“My life actually changed once I accepted Jesus into my heart.”
hopefully we can agree that accepting Jesus into ones heart means having a change of behavior for the positive.
Trying to live a life that one thinks Jesus would approve of and avoiding behavior one thinks Jesus or god would frown upon.
This may not be the only thing that is meant by the term; but it must be understood that at least in part, that accepting Jesus into one’s heart at a minimum should reflect in a person changing behavior. At a minimum it must be conceded that accepting Jesus is itself a behavior, and if you didn’t do it before but now you do, you have changed your behavior.
It is at least reasonable to conclude that other changes in behavior would likely follow from the desire to stop destructive behavior and start living a life in accordance with the wishes of a divine being.
Living as a productive member of society should and indeed does, have beneficial consequences. Every single day many of us decide to work harder, or to give a shit more, or try to love more deeply. Some of us decide to learn more and more about the world we live in and reach to achieve higher levels of education, or skills development, or artistic achievement. All of these and many other behaviors that people do can be shown to vastly improve their lives.
Most people would agree that when we behave respectfully toward other people, they are more likely to respond in kind, and the opposite is also true.
Non believers and believers both agree that a drastic change from predominantly negative behavior to primarily positive behavior will be rewarded with positivity.
For non believers, it is our ability to empathize that makes it is possible for a person to change their behavior and by extension change their situation.
Recognizing that is even a possibility in direct contradiction to what most believers would claim “Jesus is the reason for our inspiration to change our behavior even when we don’t recognize it” because if the believer admits that it is possible for a person to change their situation themselves via a change in behavior without god, then we are left with the dilemma of never being able to tell when someone was responsible for their own life improvements compared to when god is the one behind their improvements. If there are two or more possibilities then the least complicated answer, in this case that people can help themselves and sometimes do, becomes the most plausible. The recognition that people sometimes attribute success to Jesus, or Allah, or a native American spiritual guides, or Oden, or Zues, even though it is possible they did it all themselves or with help from other people working toward the same goal, nullifies the results of their assessment.
A life that is changed for the better is a result, but it does not prove it’s cause. Results can only be proof of causation when you can prove there is only one possible cause.
Simply claiming “My life actually changed once I accepted Jesus into my heart.” is not convincing to anyone who understands the basics of creating logical arguments, but this the statement still holds water with many believers. No matter what you believe, the tendency to believe, is certainly part of the problem, however, The very nature of this claim is that it is about feelings and emotions, not logic. This kind of claim has great emotional appeal as it reaffirms belief for anyone who accepts it as true.
This is another example of the argument “I feel it, so it must be true.” If you or someone you know ever felt like someone was being honest only later to find out they were lying, should know that feeling like something is true is not proof it is.
One other rarely mentioned option for someone who claimed “My life actually changed once I accepted Jesus into my heart,” is they could be lying. I challenge you all to honestly consider some possible reasons that one might lie about a religious claim like this.
So in the end we are left with a claim that requires us to accept a broken logical chain, requires us to accept magical thinking about a super being that you can communicate with telepathically or verbally, that no one else can confirm even spoke a single word, when we have no credibly reproducible evidence that is even possible. Beyond that we are forced to accept that this being provides meaningful guidance in spite of how people all over the world report receiving divine messages that are in direct contradiction with each other.
People who are willing to ignore these obvious logical breakdowns and allow their emotions to affect their decision making at a greater level than logic, are far more willing to accept a claim like that. This kind of claim is not testable, and cannot be confirmed, so by definition, if you accept it you are being gullible because it makes you feel good by re-affirming a preexisting (and unsupported) belief that there is some supernatural element to reality.