Atheist having problems with Christian friends

I gave you two plusses for even getting that far!

It's not that I"m not comfortable talking about my decision, its just that I didnt' want the discussion to be sidetracked and turned into an atheism vs. Christianity debate when the focus I wanted to be was on the relationships affected and not the actual faith vs. non-faith debate. Also, the guy who was molesting children was not a priest, but a baptist. There are child molesters in protestantism too, apparently. i can see why you would make that mistake though. He admitted it to me, so I know I was not believing rumors. HE made excuses,, saying that he might have been molested himself although he couldn't remember it. I don't know too many of the details other than what he told me. But he told me enough that I have an idea. Nor would I say that my faith was in him and not Jesus. I genuinely believed in Jesus. After the incident with Jason (his name) I remained a Christian for nearly ten years. I still believed, although my faith in other christians was shaken. Leaving was a combination of a lot of factors. For one thing, I felt that Christianity did not make much sense. Here we have a god who is all powerful. Yet he creates humans with a tendency to sin. Then, he decides that if a human is not PERFECT, he will torture them for all eternity in fire. Now, even Hitler did not torture h uman beings forever. WE called Hitler a monster, but he only burned Jews in ovens and tortured them for a little while. WE are to understand that God tortures Jews and all nonbelievers for an eternity? What can a person possibly do that deserves eternal torture? Would you pour gasoline over a homeless man and set him on fire? If not why is it ok for god to do it? Then God sends Jesus (who is sort of his son but not really (What's up with that, anyway) and kills him to save us from himself. Makes no sense at all. Finally, I started to reseach the bible and evolution. I found the evidence for Creationism to be nonexistent (and I read a book on it cover to cover, and looked at many websites) if the bible was wrong on that, what else was it wrong on? Also, I always knew that the bible contradicted itself in a bunch of places, I knew that from reading it. After study, I found that the bible contradicts itself in over 1000 places. Says one thing and then says another. How can something that contradicts itself be true? And yes, there were other reasons that I wont get into simply because my hands are tired from typing, although if you are really interested i will write more about my reasons later. I do talk to my friends about why I don't believe, but I try to not get into fights with them so I mainly just gloss over it. Maybe that is my mistake. I just dont' wnt to be in constant religious battles. Maybe they don't realize why I feel the way I do. I just walk a fine line between coexistence and conflict, and I try to respect their beliefs, even if they don't respect mine.

It cut me off, but there ere hundreds more.

if it was for the issue of hell, I'd have a much easier time believing in God. I've always struggled with it – even when I was very religious. It just seems so strange, and wrong, that God would torture people and fire for all eternity. Just because they didn't believe in him or didn't love him. Even Hitler didn't torture people forever. He tortured people for short time, and we consider him to be evil. Were supposed to believe that God is loving and good, and all that, yet we're supposed to believe that he also tortures people. It doesn't make sense.but isn't that what it says in the Bible? What do you base your beliefs on – I really want to know. How do you interpret the Bible in a way that says there's no hell? And it's true that a lot of Christians have hurt me – I wrote a little bit about it in the response above you. But I had Christians treat me pretty horribly. I won't get into all the examples. And some questions have been really nice to me – so I know not all Christians are bad. Some are really awful. And it's hard to believe that non-Christians, or often better people to Christians, all go to hell.

Amfyre, you're a Jehovah's Witness aren't you? You're a not a Christian. You belong to a heretical sect that has it's own distorted version of the Bible. The real Bible does teach that there is a Hell, most clearly in Reve 20:11-15. The 144,000 are NOT the number of places in heaven but the number of virgin men from the 12 tribes of Israel who will opposed the anti-Christ. Charles Taze Russel was full of it! Nobody should be stupid enough to follow his lies!

I wrote the above from what the bible really teaches. The bible doesn't teach hell fire nor does it teach that all go to heaven... the bible teaches that only 144 000 go to heaven who will be co-rulers with Jesus, the rest will be divided into two groups... the righteous and the unrighteous, the righteous will dwell on the earth and the unrighteous will be ripped away. I can give you scriptures for you to read in your own bible to back what I have said up. The remember these are my opinions was about the atheist part :) Everything else is from the bible. you can friend me if you have more personal questions if not, then see you in the posts :)

that's the thing. We can't talk about some of the things we used to. We used to talk about praying and now if they talk about it I just kind of nod and say yes. I don't really contribute much to the conversation. And if they talk about trying to save /convert other people, I'm left pretty cold by that, and it's pretty uncomfortable. It's a bad situation when we talk about religion and they try to convert me. It's not a safe topic anymore, you know? It used to be we both agreed. Now things are very different. So everyone's having a hard time adjusting. I guess it will take time, and some of my friends will come around at some of them won't. I guess we both have to be very tolerant of each other.

I agree with you. I wish more of my friends felt that way. I've tried to explain to them that I don't want to talk about it. But it seems like they bring up stuff about Jesus more than ever. Maybe it's just a little bit of my imagination and they always talked about Jesus, but it seems like sometimes that's all they talk about. And they know why I left the faith, but they keep questioning me anyway. They dropped hints that I'm going to hell. It bothers me to think that they actually think I deserve to suffer for all eternity. Just because I don't believe as they do. It's offensive we to believe. But I'm willing to tolerate it in them. I just don't know if there willing to do the same for me.

galilieo2008, you should be able to defend your faith. If you can't explain something as basic (I assume) as believing in the virgin Mary, then perhaps you should re-think your religion. (All Christians and Muslims should believe in the virgin Mary as a person but the Catholics put more emphasis on her and Muslims believe that Jesus forbid her to talk again as soon as he was born.)

If you don't talk about religion around somebody who doesn't agree with your religion, where does this stop? Are you going to end up with a situation where you can't talk about religion anywhere and evangelism is impossible?

I'm not against God. If there is a God, I'm not against him. I just don't think that he exists anymore. I think if God existed, a lot of things would be different – in the Christian church, in other churches, and in the world. I think the evidence isn't there to support Christianity and the Bible. all the evidence is against it, like evolution. It's hard for me to believe in it. first because of the facts, then because of life in general.Especially with the things I've witnessed, observed, and experienced. so I don't really consider myself an enemy of anything spiritual, I just think it's a fantasy. It used to be so very important to me, it's strange to have changed so much. I think I'm a decent person – I don't think I deserve to be punished for not believing in God or being uncertain about God. Why would a good God want to punish me for all eternity, burning me a fire, because I'm not sure he exists? I would think that if there was a God, he would be a good God, not someone who likes to torture people. I never understood that about Christianity – about hell. Why would God torture people for all eternity – Hitler didn't even do that. And yet were supposed to believe that God loved us so much he would die on the cross for us. But then if we don't love him back, he tortures us. See how it does make sense? I believed that blindly but it never really made sense to me. Finally just got to be too much – that in seeing how most Christians really behave in real life. Probably what started the whole thing was when the church leader who led me to Jesus in the first place ended up being caught molesting children in his church. That really shook my faith, but that was only the beginning. it seemed like there were so many questions and that were bad people that were Christians and so many non-Christians that were good people. So why should all the non-Christians, who were good people, go to hell in all the Christians, were bad people, go to heaven? I know not all Christians are bad – I'm just talking about the ones that are. There are some bad Christians and some good non-Christians. So why should the bad people go to heaven and the people go to hell. Why should it just be based on what you believe and what you do doesn't matter?It didn't seem fair, it didn't seem right, and it didn't seem to make sense. Plus the fact that there's so much evidence against Christianity and the Bible contradicts itself so many places. It just became impossible for me to believe. It took years for me to drift away from my faith. And it was for a lot of reasons, not just one. so anyway, I try to explain this to my friends, but they just get upset. It's better not to talk about it with them at all. So I wish they'd stop bringing it up. I can understand the way they feel – the irony is I would've felt the same way. That's why it's so ironic. I even did have people I knew who left the faith, and I prayed for them and fasted for them I was afraid they were going to hell. So I went through exactly what my friends are going through now, and I hated it. So I can look back on it, and I can relate to what they're feeling. And I'm sorry. I really am sorry. Sometimes I think I should just lie to my friends and tell them I'm a Christian again. But I don't think I can maintain a kind of a lie.

opalina143, you do know that the Bible says that all people are sinners except Jesus? Nobody else is perfect. I'm not sure you're using God's criteria for 'good' and 'bad' people, this isn't really a Christian concept anyway. Maybe some people you don't know well and would have a very different opinion if you knew them better. It's only those who reject the gospel who definitely go to Hell, it's not clear what happens to those who never hear the gospel. Only that's you certainly bound for Hell but you should have known better. You seem to be referring to a lot of "evidence" against Christianity without going into the details, which isn't really fair as it's hard to answer vague accusations. Perhaps this isn't really the place to discuss such things as it can get complicated (for example there are some technical problems with evolution or you can argue that the first few chapters of Genesis aren't literal but that opens the door to saying that none of the Bible is literal and that gets you into a mess). Then again, I don't think you'd like it if I said that there was evidence against atheism and didn't go into details, and there's a lot of evidence against atheism!