(October 31, 2018 at 8:02 am)robvalue Wrote: I recently heard an atheist asked whether they’d be a Christian if they woke up one day and believed in Jesus, The Bible, and so on. They said yes they would, because a Christian is someone who believes those things to be true.
I’ve always stated I wouldn’t be a Christian, even if I became convinced that it contained truth. But perhaps this is a contradiction. By the above definition I’d be a Christian, but I would call the whole thing morally corrupt, and I’d want no part of it; just as I wouldn’t vote for the Tories, but I still accept they are real.
I expect this comes up so rarely that there’s not even a particular term for it. I’ve heard of maltheism in general, and that’s rare enough, without a belief that a specific religion is true to rebel against.
What would I be called?
Far too often both theists and atheists get stuck on specific labels in human history.
If one is to take a generic approach, regardless of the pet deity and naked assertion asserted into the gap as a starting point, it would still fail morally.
I don't care if one is inserting Allah or Jesus or Yahweh, or even Jefferson's deist version of a god as the starting point.
It fails morally in all forms because the buyer of the claim has already assumed the claimed version is all powerful, and all knowing, and all loving.
In reality, regardless of the name one gives such a claimed being, at least in the west, if one has multiple kids, as parents, we don't get to cherry pick which kids we protect from harm, if we have the power to do it, and fail to protect them, we can have our kids taken away at a minimum, and or arrested for neglect or abuse.
The truth is our morality as a species is not handed down to us from above, in any language, in any old writing. It would be a horrifying reality if such a claimed being were real. It would put humans in the position of being mere property, props, toys or lab rats.
