "If some religion is irrational, then Atheism must, by default, be rational."

If you keep insisting on burdening me with the baggage you have loaded onto atheism, you leave with no choice other than to convert. Henceforth, I would simply like to be referred to as a non-believer (in God). I feel absolutely marvellous now that all those problems of atheism have evaporated.

But you don't need me to "try" to convince anybody of that. Any person who looks at it objectively, and who can do basic logic, can see that an Atheist cannot provide adequate evidence for his case. It's always a bluff.

Now that I'm no longer an atheist, but only a non-believer, I no longer have a case to support. I make no assertion that God does not exist, I am merely declining my invitation to join the club that says he does exist. You should be pleased about that. I would probably be a far bigger nuisance to the church inside than I am outside.

Besides feeling that it doesn't matter, I also feel that it shouldn't matter, and that it isn't a bad idea for it not to matter.

I don't question that that's what you "feel." I question whether it is true...or wise...or safe.

What can I say other than I have no questions of that nature?

I would only say that we are wise to believe in what is already real, and not to imagine that disbelieving in the real somehow banishes it from existence: that's manifestly not true.

I agree, but I don't believe God is real. What can I do?

Nobody said you could do it without thought or effort. One has to decide which view of God is the right one. One cannot have them all, since they are all different, and in mutually-contradicting ways. But equally, one cannot get around the problem simply by declaring it a non-problem.

Do you think I've never thought about the possibility of God, and the claims that I have heard about God? I don't think about it much now, but I have in the past. I've done my thinking and long since reached my conclusion. Furthermore, it does not seem to have left me with a problem. So, if I really do not have a problem, what do you suggest I declare it as?

Untruth isn't an issue either, in a Godless universe. Why should truth be regarded as objectively more moral, desirable, and demanding of our allegiance than comforting delusions would be, if the universe itself is indifferent to such matters?

You say that belief in God is the rational course, and therefore you believe because your rationality has given you no choice. That does not mean you had to embrace God, and act according to his wishes. You had a choice about that, and you have chosen it because you see value in it. Am I presuming too much to suggest that you think that being faithful to God makes the world a better place for everyone, and that you want the world to be a better?

Abstract concepts such as truth and morality may not have an objective existence in the way you believe God has, but if I am drawn to them, and perceive value in them, why is my choice to embrace them any less valid? I also want the world to be a better place, and I believe that the more truth we have in it, the better it will be. Morality is a double-edged sword, and can do more harm than good in the wrong hands, so I think it wiser to have some leeway with that, rather than its being set in stone by someone with too much authority. It doesn't matter that the universe is indifferent to things like truth and morality, it only matters that people are not indifferent to them.

At this point you usually say something like, "yes, but people can change their minds, while God is constant." Well God might be constant, but you are still free to change your mind about being faithful to him. I'm sure you are no more likely to change your mind about being loyal to God than I am likely to change mine about being loyal to principles like truth and morality, so I don't think we should worry about it too much.

Nothing really matters, because death ends all. What care any of us for what happens between the womb and the tomb, so long as we are happy? Let us delude ourselves, then. Untruth is no issue at all, so long as it makes us happy.

I don't believe that. But then, I don't have to, because I do believe that this life is not the end. But I can't presently see a rationale that defeats it for Atheism.

I know that I will die, and I don't expect anything to come after it, but I find that that does not make having values while I'm here seem pointless. Why should it? I think you are trying to foist a bit of a straw man on me there, IC.

If one says, "There's no evidence," then surely one should know what particular "evidence" one had been looking for, or open to, in the first place. How else would one know one hadn't found what one expected?

Well, what did one "expect"? What was one open to? What was one looking for, and what did one fail to find?

If someone were to put a proposition to you that you found implausible, and not of particular interest to you, how much effort would you devote to looking for evidence?

In any case, what form "should" our concern take? Should it be concern to help one another, as say, Jesus Christ taught us, or should it be concern to eliminate and defeat our survival rivals, as say Nietzsche, Rand or Darwin would teach us?

Jesus was only one of many who said, and say, that we should have concern for one another. And Darwin was making an observation, not prescribing a course of action.