I feel these things should exist without God. That is, they can be helpful to non-believers too. But I am having a hard time creating secular versions of these.

I think the root of the problem lies in the fact that God here is an abstract entity with whom the believer communicates but no such abstract entity exists for non-believers (duh!).

May be some form of general artificial intelligence can fulfil this role in the future?

Real people can fulfil this role too but they are probably not abstract enough. edit: And hence not "powerful" enough (to forgive, to protect etc.).

Just spit-balling here. Also not trying to offend anyone here.

The purpose of being a Christian is to love God and to love your neighbour as yourself. In if you wonder how far the love of your neighbour stretches, the goalpost has ben set at the very end: Love your enemies.[See: Mark 12:30-31 and Matthew 5:44] And this follows and is natural because God is LOVE [1 John 4:7-21].

I have a hard time believing AI will fulfil this role. For would it be optimized for gains here and now, or actions of sacrifice now that will be payed back fully in an everlasting life and that is built on faith? :-)

And I must admit that love is hard and I mess up a lot! But i try to do the same as is written here:

"Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."[Philippians 3.13-14]

What about all the people who are considered "sinners" ? There's no love for them in the Bible

If that was the case, I would be the last in line! ;-)

But God's whole purpose was to save sinners like me and you through Jesus Christ: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us". [1 John 1, 8-10 NKJV]

So hell is not a thing ? i'm confused ?

I feel like you must have never read the bible, or even interacted much with a christian, to say this.

EVERYONE is a sinner. That sin is then forgiven.

But who ends up in hell then ?

Churches provide love? As long as you are one of “them”. Go into your typical small southern church if you and your spouse are different races - many church goers still believe that “miscegenation” is a sin - including Bob Jones University.

I wonder how many churches would be as “loving” if “Adam and Steve” walked in?

https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/deja-vu-all-over...

Not only that, but the idea that we should have some sense of mercy, grace, forgiveness, etc that even permeates secular society. It’s an important value, and we’re seeing it break down as mobs of allegedly grown adults harass strangers for decades-old off-color remarks made as children, or for remarks made by family or acquaintances, or etc. I think Hitchens said that he didn’t like Christianity, but it may have been a bulwark against worse things. I think he was speaking about extreme Islam, but I think there are other pseudo-religious toxic philosophies (and thus toxic behaviors) that Christian ethics defend against as well.

I'm sure Hitchens was against all dogmatic religions and ideologies.

The point of his quote is that he realized they weren’t uniformly bad. I’d go further and suggest that it’s not even possible to have a successful secular society without a religious cultural substrate, at least not for very long. I don’t mean this as a slight against atheists or agnostics; only that religion is eminently functional to the extent that we don’t find significant societies that exist without a significant religious substrate in any place or time. Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s certainly an interesting question in my mind.

I really hope you are wrong. Science is relatively new, it's just a matter of time until we figure out how to solve it all without faith, god and dogmatic religion. One thing's for sure, the most developed countries in the world are running away from religion.

Science isn't incompatible with faith, but moreover, I think you're making a mistake by assuming that perfect rationalism is optimal. Many atheists believe religion serves an evolutionary function by motivating people to irrationally put the good of the group over the good of the individual, and the mechanism in question is the belief in a deity or karma system that punishes injustice and rewards justice. Note that this doesn't mean that a perfectly rational individual would never work for the good of the group, but he would only do so to the extent that the good of the group benefited him (as is often the case); however, he wouldn't put the good of the group above his own good--he wouldn't die for the group, for example (and of course there are many less extreme examples, especially under the rubric of "tragedy of the commons"--cheating, stealing, etc when the odds are good that one can go unpunished). Of course, many non-believers have died for things they believe in, but in doing so they were acting irrationally. So perfect rationality is actually less optimal than certain kinds of dogma, but not all of those "positive dogmas" are religious.

One interesting question is whether those "positive dogmas" have "staying power"--will they be around as the moral potency of religion fades from a culture (especially by decades and centuries)? Maybe an indicator would be a comparison of aggregate generosity between religious and a-religious people?