Hopefully I'll learn something reasonable.
"But what if you're wrong?" So goes the common questions posed to atheists by Christians. Putting aside for a moment the obvious retort (what if they are wrong and another religion is right?) I decided to really organize my thoughts a bit. What would I say if I was wrong, the Christians were right, and a moment after dying I found myself before the blinding majesty of Yahweh with Christ at his right hand? Actually, this is a fair question.
Atheists: If your right, cool, you become a tree. If your wrong, you go to hell.
Christians: If your right, cool, you are handed eternal perfection under a perfect God in heaven. If your wrong, you fall to the same fate as the atheists.
Who has more to lose?
Oh. Oh dear. I see. Well, I guess this is about as close to incontrovertible evidence for your existence as I could have ever demanded. Actually, as a good skeptic I pray you won't get offended if I entertain the possibility that I'm experiencing a hypoxia-induced hallucination. But, I'll just go along with this for now.
I'm not going to kneel or anything if you don't mind. That would kind of be shutting the barn door after the cows have run out, don't you think? Hes saying that its pointless to kneel because hes already going to hell? Besides: by your will, I was thrust into life in a very undignified manner and state, so the least you could do would be to let me leave it in better circumstances. And really, that would be the very, very least you could do. You know, now that the initial shock of being dead is starting to wear off, I find myself getting angry. I'm trying to restrain it, but this whole situation is... absurd. According to most accounts, this is the part where you judge me. Who the hell are you to be a moral judge? You're a sadistic, genocidal sex-obsessed tyrant. What..? This man is a good writer, but seriously what the f*ck was that..? All my life, I laughed off those Christians who accused me of "hating God". Like I told them, it wasn't that I hated you; I just genuinely didn't think you existed. If that is true, then both Christians and atheists will become trees. If not, the two meet extremely different fates. But I did hate the idea of you. I didn't see evidence to believe in any gods, but you in particular seemed like a logical contradiction. I was glad that the Bible was a work of-seeming-fiction because the belief that all of the most terrible things in the world were, at the worst, designed by or, at the best, permitted by an all-powerful conscious being was too horrible to not hate. It's oddly refreshing to find that all this time I was outraged at something more tangible.
Or is this the part where your grand plan is revealed, your "mysterious ways" made clear? Will you say the magic words and suddenly I'll understand how a child being raped, murdered, and left in a ditch fits in with you infinite benevolence? Will starvation and disease make sense? The reason for these things is so that humans can achieve morality. Without immorality, morality cannot exist. Without bad, there can be no good. Without choices, there can be no choosing - in this case, between good and evil; between God and Satan. There is no point in making a people so they have no free will, but it makes all the sense in the world to allow them to choose for themselves. Because you know, I don't think I want them to make sense. If that's part of your omniscient knowledge, then I don't want that part. I guess its fitting: humanity's first act of defiance was to want knowledge to be more like you. Then let my last act of defiance be choosing ignorance so that I can be as unlike you as possible. He'll be in hell, so no need. On another tangent, humans have been trying their hardest to be more and more like God for eternity.
This is all perfectly futile. You know me better than anyone. You know my mind. You know how I thought. You know – and had the power over- all the circumstances in my life that meant you very existence seemed impossible to me. After all, you "knit me together in my mother's womb," didn't you? So am I just a casualty of free will, then? You wanted worship from people who could choose to worship you and, to satisfy your ego, decided it was a fair price to create people whom you knew wouldn't choose you and would face eternal torture for it. Sigh, refer to my former point. There would be no point in making anyone if they didn't have truly free will; thus some must have the ability to deny Him, although they too can change. The author of this work was not predestined to deny Christ, but he does because he chooses to. If he so chose, he could accept Christ and his argument would thus be null. You know, even if almost everything had been perfect, a world free from pain and death where everyone would freely choose to spend an eternity with you – except for one person, and yet you made him anyways... then you would still be infinitely more evil than all the worst of humanity combined. Why? Would it not be infinitesimally more evil to disallow free will altogether? Forcing a choice on someone is better than allowing them to chose for themselves? If your atheistic beliefs are indeed false, and you end up in hell, it was your willful - and most likely self righteous - choice to do so. You denied God and believed, by means of free will, in what you WANTED to believe in. Would it not be more evil to rip that choice from your grasp, thus condemning you to believe that what you most ardently pursue is a lie? You're going to judge me? On behalf of all that's good and decent in your creation, I judge you. I may have been a willful child, but you were a terrible father.
I can't say I'm really inclined to beg for my soul now, given what I said about you knowing me perfectly. Even so, supposing mercy's still an option (and that last rant didn't kill my chances), I guess it's worth a shot. I can't pretend I have any love for you, but no principle is worth being damned over if it can be helped. What shall I say in my defense?
I tried to be good without you. You told your followers to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and visit the sick. I did those things, not because you told me to or because I thought I was "storing up treasure in heaven". I did them for their own sake, for the sake of my neighbors. When I saw suffering, I tried to help instead of saying a quick prayer to you and believing I'd done something. And when I didn't help and suffering continued, I held myself responsible instead of concluding it was just your divine will.
And I was content with one life- in fact, despite how terrible life could be, I was usually quite grateful to have one. I didn't demand more. I was content to create my own meaning in the meaningless chaos, to find love in all the pain, to find the beautiful simplicity in the apparent complexity. And I have to say, you may have failed basic ethics but you sure had a deft hand when it came to creating the cosmos – not least because you did it in such a way as to make yourself seem irrelevant. The splendor of the night sky, the incredible diversity of life, everything. Quantum mechanics? That was crazy, I loved it! And relativity? You were on a roll that day, really. I saw nearly all of your creation for what it was: wonderful. I didn't look at an exquisitely intricate world and call it fallen. I didn't look at a newborn baby and call it sinful. I didn't look at my seemingly finite life and call it inadequate.
So you created us because you desired companionship and love? Well then, you needed me. But I didn't need you. I grew up and took responsibility for my own life. If that really is the greatest crime of all, then there's nothing more I can say. The deck was stacked against me, but honestly, I can't truly say I have any regrets. Heaven, hell, oblivion... your move, God.
Though I still think I'm probably hallucinating.
This was kind of a weird essay to read, honestly. It was obscure and seemed to be comprised mostly of random rantings, although the author is am interesting writer.
I guess my main question for you now is:
What would it hurt to believe in God?