I realize it's been nine years since someone has added to this node, but I just came across it, and it ticks me off enough to add something at this late date, given other people also come here long after the node "ended" (the original "Christians don't believe" node has been closed, but I'm pleased to see this one is still accepting new writeups).
I could say all kinds of things, as an agnostic, in reaction to Quizro's original writeup, which is an accurate summary of Christianity, but I'll summarize my feelings instead (leaving the defense of many of my other nitpicks in the capable hands of the other people posting here with similar attitudes as mine):
What Quizro accurately describes is not something kind, or truthful, though a Christian thinks it so. Instead, it's a sick, occult, bizarre, carefully interlocking system of beliefs, which was carefully constructed over hundreds or thousands of years to put the fear of this supposed God into gullible people, and to force onto people who aren't gullible, with the threat of eternal damnation, or just killing them, both in order to foster a ruling class, and to feed the egos of lower-level would-be rulers (all the way down to your nosy, righteous neighbor). The article makes all the proper flat-out statements about what Christianity basically believes God to think, backed up, of course, by the Bible. My vitriol is pumped by the well-written conciseness of the article, which summarizes in a nutshell (or a bombshell) how nutty the Christian religion is, with one of the most annoying positions being to tell people that they have to be perfect to "get into heaven". I'm prepared to counter with what may sound like a child's argument, but it's still valid, illustrating that the first ideas that children have, in questioning Christianity (or any religion, for that matter), are often the most accurate: prove all this stuff to me. Prove the existence of heaven, original sin, God's thinking, requirement for perfection, etc., without relying on the circular argument that the Bible proves it, or your personal experience (usually based on "it makes me feel good") proves it, or that faith alone is what's required--a corruptible child's faith. Bleah.
Here's my take on reality in a nutshell:
• Humans aren't perfect (same as Christianity's take), but we're not imbued with some Original Sin;
• Most humans, given the proper upbringing and support, and without any form of religion (including the forms that posit that humans are God, or gods), can be so good as to put Christians to shame;
• Goodness is not mediated or defined by any mystical character, but by intelligence and sensitivity to human need and reality;
• Goodness as described in the Bible is a pastiche of sensible ideas, observations, and laws discovered by humans interacting with each other over millenia, but tainted by humans trying to use that knowledge to control others, and by ancient primitive notions of goodness (I won't belabor the ones Judaism originally held, like blood sacrifices, since Christianity dropped that requirement after Jesus was deemed the last blood sacrifice--but you get the idea; instead, it now all boils down to requiring a belief in and honor towards a God or else you're bad);
• Heaven is a metaphor for the future of humanity on earth, made good by the good acts performed by each of us, to help those who will come after us. Our acts live both now, but also in the future, and that's the only way we'll live forever, because we can't physically. We need to be good for ourselves and those around us now, and for those who will carry on in the future.
• Being good doesn't "break down" over time, unless you have some sociopathic, or even psychotic (or just "happily delusional") nuts trying to misdirect and control you, with religion being one of the weapons they use.
There. Guess I did say all kinds of things, but I could have said more, so it's a summary to me. You can call it something like
secular humanism if you'd like, minus the unfortunate next mental leap that some people make (
ubermenschists, occultists, some
New Agers, etc.) that we're all God, or at least supermen, or on the way there. Nope, we live in a universe whose laws and beings we have to learn, and feel damn good about being alive.