I am an atheist.

[SupremeSpod]

If I was to say "I believe in Jesus Christ" (which I do), does that make me a Christian?

What do you mean by "I believe in Jesus Christ"?

[MyUserName]

If I was to say "I believe in Jesus Christ" (which I do), does that make me a Christian?

No, I believe you have to follow his teachings and believe he is the son of God to be a Christian.

[Wanderer]

Atheism is a belief which is perhaps more difficult than religion. It's easy to be agnostic or to accept with faith (i.e. without needing evidence) that we die and go to heaven forever. Our minds are not wired to accept that things just happen and there is no divine intervention shaping our lives, it's not easy to believe that we die and we are simply dead and that is the end. It's had to believe that everything we are is gone when we are dead. Even Richard Dawkins acknowledges that he can't be 100 per cent certain that there is no god.

I grew up as a religious person and after years of being apathetic/agnostic towards religion I had something of an epiphany, a "road to Damascus" moment if you will. It was at that moment when I openly declared that not only did I not believe in god but more importantly that I firmly believed there is no god. It was such a great feeling, I felt the burden of years of religious superstition, guilt and persecution lifted from my shoulders. Others are free to follow their beliefs and I respect that, but from that moment on I felt free of it all.

Likewise, a friend of mine who was facing death told me that the confirmation of his atheism came when friends from the church offered to lay hands on him and pray for his recovery while he was gravely ill. His flash of inspiration was when he realised that even as he faced death his belief was strong enough to reject their offer and in doing so reject their belief in god. We talked about the liberation he felt at that moment, how his illness wasn't god's judgement on him for doing wrong, it was just something that happened.

Perhaps a person could have a spiritual experience and convert to atheism in much the same way as you could convert to a religion.

[Wanderer]

If I was to say "I believe in Jesus Christ" (which I do), does that make me a Christian?

If you want to be identified as Christian then it's easy. All you need to do is say "I am a Christian".

[Project Monkey]

No, I believe you have to follow his teachings and believe he is the son of God to be a Christian.

"follow his teaching", yes, as I think I said earlier.

"believe he is the son of God" would require me to understand what God is, and I don’t.

[MyUserName]

"follow his teaching", yes, as I think I said earlier.

"believe he is the son of God" would require me to understand what God is, and I don’t.

Nah, it just requires that you take his word for it.

[Gibbon]

This is yet another pointless thread about religion trying to prove and disprove the existence of God. I have been down this road myself and it only leads to dissatisfaction in not being able to prove an unalterable truth. It is in the end futile to either try prove or disprove, it is an act of faith.

With this in mind, I am of the faith that there is no God, but also if there is one he is not worth bothering with as he doesn’t seem to bother with us and didn’t really do a reasonable job of creation, being distracted to create unessacary untold multitudes of species, but making a botch job of the one in his likeness.

These days have I no real beef with religion as long as it is apolitical and non proselytising. Some people are weak and need to have comfort against the pointlessness of existence. My only irritation is the premise that religion has an exclusive hold on morality.

[Gibbon]

No, I believe you have to follow his teachings and believe he is the son of God to be a Christian.

This is a thorny issue, as according to the Nicene Creed he is God, Christ and the Holy Spirit all wrapped up in one i.e the trinity. Which begs the question why he mentions his father so much in the gospels, particularly upon the cross when he shouts to heaven and asks why he has been forsaken.

There was another christian creed mainly in the east that didn't believe in the trinity and that Christ was created. Arianism was it's name.

[Platypus]

Perhaps a person could have a spiritual experience and convert to atheism in much the same way as you could convert to a religion.

Yes I've heard that's not uncommon.

[NotAllThere]

This should keep Christians shaking their heads and atheists nodding in agreement:

It is easy to prove to yourself that God is imaginary. The evidence is all around you. Here are 50 simple proofs:
God is Imaginary - 50 simple proofs

Those are not proofs. They are ways of interpreting evidence. They're also so full of untrue statements about Christian belief and practice, that they simply reveal the ignorance of the author. They're on a par with "Atheists think their grandparents were monkeys". They're not serious atheology - more the kind of things an A-level sociology student might come up with.

Here is a much better reason not to believe in God as presented by Christianity. It goes like this: Christianity says 1) God is omnipotent and 2) God is perfectly good. However, we know that there is (random, unjust, cruel, horrendous) evil in the world.

These three statements are inherently contradictory, since if an omnipotent God who is perfectly good existed, he would work to remove such evil from the world. Or he would have created the universe so evil did not exist.

Therefore logically God (omnipotent and perfectly good) does not exist, and therefore it is irrational to believe that he does.

Obviously, I don't think the conclusion is a logical inevitability, but on the face of it, it's hard to refute. Later in the year, under exam conditions, I'm going to have construct a 1000 word refutation in 45 minutes.