MacNCheezus

I’ll take that deal, but only if I’m also relieved from paying taxes.

This is the sort of intellectual conmanship that I’m sure is very impressive to a 15 year old, but people who talk like that do not have your best interests at heart.

Are you accusing me of putting you on that island? Because a minute ago you told me that pointing out the alligators was a thinly veiled threat, as if it was me who put them there.

I’m only telling you how it is. I’m not asking you to worship me.

Because Jesus or any other mythical figure is not required for anyone to have the same or similar values.

That's true, but it helps having an example as a role model to look up to, because you're not going to go far without one.

Honestly, I could care less if it's Jesus, Luke Skywalker, or Jean-Luc Picard, as long as your atheism isn't an excuse for smoking weed and watching porn all day. All I'm saying is to be careful about throwing out the baby with the bathwater when you leave organized religion behind, because while the church you grew up in may very well have been a den of thieves and fully deserve your condemnation, not all of them are, and there's thieves outside of the church, too.

It's not a threat, it's a warning. Like saying "be careful about swimming in that lake, there's alligators in there". Perhaps you'll be lucky and they've already eaten for the day, but simply not believing in them will not make them go away.

And no, that's not to say there aren't any alligators in church, because that would be a lie. What I'm trying to tell you is that they're everywhere, not just in church, and it's a mistake to believe you are safe because you got out of there.

So just stick to your own values?

Not a good idea if your own values suck – and a lot of people end up using atheism as a an excuse to have shitty values because there is no God who will judge them for it.

The values Jesus espouses are fundamentally solid and worth imitating. The fact that many of his fan clubs do a terrible job at living them is not a testament to their futility, but rather, to the sheer difficulty of actually practicing them.

My point is basically that if you throw out your morals along with God, there is no hope for ever making it anywhere good in life. It's true that you don't HAVE to go to church to have morals, but unless you find them somewhere else, you'll be no better than those fake Christians.

Thanks, I appreciate that. But I hope you do understand that this is not the average experience for the vast majority of people who become atheist, right?

Would you care to share what you may have done differently?

Just to be clear, I am by no means advocating for anyone to return to their parents' church if they found it to be full of assholes and hypocrites. Rather, what I am saying is that unless you manage to live a more moral life than those you left behind, you aren't likely to end up anywhere good in life, and to the extent you use atheism as an excuse for being a shitty person, you'll be just as much of a hypocrite as those you condemn.

True, that’s a bit of a lucky guess based on the observation that the vast majority of atheists never grow past the stage of resenting the church, and it’s extremely difficult if not impossible to do a better job if you’re full of hatred.

And what's that?