Why would a non-believer care if there is heaven?

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JohnStrachan

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A very good friend of mine - who is perhaps the only atheist friend I have - wonders if salvation can still be his even if he doesn’t believe. I’m perplexed by his thinking because if he doesn’t believe why would he care about the possibility of salvation. But his train of thought is this:
  • if there is a heaven/afterlife/salvation it should be available to everyone
  • that he doesn’t believe is irrelevant as a good God would see his goodness beyond his non-belief
  • he believes the notion of any sort of Christian discipline or observance is pointless as God should be able to see what is in our hearts that that is good enough
My sense is that he is trying to hedge his bets. He wants to be assured of salvation without having to adhere - like most people I would say.

My question to him is why care about salvation is you don’t believe in a God? Simply being a “good” person isn’t enough if you fervently seek to reject God’s very existence. Thoughts?
 
You are either a good person, or you are in jail. That is not a very high recommendation. Rather than heaven, hell, salvation, eternal life and all of the potential discursive distractions, what we enter into is a relationship - a loving relationship with our Creator. All, from the best to the worst, can understand love-even if they know only self love. Love is the most powerful force on this earth. Love desires the good of the other. Love does not count the cost.

If they are not ready to love, they are uncomfortably close to lower animals.
 
This is brilliant. Jesus says you need to satisfy four things:
  • baptism
  • eucharist
  • faith
  • do the will of the Father
None of them say “hey, naturally grow into heaven.”
 
It’s one of Fr. Mike’s better videos.

I found it interesting that young people regardless of what religion they were raised in, or even if they’d been raised atheist, came to the same conclusion that people who are basically good go to Heaven. To me, that’s an argument tending to prove the truth of Christianity, because if Christianity had just evolved out of man’s wishful thinking, it would have looked more like “people who are basically good, in other words not Hitler or serial killers, are going to Heaven.”
 
“Why would a non-believer care if there is a heaven?”

A non-believer would care about heaven, if s/he found the concept intriguing, though non-existent.

Since heaven is a community of truly loving people with unending peace and limitless joy open to all who freely choose to be truly loving, non-believers should care about heaven because it would be amazing for them too!
 
I have a feeling that we tend to overestimate our own righteousness.
 
I’m an unbeliever. I don’t wish heaven for myself, but I do hope that people who believed and sacrificed much, and organized their life around the hope for an afterlife, won’t be disappointed.

Of course if there is no afterlife, they won’t be because their consciousness will cease, but some part of me would like there to be positive justice for them. I know a lot of lovely people who certainly seem worthy of a happy afterlife should one be available.

I don’t believe there is an afterlife and I’m fine with that. Eternity of any sort isn’t attractive to me.
 
Cardinal Newman gives this answer to your friend’s question:

Take a mere beggar woman, lazy, ragged, filthy, and not over-scrupulous of truth, – but if she is chaste, and sober, and cheerful, and goes to her religious duties – she will, in the eyes of the Church, have a prospect of heaven, quite closed and refused to the State’s pattern-man, the just, the upright, the generous, the honourable, the conscientious, if he be all this, not from a supernatural power, – but from mere natural virtue.
 
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Calliope said:
I don’t believe there is an afterlife and I’m fine with that. Eternity of any sort isn’t attractive to me.
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My I ask, and I say this with the utmost respect and generosity, what would incline an atheist to come to this forum, read and engage in conversation? If none of this is of any consequence to you, why are you curious?
 
Interesting, and often intelligent discussion. I originally popped in to ask some questions. I hang around because it’s interesting.
 
I think the problem with an atheist today is that most are not really uninformed about the Messiah (Jesus Christ) and God and the Bible and the Church, like for example, the case that was valid during Jesus’s time. If Jesus would have to center Europe, people there wouldn’t even know who Moses was or God’s laws. This is something called infallible ignorance I think?
But when someone hears about God, the Messiah, and rejects it altogether saying “I don’t feel it, or I don’t believe” then this isn’t, for a fully grown rational adult, ignorance but it’s half rejecting the Truth. So I don’t know what Church Fathers teach on this, or the official position of the Church, but I don’t think we are in the right when we tell people that it doesn’t matter if they are atheist or not. Especially if they are baptized, confirmed and then left the faith because they did not “feel like it”.
 
Also here to dispel some of the odd assumptions about nonbelievers. Plus how one comes to believe something is fascinating to me.
 
Mary888 said:
Especially if they are baptized, confirmed and then left the faith because they did not “feel like it”.
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I know a lot of baptized atheists who left the Church. None of them left because they weren’t “feeling” it. They left because they didn’t believe in it. They are intelligent people who take the information and realize there is no proof for most of it. Without proof, all you have is faith, if you are still a believer. They don’t have faith. It isn’t a choice.

Please lets not cast a negative light on our atheist brothers and sisters, by suggesting they kick something as important as spiritual faith to the curb because they aren’t “feeling” it. If you don’t have faith, you don’ have faith.
 
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This reminds me of a conversation I once had with an atheist, regarding what happens when we die. What happens if I’m right, I told him, and after death, comes judgement? The atheist said in that scenario he would argue his case before God, to be allowed into Heaven. I said: really? argue with God is the plan?
 
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