Are all atheists this ill-informed about religion?

[Chad32]

My parents ask me to live morally, and not be a jerk. Your god demands that I dedicate my life to him, because anything less is evil. If it was just about being a good person, then I have that covered without professing christianity or reading through the bible. Or following any particular religion at all.

I suppose the core doctrine is Jesus and his death/resurrection. If it's just wars over that, I suppose christians don't wage war with each other over it. They will wage war against jews and muslims over it, despite all three groups following the god of Abraham.

I must preface every post with the point that I can't respond to every single of the hundreds of posts begging for my attention. I have limited time, and prefer to respond to the most interesting and substantive posts. If I've missed one or two of those, feel free to bring them to my attention. This message is more to SnakeOilWarrior than to you, Chad.

But I agree with one thing you say, and disagree with the other. Where I agree: Christians don't wage war over core doctrines. In fact, they don't even wage war over peripheral doctrines. Rather, people who affirm Christianity often wage war for sociopolitical or economic reasons, and use the banner of Christendom as a convenient cultural icon. This says nothing about the militancy of Christian belief so much as about culture.

So where do I disagree? I disagree on the underlying assumption that "My parents ask me to live morally" is an adequate moral standard. We don't live up to such a standard infallibly, and this is a far bigger problem than it seems. We admit most crimes ought not to get a mulligan; you won't give the (hypothetical) murderer of your parent a second chance at life because people make mistakes. You want him to rot in prison! So you're unwittingly being a hypocrite when you so easily excuse yourself and expect punitive measures against others. Unless you do believe everybody deserves as much latitude as you give yourself. Do you?

But that's not the only problem. The other problem is "Your god demands that I dedicate my life to him, because anything less is evil." doesn't sound like Christianity at all. Rather it sounds like an amusing misrepresentation.

That's fine. I can see you're having a conversation with a number of people. That can be a little hectic sometimes.

The fact that people often tend to use religion for their own goals, and there doesn't seem to be much that god can do to stop it, helps lead me to believe that religion and god is a human invention. You'd think if I was an all powerful deity, and I saw people misusing my message for their own ends, and killing my loyal followers in the process, then my vengeance would be swift and brutal. That is, if I gave a crap about that kind of thing.

Morality is subjective. One of the biggest clues to that is the fact that people tend to treat their loved ones better than strangers. It's true. If a stranger killed another stranger, I would be upset, but I may not call for their head unless the killing was excessive or something. If someone ran up and punted my niece across the street, I'd put him in the hospital. That would be a bit hypocritical of me, but angry people are not always known for their objective reasoning skills.

The god of the old testament seemed to think those that don't worship him should die. The god of the new testament sent his son, who may or may not be himself in the flesh, do die to save us from a place of punishment he set up for those who don't worship him. This judgement is mostly dependent on what you say, instead of what you do, otherwise people wouldn't be trying to get deathbed conversions, or try to convert death row inmates. You seem to think your god just wants people to be good. Can you get into heaven by being good, whether you believe in Jesus or not? If not, why not? What is the other option if I don't get into heaven?