CrossFeed 148: #Atheism, #LDS, and #V

[ChooseThisLife]

Besides being a 'V' watcher, I am both former LCMS and current atheist.

I don't really have an issue with summarizing the purpose of life as self-determined. I generally find that those purposes fall broadly into three categories: loving, learning, and creating. I don't find permanence a necessary ingredient to 'real' purpose. Of course my rights to self-determination is constrained by my rights to swing my fists stopping near the end of your nose.

I find the Christian answer . . .

[ChooseThisLife]

. . .at even an operational/definitional level, less desirable than my own. Even though heaven/hell is suppose the be the ultimate carrot/stick.

While most Christian apologists premise their superiority over an atheist's purpose on, at least in part, its permanence, they quickly retreat from this permanence when pushed on the question. 'Suppose instead of eternal life, you and God only endured for a billion years more?' Then the case is shifted to the greater nature and righteousness of God.

[ChooseThisLife]

But if at its heart self-determination is not the source of purpose, the Christian is reduced to either being God's tool, God's pet, or God's slave. All of which sound like even worse outcomes to me than non-existence. Have Christians been brutally honest with what they really believe?