Get Over Your Fear of Atheism

mpb1 So are you saying here that if you became an atheist you fear you would leave your wife of many years and indulge in an orgy of other women? How is that possible if you indeed love that woman and if it is possible perhaps you are trapped in a life you live only because you are forced to which is dishonest.
Atheism may not be the thing you fear my friend.

mpb1 And it is so excellent to be able to go through life without such fears of punishment making a mockery of the beauty of the world.
To tell the truth in the days when I read the bible and the sacrifice of Jesus I came to an entirely different conclusion about the meaning of the "accepting the sacrifice" to enter heaven. The sacrifice, I thought, was a test by God to see which people would be so immoral as to lay upon Christ their "sins" and so free themselves of responsibility for their so called crimes against God.
The proper response would be to refuse the gift and show responsibility for your actions and not to place them on the shoulders of an innocent, thereby showing your empathy and peaceful regard of others. But that is just me and I moved on from such things later in life.

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" Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow!!What a ride!"

GDR I never said it represented Christianity for anyone but only my own humble take on the events. s
Indeed, and if Christ represented innocence, then what is the morality involved in having him pay for your sins thereby excusing yourself from taking responsibility as a person with a mature and reasoning mind would? The priority in my eyes would be to show God that the welfare of others is first and foremost and not my own selfish needs.
I would further assume that a loving god would find this to be the action of a worthy soul and hence to be rewarded.Of course I long ago left such things that I find to be fantasy and no longer deal with it except in where it comes up in conversation. That said I am sorry if I caused you distress and discomfort. It never concerned me to be forgiven and I ,at that time, was of the mind that my punishment was mine to suffer and not some innocent person in my stead. How does this release us from sorrow to brandish the supposedly only innocent man ever with our transgressions? The sorrow is not something that my point of view diminishes in the least but ,in fact, magnifies it to the point of humbling ourselves for the actions we personally consider wrong.I came to the conclusion later on that the ""sins' we engage in are partial{ or total} regrets for actions that we later reflect upon when we learn to empathize with others and realize that we find those actions as grievous and distasteful. We are human and make errors of judgement as we grow and mature and it is to be expected that we cause others transgression however the errors are not sins and I have a far greater tolerance of people for this understanding.

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" Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow!!What a ride!"

GDR Yes and your choice is to relinquish the responsibility onto someone else's shoulder to avoid punishment for your transgressions by shifting the burden to another. This is an immoral action in my view and as such I would take the other choice and refuse the offer.