So, if you are no longer a Christian...

If you "became" an atheist tomorrow, what feelings would you have?


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Non sequitur

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I've never seen a poll or conversation about how Christians would "deal" with this scenario. More so, how they believe they would process it. I posted it here because Philosophy is closed.

I was curious to see what emotional (as best as I could list the options for) reaction a Christian would have if they found themselves an atheist, in the way many atheists do; it becomes apparent and thus accepted. If you found yourself an atheist, you would not have any reason to try an convert (back) to Christianity, nor argue for it.

If you cannot find yourself able to imagine/role-play the scenario (not how, whether it is plausible, etc), please don't comment or vote; it's not a debate. Please, no atheist (as you shouldn't be taking this poll anyway).

I'm genuinely curious as to how you think you would feel about it. If your feeling is not a choice (I'm just having to guess at possible feelings), feel free to elaborate. It's multiple choice.

P.S. Sorry if the options are not "good", but I don't know what to assume they could be.

Thanks!
 
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2PhiloVoid

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I've never seen a poll or conversation about how Christians would "deal" with this scenario. More so, how they believe they would process it. I posted it here because Philosophy is closed.

I was curious to see what emotional (as best as I could list the options for) reaction a Christian would have if they found themselves an atheist, in the way many atheists do; it becomes apparent and thus accepted. If you found yourself an atheist, you would not have any reason to try an convert (back) to Christianity, nor argue for it.

If you cannot find yourself able to imagine/role-play the scenario (not how, whether it is plausible, etc), please don't comment or vote; it's not a debate. Please, no atheist (as you shouldn't be taking this poll anyway).

I'm genuinely curious as to how you think you would feel about it. If your feeling is not a choice (I'm just having to guess at possible feelings), feel free to elaborate. It's multiple choice.

P.S. Sorry if the options are not "good", but I don't know what to assume they could be.

Thanks!

I would probably be Sad (for myself and for others), Angry (at Christians and religious people), and Confused (as to where to go next in life).

The interesting thing is, I've had episodes during my walk as a Christian where I actually felt these emotions of unbelief for various durations of time, so I think I have some personal experience as to what such a 'change' of outlook-on-life could feel like.

Peace,
2PhiloVoid
 
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rockytopva

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In my teenage years I took a walk on the wild side. I felt an unknown multitude of presences sorrow and grieve as I did. I have no interest in repeating all of that a second time.
Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. - Luke 15:10

I would say that the opposite also holds true. That the angels sorrow when people turn away.

In 1895 they had a camp meeting in which thousands attended and were blessed. As the altars were full, Methodist shouting filling the mountain air, and as the choir was singing, 'Jesus lover of my soul' it was reported as a droan of bees above the worship shed. A woman screams, " I hear my mother singing!", and the song leader says, "Do you hear it? The redeemed host are singing!" A stampede then happens to get outside the worship shed. In which, by testimony of those there, the redeemed host was singing above the worship shed.

And in the words of the editor of the attached story below... "I can not vouch for the authenticity of this story, but can point out that all of the information was passed down by reputable ministers of the Methodist Church. " That is the account I got from the Methodist church, another account is given here...

An angels chorus | The Southwest Times

And the account I have as I live about 20 miles from the old camp... The Wabash Camp Meeting of August, 1895… The night the angels sang…

The Wabash camp ground lay four miles southwest of Staffordsville. When Robert Sheffey reached the Pulaski-Giles turnpike leading to the camp grounds he looked with amazement upon the endless train of human and animal flesh. The young women walked along barefooted, carrying perhaps their only pair of shoes, keeping them clean and unscarred to wear at the meetings. There was a time he might have frowned upon this little vanity, but time and God’s love had mellowed him. He had seen many happy and fruitful marriages result from the courtship phase as well as the worship phase of the camp meetings. Eliza also had helped to enlighten him on this delicate subject. “Is there any better place for the young to fall in love than in our Lord’s most holy presence?” she had said. How right she had been, he thought, riding along and passing grandchildren by the score who had been the offspring of camp-inspired marriages.

The camp ground proper lay to the northeast of the turnpike road. It covered the space of six acres with both open space and well shaded with oak and poplar. The area was near the little village of Wabash (The name had come from a settler, who started a journey to the Wabash River in Indiana and broke down on the present village spot. Having to spend the winter there, he named the place Wabash.) In physical appearance the campsite looked like the most perfect nature-carved amphitheater. The bubbling fresh-water springs of the Wabash fed with abundance both man and beast. He had hardly dismounted when hordes of little children who were offspring of the early arrivals rushed to be the first to hold his coattail as he made his way along the dusty road to the preachers’ tent.

“Brother Bob, it’s going to be the biggest crowd we’ve ever had this year!” an elderly resident called. “Wouldn’t surprise me none if we had four or five thousand.”

The worship shed was simply a huge shingled roof supported by log posts. Neither the sides of the building were enclosed. The openness was welcome as he had witnessed the heat of religious fervor so great that the ventilation was greatly appreciated. Robert placed his own belongings within the preachers’ tent but did not stay inside. He loved the activity of seeing the camp come to life. Just as Robert started to leave the preachers’ tent and make his customary journey to the top of the hill, Reverend Tyler Frazier, a county minister he knew, arrived with his own belongings. “Brother Frazier, I was just ready to go to the hill for my prayers about the meeting. Would you join me?”

Children busily traversed the footpath to his left, carrying bucket after bucket of cool water from the bubbling spring in the distance to their family cabin or tent, and they would not neglect the camp custom of greeting other participants with short Bible verses, long ago committed to memory.

“I am ready, Brother Bob!” Tyler Frazier called from inside.

A young woman walked by Robert and greeted him with, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

“He that believeth in Me, though he were dead yet shall he live,” Robert returned the greeting. On the crest of the hill they knelt and prayed together until they had implored all the forces of heaven to invade the hearts of the unsaved and send them home victorious and reborn. As the crowd swelled and in his rushing about, Robert would be stopped by folks who would request of him special prayer. “Yes, brother, I’ll ask it of the Lord,” Robert told one last man, delaying him from going under the shed and opening the night service with prayer, “Tell me again your name?” The man repeated it, but Robert felt it flee from him as he made the journey up the straw-covered aisle to the preachers’ platform.

“ … and Dear Lord,” he concluded his prayer, “bless that man standing at the back who asked me to pray for him and whose name I’ve forgotten. From the cut of his coat and the way his pants hang, I believe he is from Grayson County.”

Robert relinquished the rostrum to Reverend Dill Strader. The young man admonished his listeners not to let the fervor of the camp meeting die and to take it back to their individual churches and then launched into his sermon.

Robert sat on the platform with the five remaining ministers who would in turn follow the younger man. When the others had finished preaching he would make his way up and down the aisles, exhorting, walking with the timid and fearful toward the mourners’ bench, or kneeling with a would-be penitent until peace came to his troubled heart. Sometimes he preached, but his preaching did not move the crowds as did his prayers and exhortations. One after another, the platform preachers took their turns, resting only between songs and shouting. Ministers reassembled in the preachers’ tent, as was the custom, to rejoice over the repentant souls who had made their professions.

Robert took his sheepskin and walked alone to the mountain to pray. he prayed over and over again: “For the sake of our blessed Jesus, dear’ Lord…”

The flood tide that Robert knew had been building began to break the next service when the third speaker had finished. That speaker was Tyler Frazier, whose eloquent and impassioned pleadings had started such a fire in the hearts of his listeners that their raptured faces shone with the glow of winter frost by moonlight. No words had been minced as to humanity’s low estate and the sin that reigned in every heart, and God’s redeeming love that was the only cure.

Before his colleague was seated, people were standing and crying, “Mercy! Mercy!” The next speaker began to take his turn at the rostrum and Robert waved him back. “Let them shout, brother – give them all the time they need to shout, and then you can speak! It is a glorious time!”

“And now the hour has come,” the speaker concluded. “Has God’s Word convinced you that you are blind to pin your hopes upon this wicked world Christ’s Kingdom never dies! Live, starting tonight! And neither have any fear of death, for it is the final and absolute freedom! Christ lives!”

The speaker relinquished his place to the song leader. “We will close the service with the singing of ‘Shall We Gather at the River.’ We have no assurance that we will live to see each other again next year. Tonight may be your last chance to make a decision that presses heavily upon your heart, or perhaps you, the baptized, have fallen from grace and wish to rededicate yourselves anew. The time has come and is now!”

“Oh, what joyous times, Lord!” Robert said aloud.

On this the last night of the meeting, Dr. J. W. Perry from Abingdon was preaching from the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, “For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country… Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.” Before he finished the sermon the presence of the Holy Spirit came down upon the congregation wonderfully.

The altar was flooded with souls and the worshippers would make the worship shed, hills, and valleys ring with their glad praise. Dr. Perry then asked to be excused for a time as he was totally exhausted. Scores came forward as penitents and fell in the Spirit all about the shed. There was such a tremendous surge of emotion at that time that Dr. Perry hurried back under the shed to behold the glory that was happening all around him. Robert took to the altar work and exhortations with great delight.
Tyler Frazier, in charge of the after-service, being the presiding elder then turned to the music minister and told him to sing ‘Jesus, Lover of My Soul.’ Before they had finished the first verse of the song a strange feeling came the congregation accompanied with the sound of a high-pitched drone over their heads like a swarm of bees going by. Others just outside the shed were those gazing toward the sky and pointing upward with their fingers.

As they started the second stanza of this song a Ms Stafford called out above the sound of the voices of the congregation, “Listen, listen, the redeemed hosts of heaven are singing. I hear the voice of my mother!” Rev. Wiley then heard the singing, softer than human voices but clearly distinguishable through the remainder of the Stanza. A thrill came over the audience and many pressed toward the right of the building. As the main speaker, Dr. Perry was in the straw with penitents, R.A. Kelley came up to him and declared, “Don‘t you hear it? The angels are singing!” By then people were rushing out from under the shed, but some including Robert stayed and knelt with the penitents who remained in prayer.
 
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Non sequitur

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In my teenage years I took a walk on the wild side. I felt an unknown multitude of presences sorrow and grieve as I did. I have no interest in repeating all of that a second time.
If you "became" one, you wouldn't feel sorrow or grief.

I'm not asking how you would interpret it from the viewpoint you have now.
 
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rockytopva

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If you "became" one, you wouldn't feel sorrow or grief.

I'm not asking how you would interpret it from the viewpoint you have now.

Well... There is such thing as the Holy Spirit... In which case, if you have never experienced, is probably a waste of time for me to try to explain.
 
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Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. - Luke 15:10

I would say that the opposite also holds true. That the angels sorrow when people turn away.

In 1895 they had a camp meeting in which thousands attended and were blessed. As the altars were full, Methodist shouting filling the mountain air, and as the choir was singing, 'Jesus lover of my soul' it was reported as a droan of bees above the worship shed. A woman screams, " I hear my mother singing!", and the song leader says, "Do you hear it? The redeemed host are singing!" A stampede then happens to get outside the worship shed. In which, by testimony of those there, the redeemed host was singing above the worship shed.

And in the words of the editor of the attached story below... "I can not vouch for the authenticity of this story, but can point out that all of the information was passed down by reputable ministers of the Methodist Church. " That is the account I got from the Methodist church, another account is given here...

An angels chorus | The Southwest Times

And the account I have as I live about 20 miles from the old camp... The Wabash Camp Meeting of August, 1895… The night the angels sang…

The Wabash camp ground lay four miles southwest of Staffordsville. When Robert Sheffey reached the Pulaski-Giles turnpike leading to the camp grounds he looked with amazement upon the endless train of human and animal flesh. The young women walked along barefooted, carrying perhaps their only pair of shoes, keeping them clean and unscarred to wear at the meetings. There was a time he might have frowned upon this little vanity, but time and God’s love had mellowed him. He had seen many happy and fruitful marriages result from the courtship phase as well as the worship phase of the camp meetings. Eliza also had helped to enlighten him on this delicate subject. “Is there any better place for the young to fall in love than in our Lord’s most holy presence?” she had said. How right she had been, he thought, riding along and passing grandchildren by the score who had been the offspring of camp-inspired marriages.

The camp ground proper lay to the northeast of the turnpike road. It covered the space of six acres with both open space and well shaded with oak and poplar. The area was near the little village of Wabash (The name had come from a settler, who started a journey to the Wabash River in Indiana and broke down on the present village spot. Having to spend the winter there, he named the place Wabash.) In physical appearance the campsite looked like the most perfect nature-carved amphitheater. The bubbling fresh-water springs of the Wabash fed with abundance both man and beast. He had hardly dismounted when hordes of little children who were offspring of the early arrivals rushed to be the first to hold his coattail as he made his way along the dusty road to the preachers’ tent.

“Brother Bob, it’s going to be the biggest crowd we’ve ever had this year!” an elderly resident called. “Wouldn’t surprise me none if we had four or five thousand.”

The worship shed was simply a huge shingled roof supported by log posts. Neither the sides of the building were enclosed. The openness was welcome as he had witnessed the heat of religious fervor so great that the ventilation was greatly appreciated. Robert placed his own belongings within the preachers’ tent but did not stay inside. He loved the activity of seeing the camp come to life. Just as Robert started to leave the preachers’ tent and make his customary journey to the top of the hill, Reverend Tyler Frazier, a county minister he knew, arrived with his own belongings. “Brother Frazier, I was just ready to go to the hill for my prayers about the meeting. Would you join me?”

Children busily traversed the footpath to his left, carrying bucket after bucket of cool water from the bubbling spring in the distance to their family cabin or tent, and they would not neglect the camp custom of greeting other participants with short Bible verses, long ago committed to memory.

“I am ready, Brother Bob!” Tyler Frazier called from inside.

A young woman walked by Robert and greeted him with, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

“He that believeth in Me, though he were dead yet shall he live,” Robert returned the greeting. On the crest of the hill they knelt and prayed together until they had implored all the forces of heaven to invade the hearts of the unsaved and send them home victorious and reborn. As the crowd swelled and in his rushing about, Robert would be stopped by folks who would request of him special prayer. “Yes, brother, I’ll ask it of the Lord,” Robert told one last man, delaying him from going under the shed and opening the night service with prayer, “Tell me again your name?” The man repeated it, but Robert felt it flee from him as he made the journey up the straw-covered aisle to the preachers’ platform.

“ … and Dear Lord,” he concluded his prayer, “bless that man standing at the back who asked me to pray for him and whose name I’ve forgotten. From the cut of his coat and the way his pants hang, I believe he is from Grayson County.”

Robert relinquished the rostrum to Reverend Dill Strader. The young man admonished his listeners not to let the fervor of the camp meeting die and to take it back to their individual churches and then launched into his sermon.

Robert sat on the platform with the five remaining ministers who would in turn follow the younger man. When the others had finished preaching he would make his way up and down the aisles, exhorting, walking with the timid and fearful toward the mourners’ bench, or kneeling with a would-be penitent until peace came to his troubled heart. Sometimes he preached, but his preaching did not move the crowds as did his prayers and exhortations. One after another, the platform preachers took their turns, resting only between songs and shouting. Ministers reassembled in the preachers’ tent, as was the custom, to rejoice over the repentant souls who had made their professions.

Robert took his sheepskin and walked alone to the mountain to pray. he prayed over and over again: “For the sake of our blessed Jesus, dear’ Lord…”

The flood tide that Robert knew had been building began to break the next service when the third speaker had finished. That speaker was Tyler Frazier, whose eloquent and impassioned pleadings had started such a fire in the hearts of his listeners that their raptured faces shone with the glow of winter frost by moonlight. No words had been minced as to humanity’s low estate and the sin that reigned in every heart, and God’s redeeming love that was the only cure.

Before his colleague was seated, people were standing and crying, “Mercy! Mercy!” The next speaker began to take his turn at the rostrum and Robert waved him back. “Let them shout, brother – give them all the time they need to shout, and then you can speak! It is a glorious time!”

“And now the hour has come,” the speaker concluded. “Has God’s Word convinced you that you are blind to pin your hopes upon this wicked world Christ’s Kingdom never dies! Live, starting tonight! And neither have any fear of death, for it is the final and absolute freedom! Christ lives!”

The speaker relinquished his place to the song leader. “We will close the service with the singing of ‘Shall We Gather at the River.’ We have no assurance that we will live to see each other again next year. Tonight may be your last chance to make a decision that presses heavily upon your heart, or perhaps you, the baptized, have fallen from grace and wish to rededicate yourselves anew. The time has come and is now!”

“Oh, what joyous times, Lord!” Robert said aloud.

On this the last night of the meeting, Dr. J. W. Perry from Abingdon was preaching from the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, “For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country… Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.” Before he finished the sermon the presence of the Holy Spirit came down upon the congregation wonderfully.

The altar was flooded with souls and the worshippers would make the worship shed, hills, and valleys ring with their glad praise. Dr. Perry then asked to be excused for a time as he was totally exhausted. Scores came forward as penitents and fell in the Spirit all about the shed. There was such a tremendous surge of emotion at that time that Dr. Perry hurried back under the shed to behold the glory that was happening all around him. Robert took to the altar work and exhortations with great delight.
Tyler Frazier, in charge of the after-service, being the presiding elder then turned to the music minister and told him to sing ‘Jesus, Lover of My Soul.’ Before they had finished the first verse of the song a strange feeling came the congregation accompanied with the sound of a high-pitched drone over their heads like a swarm of bees going by. Others just outside the shed were those gazing toward the sky and pointing upward with their fingers.

As they started the second stanza of this song a Ms Stafford called out above the sound of the voices of the congregation, “Listen, listen, the redeemed hosts of heaven are singing. I hear the voice of my mother!” Rev. Wiley then heard the singing, softer than human voices but clearly distinguishable through the remainder of the Stanza. A thrill came over the audience and many pressed toward the right of the building. As the main speaker, Dr. Perry was in the straw with penitents, R.A. Kelley came up to him and declared, “Don‘t you hear it? The angels are singing!” By then people were rushing out from under the shed, but some including Robert stayed and knelt with the penitents who remained in prayer.
Please don't derail this thread by sermonizing or testifying.
 
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Non sequitur

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Well... There is such thing as the Holy Spirit... In which case, if you have never experienced, is probably a waste of time for me to try to explain.
Obviously you did not read the OP.

If you cannot find yourself able to imagine/role-play the scenario (not how, whether it is plausible, etc), please don't comment or vote; it's not a debate.
 
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rockytopva

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Well then, if I did not feel or experience anything... I would not feel anything.

4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,
6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. - Hebrews 6

But... Having experienced these things, and then falling away, I would really feel like the worlds biggest wimp.
 
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Eryk

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Please don't derail this thread by sermonizing or testifying
Atheists on CF insult the Bible and everything holy, constantly. So you're going to have to put up with sermons. You are not going to stifle Christians on a Christian forum.
 
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Well then, if I did not feel or experience anything... I would not feel anything.

4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,
6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. - Hebrews 6

But... Having experienced these things, and then falling away, I would really feel like the worlds biggest wimp.
Why are you posting all this? It is irrelevant to the topic and divisive.
 
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Atheists on CF insult the Bible and everything holy, constantly. So you're going to have to put up with sermons. You are not going to stifle Christians on a Christian forum.
I'm not trying to stifle anything and It's not relevant to the topic. It's just mass posting for the sake of doing it.

This is supposed to be insightful and shows introspection.

Are you basically saying because some atheists do things you don't like, it's ok and justifies this?
 
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