Atheists: Don’t care if God is blasphemed.
Christians: Are obligated to put God first and to love him with all their hearts which means that when they see him being maligned or insulted they will feel as if it had been done to them. The stress of such an approach must be unimaginable! They have to find it the most offensive thing imaginable. Atheists are better off. In so far as a Christian does not care if God is insulted, the more the Christian fails to treat God as God. God by definition is all that matters. God is to be more than just a theory – God is not God to you unless you are intensely committed.
Atheists: People do not deserve to suffer in earthquakes or by plague. We will not insult people by saying there is a God for that implies that its possible they may be getting punished. It certainly implies that God is right to let it happen to them. Even if people are not insulted by the suggestion that there is a God – that is their problem. We cannot insult people just because they don’t realise they are being insulted. And there is a principle too – principle matters.
Christians: As sinners, we all deserve to suffer forever in Hell so we deserve to suffer on earth too. The gospel is all about how God reached out to us to save us from the fate of everlasting torment by sending his son to take our punishment for us. We may deserve great suffering but if it comes it is not necessarily a punishment from God. It may be.
Atheists: Morality is just whatever is fashionable. People care about fitting in and not about being really “good“.
Christians: True morality is based on the commandments of God. What is right and good is right and good because God says so and no other reason.
Atheists: Thanks for the candour! You say there is no such thing as right and wrong when you say there must be a God to invent it!
Atheists: The state should not be influenced by religion but by ethical teachers who care about what is best for humanity and who leave concern for God and supernatural beings out of it. It is better to give your love to an evil person who does not deserve it than to give it to a God who does not exist. And if God has not given you enough evidence that he exists, you cannot be expected to risk wasting love on him. People need to be treated by the law as people and not as religionists.
Christians: Many of us – not all – hold that the state should not be ruled by religion but be influenced by it. We all agree that the state should not influence religion.
Atheists: Modern teachers and life coaches emphasise that it is not your business what other people think about you. If so, then it is not your business what anybody thinks of your friends or family. It is not your business then what God thinks of you.
Christian: You cannot have any genuine belief in right and wrong unless you believe in a God to enforce what is right.
Atheists: Religion is not that special that people should be forced to submit to it. Forced conversion in religion – even the true religion if there is one – is absolutely wrong. An atheist is simply a person who just functions as an earthling and focuses on day to day living without prayers and magic and bibles and occult beliefs. If God is just a theory to you, and there is no commitment, you fulfil the most necessary condition for being an atheist: living as if there is no God.
Christians: We oppose forced conversion only because it can’t work! People have a duty to follow the truth and to be compelled to do so. Duty implies compulsion.
TRANSLATION: “PITY IT DOESN’T WORK. WE WOULD SHOVE GOD ON YOU IF WE COULD.”
Atheists: Christians apply social pressure on people to believe in saying evil deserves punishment and suffering while pretending that the evil person does not. This is punishing the sin not the sinner. It is totally hypocritical but you will suffer if you challenge the dogma. It is an example of forced conversion.
Judging the person always starts with judging the sin. Judging the action leads to judging the person. To pretend it does not, makes judging more dangerous not less.
To punish a sin as separate from the sinner is refusing to see that it is a person you are dealing with. It is worse than seeing the evil as part of a person and treating The person accordingly for it can lead and does lead to grave inhumanity. Think of how Catholic Ireland treated the Magdalenes.
The notion of sin is hate speech. Instead of accusing people of evil, we should tell them they have the power to do differently. All that matters is not how evil a person is but their sense of responsibility. Calling a person evil cannot change them. Only their sense of responsibility can.
Atheist: If you need to tell yourself there is a God to make yourself happy, you are making yourself happy. God is not doing it. If you cause yourself to believe in God and you find that belief comforting then you have the power to be reasonably happy without the belief. In fact you are distracting yourself from your power if you believe. It may be harder to take the straight road to happiness but the rewards are better. You get it through your own self-confidence and refusal to create psychological crutches.
Christian: God is good and that is that. It is good for us to believe.
Atheist: Yes you believers simply resort to denying the truth in the end. You didn’t even attempt to refute what I said. Ask yourself why?
CONCLUSION
Atheism is better than religion.