Why, why, why Delilah ?!

Is what you describe your notion of what you might become without a god to lean on ? It really is not a picture of the world that many non-believers have, a world without values, of chaos and dog-eat-dog. We have to find and develop and manage a sense of purpose without any Grandfathers.

As a non-believer, what you suggest has never occurred to me and to many others of similar persuasion: we spend our lives trying to contribute and think through what the world, society and human aspirations can be like. I suppose many criminals are godless, I don't know, intuitively it makes sense, but it may be just one more aspect of their anti-social behaviour in general.

To return to topic, I am in a couple of singing groups with Sing Australia (check out their web-site) and yes, we sing a hell of a lot of carols towards Christmas, including versions of Silent Night. I can get as enthusiastic as the best of them, and enjoy most of the carols - God Rest Ye etc. and a few others get a bit repetitive and I really can't give the Twelve Days yadayada my full attention. But on the whole, it can be a lot of fun, especially W.G. James' carols. As singing is generally :)

And why should God have all the best tunes ?

Joe

Delilah:
<Would Godlessness lead to hopelessness, abuse, contempt for life and internal death, chaos and decay?? That is the direction our society is heading. Just look at the statistics (news), More divorse more fatherlesness, more abuse( off all kinds) more suicide more family breakdown more workplce discontent.....and the list goes on>

And this after two thousand years of Christianity!

You should expand your reading, Delilah; ethics is considerably less problematic without dogmatic binaries of good and evil. Progressive humanism has all the ethical philosophy we could want, but ethics runs counter to the spirit of capitalism and ergo it is only observed in the breach.
I am an atheist but I can assure you I have a highly developed sense of right and wrong, and I don't need the promise of eternal life to live ethically. Incongruously, I'm a member of a profoundly unethical culture.

Runner I reckon everyone who reads a message will view it differently - each person will hear a different tone, receive a different meaning, be feeling a different way from the next person when they read it and every message viewed changes in a million different ways according to who receives it, not the messenger.

That person sitting in church beside you does not see what you see or hear what you hear or understand the message in the way you do. I do not believe any belief is shared by many; each faith belongs to only the person who has it.

You found your god, I don’t accept your belief as mine is all. I'm okay with it so I'm not sure why you sound annoyed... but then it could just be the way I read your message.

It seems that truth is getting sidelined here. There are actually many times more historical records around the life and work of Jesus and the the early church than the next most documented historical figure. Would 11 of his 12 disciples have willingly been martyred for a lie? (the 12th was exiled). We have lots of historical documentation about the early mission ventures. We know that this resulted in many many deaths of early Christians but amazingly it ended up with the Roman Empire itself taking the message on board. All for a lie? Josephus, a Jewish historian acknowledges Jesus. Fragments of the New Testament have been found dating back to one part of Johns Gospel written about the year 120. Have those on this forum who are skeptical actually read their Bible, especially the Gospels? Truth has a way of clearing things up.
Dash

Remind me of Lilith in the bible Dash.

Truth, documents relating to what?

Truth?

Good lord.