Maybe I never was a Christian?

[Reasonable_Jeff]

Well, you're trying to prove -something- then, aren't you? Do you imagine that christian doctrine is some kind of monolith whereby your reference of your own beliefs will correct the beliefs of others? Back to bare assertions again. All you can hope to say is "the christian denomination I follow doesn't hold that as doctrine". No worries, there are tens of thousands more to choose from.

Fair, good point. I should have been more specific. Catholics and Protestants have very different doctrines while they are both considered Christian.

I'm not sure what you were hoping to establish with this one.

I was trying to forth a more Biblical view of what heaven will be like....I wasn't trying to make it sound "less silly."

Didn't you just post an apology for this sort of shit?

I was apologizing for the way that I've treated atheists/agnostics. I have been cruel to them in the past.

This assertion I made was one that atheists themselves have stated.

Richard Dawkins says, “there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference. . . . We are machines for propagating DNA. . . . It is every living object’s sole reason for being”?

Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden: a Darwinian View of Life (New York: Basic Books, 1996), p. 133 and Richard Dawkins, “The Ultraviolet Garden,” Lecture 4 of 7 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures (1992)

You mentioned that you were not always a believer in gods (IIRC). Was your life purposeless then Jeff? Did it lack meaning? What changed?

My life was a continual chasing of fulfillment through cheap thrills, alcohol, drugs, sex....but each "high" was followed by an increasingly deeper "low."

It seemed meaningless....what was the point?

What changed? I had an encounter with the living God and Jesus became glorious in my eyes. Reading the Bible before seemed about as fun as reading through a dictionary....now I LOVE it!

In short, once I met Jesus my desires changed.