If you were baptized but choose not to believe in Christianity, are you still Christian, and will you go to hell?

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Catholics, going off memory here so feel free to correct me, believe that a proper baptism, that is, done according to the standards set in the gospels, puts you in a situation where Heaven is “yours to lose.” So long as you don’t commit too much sin that you don’t earn redemption for, say through confession or sincere repentance, your ticket to Heaven is all but guaranteed.

If you don’t get baptized, then you have a far more difficult path. Your actions and inner beliefs are weighed and judged. I’m not entirely sure what most Catholics feel constitutes apostasy. Historically, merely not believing does not make you an apostate. You have to act against the Church and faith. If you got caught, you get excommunicated, but not getting caught don’t mean anything in the eyes of the Lord.

Protestants have a very different view on this. Martin Luther was totally convinced that it was faith only that gets you into Heaven. One’s inner morality or deeds in life mattered very little. In practice this means that if you acted in a way conducive to community norms and didn’t make dangerous public statements, you were usually considered to have gotten into Heaven. No matter the practicalities, the stated rationale is that your faith is between you and God. Only God knows.

This puts atheists who nonetheless fear Hell in a tough pickle, made much harder by America’s increasing intolerance towards people that are just different.

My advice? Don’t sweat it. Plenty of Christian mystics have come up with better. One worked out that it’s what you learn to love during your life that determines where you find yourself in the world after. That has a certain intuitive appeal to it, especially if you were to start meditating yourself and grappling with the concepts as I have.