Truthabounds - “Think you misunderstood Goodlife’s comment. I read it and he doesn’t say these people are atheists. People are responsible for the conditions we see around us today, “especially” those who have ” little or no regard for the creator and his laws”. No doubt some of these people do believe in God but that does not mean they put him first place in their lives. The first goal in to make money otherwise they would not be in the positions they are.”
So what you're saying is that people who claim to be (for example) Christian may not be Christian in the truest sense of the word?
Well, where does that leave us or Goodlife’s argument? When a person claims to have 'faith' then we must take him at his word, no? As we have no other way of determining the amount of 'faith' a person has, all we can do is accept what they tell us. So if the CEO tells us he is a card-carrying, God fearing Christian, we must accept what he says is true.
Maybe we could attempt to judge his 'faith' by his actions? The difficulty in that is multitudinous. A Prime Minister, President, CEO, etc. may on occasion do many honourable deeds and look like the epitome of righteousness. The next day, they may make a decision that kills many people to achieve a political goal or puts many people out of work to achieve a financial goal that achieves a greater good for the majority.
The simple fact is that the every world leader and the vast majority of the heads of banks/industry claim to have religious belief. Since there is no way to quantify the amount of 'faith' that these people have, it's fair to say that my original post remains accurate.
As an aside, if we're going to judge people on their actions rather than what they say, the Old Testament story of Abraham and his ultimately abortive attempt to murder his own son, shows that a person can carry out the most horrific deeds and still be held up as a paragon of piousness and virtue. Such is the twisted logic that pervades religious belief.