It is freeing to recognize that I have never sinned and it pissed Christians off when I say this. To clarify, in Christianity sin is not simply “the bad things we do” it is specifically an offense against god. God does not exists so i have never sinned against him.

I’ve been an atheist for for 16 years but it was only recently that I realized this distinction. It short-circuits the guilt based evangelism. It forces the christian to first demonstrate that god exists before they can convince me I have sinned and need to be saved from that sin. And to say the least, they are ill equipped to demonstrate the existence of god.

  • @froh42English
    8•7 months ago

    No I don’t, at all. I follow a few moral rules, like “Don’t be an asshole”. I actively don’t try to hurt other people. But there is no superior being that makes me do it, whose will I bend to.

    By the way, this was my road to atheism: As a teenager, brought up with a few christian viewpoints (nothing like in the US) I one day thought

    • if I only am behaving “well” because I will be judged one day, I’m still not a good person.

    • if I want to be a morally good person I need to be that person out of my own free inner will

    • if I am, I need no judge, therefore god is irrelevant

    Then I stayed with atheistic agnosticism (god is improbable but possible) for another 30 years or so.

    Calling myself an atheist now, as I do not BELIEVE gods exist (*) , but the nonexistence of something can not be scientifically proven.

    *= Of course gods “exist”. Gods are an idea, thought up by many human minds, as a shared idea they really are potent things. GOD IS A MEME. Therefore gods are everything and as powerful as religious people believe.