The International House of Bacon

An interesting question was posed late last week, and it’s one I’ve encountered a few times:

Atheist readers, what if you were to suddenly find out tomorrow that the God of the Christian Evangelicals was real?

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I’m not asking HOW it would happen (see Frank’s earlier blog on this) but IF it happened, how would you react?

I don’t know if the “what if” question for atheists is a universal one, or simply goes with the stereotypical Catholic guilt that makes me still shudder at the thought of hell, not enjoy pleasurable experiences as much, etc etc. However, it at least seems to be somewhat different where I don’t come to it from a place of anger (i.e., prayer failed me, something bad happened, etc).

At least for me, my positioning comes from a place of needing more evidence. Thus, if this evidence comes forth that I’m dead wrong about this, do I have any other choice? I wonder how many atheists would say “yes, I still have a choice here.” Not saying that there’s no extra choice to “follow” or whatever, but just on the existence angle.

The more interesting concept for me, actually, involves more of the free will aspect of the discussion - if the God in the discussion is real as we’ve been told to believe, we’ve also got the free will argument to run with, and a broader discussion about the ideologies and the way we got to that point and whatever else is created as well. While advancing the debate significantly, it also brings up a lot of other odd questions.

So yeah. It’s an interesting concept, and one that probably would require more thought if it were something that could realistically occur.