I have a question for those that believe there is no god, just something I have been wondering about rather than a debate.
If tomorrow, the God of Christianity revealed himself to you in a way that was undeniable and left you with no doubt as to his existence and Christianity's truth, what would you do?
The reason I ask is many seem to have moral objections to the actions of the God of the Bible, so I'm interested if they would retain those objections and reject God, or if they would become Christian and worship him in order to get to heaven (or some other reason).
I'm a non-believer because I'm a skeptic. I see no positive evidence that supports the claims of Christianity (or any other religions for that matter), therefore I cannot accept the claims.
My position is a necessarily tentative one though. It is open to new evidence and I'm open to having my mind changes, which is part of the reason why I particpate here.
If I was presented with direct, positive evidence that the God of Christianity did exist, then I'd believe in the existence Christian God. This
DOES NOT mean that I would accept all the claims of the Bible, nor all the doctrinal claims of various Christian denominations (many of which are mutually exclusive anyway).
Evidence for the existence of the Christian deity
is not necessarily evidence that the stories in the Bible are true. These are two separate things. Acceptance of one claim does not mean I then have to accept all subsequent claims. Its not a package deal. Claims such as the existence of heaven and hell, souls, unicorns, dragons, behemoths, original sin, human resurrection and the like are not immediately rendered valid by the existence of the God of Christianity.
Accepting "Christianity's truth" - whatever that actually means - for me would not mean adopting positions that cannot be logically supported or are in direct contravention of available evidence.
Unless I had direct evidence to the contrary, I would continue to believe that most of the bible is the product of failible men writing without divine inspiration.
The best available evidence suggests that most of the Old Testament biblical stories are either allegorical or metaphorical tales told by bronze age peoples ascribing agency to things about which they had little knowledge, are glorifications of their slanted takes on their own oral histories, retelling of far older myths or were morality tales not meant to be taken literally. The New Testament is on more solid historical footing, but I would need comprehensive evidence in order for me to accept all its claims at face value.
On top of this, there are actions by God in the Bible that I do find morally repugnant - from inherited sin and physical punishment of innocents all the way up to multiple acts of murder at direct divine command and world clearing genocide.
So, even if I accepted the existence of such a divine being and believed as such, I would not necessarily accept that I had to worship or praise it, or that it had any say in how I operate my life.
