Atheist Statement #5

      "You can love "Jesus" without guilt or shame. You can also reject "Jesus" without guilt or shame." This same idea can apply to eveyone and everything. You can choose to love your spouse or children or friends without guilt or shame! You can also reject them without guilt or shame, but IF you are a good person WITH a good heart and a conscience, you will feel guilty over negative things and feelings, especially the rejection of your family and friends!  This is what a conscience does! It guides us through our feelings to do the right thing.  This conscience can also be called the "spirit of the Lord". It helps us feel good or bad about the choices we make so that we can learn to become better people. BUT if we ignore the feelings of guilt, shame, sorrow, negativity, etc., and continue doing the things that made us feel that way in the first place, the spirit of the Lord leaves us, little by little, to our own devices. In other words, we deaden our conscience to being able to choose between the good and bad in our lives. And when our conscience is dead we do not feel anything about the choices we make. We do what we want to do and never question whether it is right or wrong or if it is going to harm ourselves or others. Some people may choose to follow this road so far down that they often learn to take pleasure in seeing others suffer. And we know stories of people like this from history or even in many present day circumstances, that prove this point!