You Dumb! What if there is a God?!

Andry, also known as Baygon Ipis Killer, has played a big factor to my switch toward the side of skepticism. For many nights, we would meet in a particular room and talk about many issues surrounding my wobbly theistic beliefs and his grandstanding atheism.

Those days are long over now and, in fact, I rarely see him any longer. The last time I heard of him is that he got his head buried on technical papers he has to organize in line with his studies.

We practically became friends and teammates and together we argued for the side of Atheism in chat rooms and forums.

In one of those calm and respite moment, Andry blurted, "Hey, Joma, what if after all this war of words and urging, we find that there is, in reality, a God?"

I replied, "Oh that is easy. In the face of undeniable facts, all we have to do is accept Him. After all, if there is an omni-all-God, it will then be a gain for humankind. And, you know what?"

"What?" he raised.

I concluded, "I will get my butts early on the Pearly Gates, perhaps much ahead than those bigoted theist!"

There was a long silence. I felt he was unconvinced with my reply, and I established my suspicion when he continued, "Joma, you don’t see the point. Look, if all what has been said by our theists friends is true, then you don’t even have a chance of seeing the Pearly Gates. I mean, you and me will be transported door-to-door to Hell to be welcomed with all its fire, brimstones, gnashing teeth and worms!"

Well, Andry surely got me into a lot of thinking. And, for good reasons, why not? You see, rational thinking is not all about "shrug off the shoulder" and dismisses other reasonable possibilities. Much more, a logical person does not take the "devil will take care of tomorrow" attitude. And so, my quest continues.

Now let us go back to the question, "But what if reason (against faith) is wrong in this case?" Reasons, in many cases, are wrong, as we all know; we are fallible human beings, after all. What if it turns out that there is a Christian god and He's up there and He's going to punish for eternity for disbelieving in Him.

I will present to you my explanations and ways of thinking.

Let's take for granted that you are an atheist. What are the possible expectations and scenarios?
The first possibility is there is no god, then, you're right. In that case, you'll breathe your last breath, that'll be it, you've lost nothing, and you have lived a happy life with the correct position.

The secondly possibility, a god may exist but he may not be concerned with human relationships. We are seeing here an uncaring God. He may be the god of conventional Deism, the same God that Albert Einstein and Anthony Flew believe in. He may have started the universe going and left it to its traditional plans, in which case you will simply die, that is all there is to it, again, and you've lost nothing.

Here is the third possibility. Let's suppose that God exists and He is concerned with human affairs -- He's a personal god -- but that He is a just god. This God is concerned with justice, and being so, He could not possibly punish an honest error of belief where there is no extreme immorality or wickedness or no wrongdoing involved.

If this god is a creator god and He gave us reason as a tool for understanding our world, then He would take pride in the careful and conscientious use of reason the part of His creatures, even if they committed errors from time to time. This is the same way a caring father would take pride in the actions of his daughter, even if the she committed errors from time to time. Therefore, if there is a just God, we have absolutely nothing to fear from such a god. Such a god could not conceivably punish us for an honest error of belief.

Now we came to the last possibility. Suppose there exists an unjust god, specifically the god of Christianity, who doesn't give a damn about justice and who will burn us in Hell, regardless of whether we made honest mistakes or not. Such a god is necessarily unjust; for there is no more heinous injustice we could conceive of, than to punish a person for an honest error of belief, when he has tried to the best of his ability to ascertain the truth. In this case, the Christian thinks he's in a better position.

I wish to point out that he's not in any better position than we are because you have an unjust god. The earmark of injustice is deceitful behavior, behavior that's not conventional. If there's an unjust god and He really gets all this glee out of burning sinners and disbelievers, then what could give him more glee than to tell Christians they would be saved, only to turn around and burn them anyway, for the hell of it, just because he enjoys it? If you've got an unjust god, what worst injustice could there be than that? It's not that far-fetched.

If a god is willing to punish you simply for an honest error of belief, you can't believe He's going to keep his word when He tells you He won't punish you if you don't believe in Him because He's got to have a sadistic streak to begin with. Certainly He would get quite a bit of glee out of this behavior. Even if there exists this unjust god, then admittedly Atheists live in a nightmarish universe, but we're in no worse position than the Christian is.

My Conclusions
Again, if you're going to make the venture, you are to do it based on reason and it tells you, that atheism is correct. You will go that direction because you won't be able to do anything about an unjust god anyway, even if you agree to Christianity.

This venture says that you should, in all cases, put your risk on reason and accept the logical outcome, which in this case is atheism.

If there's no god, you're correct; if there's an indifferent god, you won't suffer; if there's a just god, you have nothing to fear from the honest use of your reason; and if there's an unjust god, you have much to fear but so does the Christian.

Prepared by Joma, on 6 June 2005
(While the accounts of my making contact with Andry is accurate and truthful, my articulations were based on the speech "How to Defend Atheism" delivered by George Smith in 1976. I personalized them to be mine.)