Where do we go when we die and are you afraid?

[Mister Agenda]

No, I haven't read the whole Bible (I'm only up to Leviticus to be honest).

So I haven't read enough to pick or choose. But I'll do what feel is right in my heart. I've noticed that most ethical standards we live by originate from the Bible. So how can people denounce it anyway when they're living by it (indirectly, but still living by it).

Can I ask, do you (as an atheist) believe that you chose to be an atheist so you could sin without a guilty conscience?

PS: Got a lot of time on my hands : )

At least you're trying, a lot of people never get as far as the third book in their most sacred text.

Everybody else does what they feel is right in their heart. They get that feeling from their experience, innate moral instincts (empathy, fairness, love, and reciprocity), and upbringing. Most of the moral standards we live by are also endemic to cultures that are unfamiliar with the Bible. The majority Christian country of the USA has a much higher murder rate than Japan has, is that an argument for Buddhism or Shintoism? Jainism condemned slavery 500 years before the time of Jesus, who never mentioned it in a disparaging tone. Much of the morality that we approve of in the Bible predates it or supersedes it. Ever so gradually, the arc of religion in the world bends towards humanism. As far as denouncing the Bible, it approves of slavery, prescribes the death penalty for things it is your right as an American to do, commands taking virgin girls as sex slaves, forces women to marry their rapists, brothers to marry their dead brother's wives, and on and on. There's plenty to denounce, and nothing good you can't find somewhere else.

People don't choose what to believe, they believe what they're convinced is true and don't believe what they're not convinced is true. I didn't choose to become an atheist, I became one the moment that stopped believing God is real. When I was young I was a Pentecostal, spoke in tongues, got dunked, and read the Bible cover-to-cover twice. The Bible convinced me not to be a Pentecostal anymore, but it didn't make me an atheist. I just couldn't believe the petty, changeable being depicted in the Bible was being accurately described...I thought God had to be better than that. It took about 15 more years for me to become an atheist, and before I stopped believing in God I stopped believing in alien abductions, ancient astronauts, Bigfoot, clairvoyance, ESP, ghosts, Nessie, psychokinesis, reincarnation, telepathy and a bunch of other things I thought were true because I was raised without any sense of skepticism whatsoever. God was the last one to go, taken down by just applying the same standards as I applied to every other unsubstantiated claim I had already let go of.

Sinning without a guilty conscience never crossed my mind, nor have I noticed that being an atheist in any way assuages my conscience when I have done something I knew was wrong.