Peter, do you really need an answer to the question is sincerity needed or does it matter? The derivative of the word sincerity comes from a Latin word meaning without wax or without a false covering. Of course sincerity matters - God is not fooled and Christ, who will be our judge, is able to read the heart (the soul's heart) of man. Few people reach a state in life known as "zoe Christos." Without getting too far into the weeds, some ascetics taught that it was possible to attain a state ( zoe Christos) everlasting life in Christ - where it was possible to go from this life to the next and barely know the difference. I'm certainly not there and confess that I never will be, but Jesus taught in His parable of the workers in the field that those coming at different hours of the day were paid the same wages as those who had worked all day. It is important to note that those who were the most upset we're those who had worked all day the parallel, of course, are those Christians who had tried to be faithful their entire lives seeing a "low life" slip into heaven at the last minute with their last breath. The other son in the parable of the Prodigal Son was also unhappy. Yet the message in both parables is not what the workers did or what the son's did but the actions of The Father.

Contrition, being sorry for our sins, comes in two forms - perfect and imperfect. Perfect contrition is being sorry for sins because we have offended God. Imperfect contrition is being sorry for our sins because we are afraid of hell. I expect perfect contrition is the best but in the reality of life a combination of both is more common, perhaps even more practical. There are only two types of sinners those who are forgiven and those who are not. The type of life God intends for us to live is to love Him and love one another. If we weren't sinners we would have no need of Christ. Have I answered your question?

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/09/new_atheisms_fatal_arrogance_the_glaring_intellectual_laziness_of_bill_maher_richard_dawkins/

SATURDAY, MAY 9, 2015 09:30 AM CDT
New Atheism’s fatal arrogance: The glaring intellectual laziness of Bill Maher & Richard Dawkins
SEAN ILLING

New Atheism's fatal arrogance: The glaring intellectual laziness of Bill Maher & Richard Dawkins
(Credit: HBO/Janet Van Ham/Reuters/Chris Keane/Photo montage by Salon)
Atheism has a storied history in the West. From the irreverent Voltaire to the iconoclastic Nietzsche, the godless have always had a voice. But the New Atheists are different. Religion, they argue, isn’t just wrong; it’s positively corrosive. If you’ve heard people like Bill Maher or Lawrence Krauss speak in recent years, you’re familiar with this approach.

New Atheism emerged in 2004 as a kind of literary and social movement. Led by such luminaries as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, New Atheism became part of the zeitgeist, a well-timed reaction against religious fundamentalism. The New Atheists are notoriously pugilistic. In print or on stage, they never run from a fight. Whatever you think of their tactics, they’ve succeeded at putting fanatics and moralizers on the defensive – and that’s a good thing.

But there’s something missing in their critiques, something fundamental. For all their eloquence, their arguments are often banal. Regrettably, they’ve shown little interest in understanding the religious compulsion. They talk incessantly about the untruth of religion because they assume truth is what matters most to religious people. And perhaps it does for many, but certainly not all – at least not in the conventional sense of that term. Religious convictions, in many cases, are held not because they’re true but because they’re meaningful, because they’re personally transformative. New Atheists are blind to this brand of belief.

It’s perfectly rational to reject faith as a matter of principle. Many people (myself included) find no practical advantage in believing things without evidence. But what about those who do? If a belief is held because of its effects, not its truth content, why should its falsity matter to the believer? Of course, most religious people consider their beliefs true in some sense, but that’s to be expected: the consolation derived from a belief is greater if its illusory origins are concealed. The point is that such beliefs aren’t held because they’re true as such; they’re accepted on faith because they’re meaningful.

The problem is that the New Atheists think of God only in epistemological terms. Consequently, they have nothing to say to those who affirm God for existential reasons. New Atheist writers tend to approach religion from the perspective of science: They argue that a particular religion isn’t true or that the empirical claims of religious texts are false. That’s easy to do. The more interesting question is why religions endure in spite of being empirically untrue. There are, of course, millions of fundamentalists for whom God is a literal proposition. Their claims concerning God are empirical and should be treated as such. For many, though, God is an existential impulse, a transcendent idea with no referent in reality. This conception of God is untouched – and untouchable – by positivist science; asking if God is true in this sense is like asking how much the number 12 weighs – it’s nonsensical.

These sorts of questions pervade literature and philosophy. The existentialist authors, most of whom were atheists, took seriously the problem of meaning and truth. Dostoevsky, for instance, although a Christian, refused to defend Christianity on positivist grounds. He considered God a motive force, not an empirical claim about reality or history. For his part, God was a bridge to self-transcendence, a way of linking the individual to a tradition and a community. The truth of Christ was therefore less important than the living faith made possible by belief in Christ.

Richard Dawkins may find this distinction trivial, but I don’t think it is.

Dostoevsky’s defense of the idea of God has to be reckoned with, especially by critics of religion. The great writer and humanist Albert Camus wrestled with Dostoevsky for most of his life. Camus was an atheist, but he understood the instinct for transcendence. And he knew that God was a solution (however false) to the problem of meaninglessness. Against the backdrop of death, what matters more: truth or a reason for living? “I’ve never seen anyone die for the ontological argument,” Camus wrote, but “I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others getting killed for ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living.” Today is no different; people continue to kill and die in defense of beliefs that give their lives meaning and shape.

The New Atheists don’t have a satisfactory alternative for such people. They argue that religion is false; that it’s divisive; that it’s unethical; that it makes a virtue of self-deception; that it does more harm than good – and maybe they’re right, but if they don’t understand that, for many, meaning is more important than truth, they’ll never appreciate the vitality of religion. To his credit, Sam Harris’ most recent book, “Waking Up,” grapples with these issues in truly fascinating ways. Indeed, Harris writes insightfully about the necessity of love, meaning and self-transcendence. But he’s a fringe voice in the New Atheist community. Most are too busy disproving religion to consider why it is so persistent, and why something beyond science will have to take its place in a Godless world.

The New Atheists have an important role to play. Reason needs its champions, too. And religion has to be resisted because there are genuine societal costs. One can draw a straight line between religious dogma and scientific obscurantism or moral stagnation, for example. That’s a real problem. But if religion is ineradicable, we have to find a way to limit its destructive consequences. Satire and criticism are necessary, but they’re not sufficient.

People like Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens make a powerful case for a more humanistic ethics. Harris writes admirably about the need to be more attentive to the present, to the suffering of other human beings. I agree. But if we want to encourage people to care about the right things, we should spend as much time encouraging them to care about the right things as we do criticizing their faith.

Sean D. Illing is a freelance writer based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He teaches political theory at Louisiana State University. Read more from him at his blog at Cosmopoliticsblog.com. Follow him @sean_illing on Twitter.

Sean Illing
Sean Illing is a USAF veteran who previously taught philosophy and politics at Loyola and LSU. He is currently a staff writer for Salon. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter. Read his blog here. Email at silling@salon.com.

"It is the most common objective supernatural act one can accomplish."

Interesting word soup, but it doesn't add up:

Supernatural: (of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.

Thus, when one prays and nothing happens, like praying for rain or for the forest fire to stop the reason it didn't is because scientifically, science can't support the reason that it didn't rain or stop the fire. Asking for something, or not asking for the same thing and it doesn't happen doesn't require that much investment in objective research to say that it doesn't work; common or otherwise. And if supernatural acts are required that says more about your faith than it does mine. The bible mentions many times that one need only ask in his name and you will get an answer. Not answering, under your "rules" is an answer. I live in a temporal world or plane that might include "...fries with that" if I ask for them. If I pay for them (a prayer if you will) and ask for them: I expect a Bigmac, fries and a coke. If God can't get that right I have no need to go to his restaurant anymore; the many promises that God makes in his "sweet time" isn't a good answer. I have the same question about tithing, why can't God find a pile of gold under a church when it's built. Imagine, how many churches could be built if that would happen?

As for the rest your message. If a man, dressed as any man in the 21st century walked into your church (I am assuming that you have a church, you may be a lone wolf, so just roll with this story), walked to front of the church, during a service and he started yelling at the congregants about their lack of discipleship, tipping over the altar, throwing candles around and acting like a crazy man. Then, he has the audacity to declare that he is the son of God. Would you believe him or would you be a sadduce, and start praying to get this demon possessed man out of your church.

Now, you might understand how jews viewed a Messiah. There were many before Jesus and there are still many today that show up in Jerusalem claiming to be the son of God.

Let's see how you sugar coat this example. I look forward to your reply.

That's what I was saying Padre--you have to be sincere in seeking forgiveness and with ones dying breath you are going to be froth with desperation not a sincere belief that Jesus Christ as your savior. I don't know how many times Christians have said I will be sorry and be begging for forgiveness in the end. Well sorry no, the same logic that tells me there is no god is the same logic that tells me it is useless to beg for forgiveness simply out of the hope that I may gain heaven. It's a silly notion Padre and a true atheist would never fall for it.

It's you Christian's who are going to be praying up a storm Padre and the Christians on OPP are an example of the whole you guys better start praying now, not your dying breath, because that will be long past too late...