ArGee: If you will answer two questions for me, then I will answer the burning issue of those who never had a chance to hear the name of Jesus for you. I will answer it from the Bible so that you will know it is Christian doctrine.
1. Are you an atheist?
2. If I answer that question, will you believe in G-d?
discostu: Yes I'm an atheist. And whether or not I'll believe depends on the answer.
I will not hold you to your word, but G-d may. I will merely keep my word and answer your question from the Bible. I use the NIV on-line in case such distinctions are important to you.
1 Peter 3:18-20 For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water,The "spirits in prison" are those who were dead before Christ was born. Peter references the days of Noah - a code for the days before there was any Christ so that no one could be righteous. If you read the rest of the passage you will see the connection between the Ark, which saved Noah's family, and Christ, which saves mankind. Clearly, Christ went to the land of the dead and preached the message before he left the tomb. Those who have no way to hear the message on earth will be given the message before they have to make the choice. I don't fully understand all the places that the dead dwell - there is still controversy in the Church about things like purgatory - but I believe that Jesus will guarantee everyone a chance to hear, just as He did those who died before He was born in time.
As an indirect proof:
Luke 16:22-23 "The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.The rich man was in hell, far away from Abraham. The obvious point is that Abraham was in heaven. Yet Abraham died long before Christ was born. Christ Himself told us that Abraham would be in heaven. Therefore, Christ himself promised a way for those who never had a chance to hear the Gospel while alive.
As purely anecdotal evidence, I once heard a woman speak who was raised in an Islamic nation where Christian testimony was illegal. She claimed to have heard the Gospel in a dream and to have converted to Christianity long before she met a Christian. You can not judge the validity of her claim, of course, but I can at least say that I never learned any reason why a woman raised as a Muslim would have made that up.
I hope this helps. I surely pray that this was the only stumbling block keeping you from the table.
Shalom.
Of course you also have to understand that this is only one issue. I've kind of poked at them during all of this let me lay them out clean, some of these apply to any religion some apply specifically to Christianity, you can probably figure out which is which on your own:
Souls, they really don't add up from a non-religious perspective.
Old Testament God of smiting and vengeance, while you might read it differently a lot of us see drowning the entire planet as rather extreme and not the activities of a benevolent being (note, this tends to keep people agnostic more than atheist).
What happens to people that never heard the Word (I know you answered, including for completeness).
Why is being saved the important part, in other words why aren't good non-Christian allowed in heaven.
But there's all these other religions, and they all say they're the one true religion, and there's no method of judging external to all religion that shows any of them as more valid.
Then, even if you decide to be Christian, you've got to figure out which sect, just picking between flavors of Lutheranism could take years.
Some people just don't want the kind of personal relationship with God you have, I think that's mostly us fallen Catholics, but some folks just don't want to bask in the light all the time. Some folks would rather what I call a Naval relationship rather than an Airforce relationship, if you know how both branches work that makes sense, if requested I'll explain that one.
And, I think this is finally, some folks just aren't spiritual, they're just plain not interested because that's not a world they live in. It's like trying to convince someone to watch a TV show and that person has never watched TV consistently and when they did watch at all they didn't like it; it's just not their world.
There's a vast myriad of things and that list is not even remotely complete, but you begin to understand. If going as open minded as possible my thought is that if there is a God he wants us to get the core message. And the core message isn't something that exclusive to one religion. It's the basic rules of conduct that are in almost every religion: honor, decency, respect, honesty. You know the list. And He doesn't care how you got the message just so long as you live by it. There might or might not be a reward at the end, but there doesn't have to be, because living that lifestyle, regardless of your religious label, is it's own reward. It's a better way to live and life works better when you do.
Then on the otherside, in my least open minded I think it's all just gobbledy gook and religion is just there to understand the societies that made them. Of course even then, living the moral life is it's own reward.