Disregarding what you term a "threat", and disregarding the hereafter, a sound position is...regardless of anything else...that if one follows His teachings, one will have a better life. The 'peace that passes all understandings' fills a God shaped void in many people's lives that can't be filled by anything else.
Antlers,
I get what you're saying and was just talking about this with my buddy the other night. I believe the world would be a better place if people followed Jesus' teachings. However, that can be done without believing he is/was/became 'God'. (Please, nobody bring up C.S. Lewis' classic argument...it doesn't hold water). After all, many of his teachings are found in many other moral 'manifestos'.
It's entirely possible for an Atheist to follow the teachings of Jesus and, one could possibly argue, even be a 'disciple' of his...(how's that for a brain teaser!)
Your earlier reference to humility is a big part of it, I think. Humility and empathy toward one another would go a long way to curing many of mankind's ills....but again, you don't need a god (or the specific Christian God) to accomplish that.
Like I stated in the OP, if a particular flavor of Faith makes you a better human then so be it. But it is a Manichean world view that states only those who believe in a specific version of god (theirs) can be moral and upright. Just not true. The danger of conflating faith with fact is that it can lead to arrogance, bigotry, condemnation, exclusion, disharmony and a whole slew of ills. That's why I enjoyed Scott's response so much. He admitted his was faith alone and didn't try to proselytize or convince others he had the 'truth'. For how could one try to convert unless one is convinced they 'know' they're right?
Thanks for your thoughts and have a good Holiday weekend.
It ain't what you don't know that makes you an idiot...it's what you know for certain, that just ain't so...
Most people don't want to believe the truth~they want the truth to be what they believe.
