Q: do you, Christian, claim that God exists, rather than you believe that he exists?

[discipulus]

It is exactly what it was before and without the idea of God. We are critters with conscious minds, perhaps made possible by what you call God but which I would completely separate from anything connected to the bible. That is only one set of narratives which has arisen around the intuition of God. Not at all more special than any of the others and all of them are better for not being taken literally. IMHO

You are entitled to your opinion. I respectfully disagree on certain points, but in the end, my point still remains and it is something you have even agreed with yourself when you alluded that we are critters with conscious minds. We are critters. We think we are special but we really are not. We take up all sorts of noble and flowery sounding ideals about being grateful that the cosmos has "granted" us this remarkable chance to be alive. We delight ourselves with delusions of grandeur, but in the end they are all just that delusions. The "Noble Lie" we believe to make life bearable.

You and I both agree, that if we see life through the lens of atheism, we, like Bertrand Russell, MUST conclude:

Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.

Bertrant Russell, A Free Man's Worship

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Why do uneducated people say "if atheism is true".. atheism is a label.. Lack of believe in a god/s.. its not true or false.. READ A BOOK..

Uneducated people may say "if atheism is true..." because they see it as one particular worldview out of the several that exist and are not bothered by the word games some try to play to dance around the important issue at hand which is simply this:

Either God exists or He does not.

So the next time you hear or read an uneducated person utter that phrase, you can take it to mean: "If God does not exist".

But then, since you are educated, I believe you already knew that.

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Religion has baggage, and it's a huge problem.

I agree!

Human nature being what it is, I don't have much hope

Neither do I my friend, neither do I.