Atheist answers: What if you're wrong?

Hello. I know that many of your are very smart and reasonable people, so I would love your input on stuff. There are many common questions that atheists get asked and I would like to hear your responses. Hopefully, I can compile some genuinely good answers to these questions and make a little black atheist' handbook, that can help those who are looking for answers to their questions.

 The first in this little blog series is a relatively easy one: "What if atheists are wrong?"

You're are encouraged to post answers that you have from elsewhere - I know there are a couple of videos that depict such answers from Richard Dawkins and from the Atheist Experience, and if the questions are loaded, please feel free to point it out and explain why.

I thank you for your help.

gwiz665 says...

I'll answer it myself too, but I would like your perspectives.

"What if you're wrong" is a loaded question, because it is obviously clear what will happen if we're wrong, depending on what we're wrong about. If we are wrong about the Christian god, then we will go to hell, same with the Muslim god. I'm not entirely sure what would happen if we were wrong about Buddhism, but it would probably not be good.

You can respond with "Well, what if you are wrong in your particular religion?" I mean, a Muslim would not be on safe ground if he was wrong about the Christian god, because he would have followed a false prophet == straight to hell.

The question is not really worth any thing, because it's all speculation. A religious person could easier answer it better than an atheist, because it assumes that if the atheist is wrong, then one of the religions are right - the question is easily answerable by a person from the religion that is assumed right.

So I presume a good answer could be "So what?"

berticus says...

The simple answer is that if atheists are wrong, then whichever theistic belief system turns out to be correct will determine their fates.

But the question is really just Pascal's wager draped in fear (usually of the Christian hell).

The standard response is that since there are so very many religions, how is believing in any one of them any more reasonable than another? Each one could be just as wrong as the other, and since there is no evidence for any of them, why favour one?

(The person asking the question is usually thinking: "What if [y] is wrong and [z] is right?", when the question really is "What if [a,b,c,...y] is wrong and [z] is right?")

Psychologic says...

My comment from the video section


I'd say that if God exists then the most likely situation is that "He" created the universe via the Big Bang and then let everything play out from there.

So if I got to heaven then I guess my fate would be determined by the kind of person God wants in there. Does he want kind and loving people, or perhaps observant and intellectual people?

If it turns out that God only wants people who hold onto one specific religion out of hundreds of denominations based on its specific anecdotal evidence while rejecting all other anecdotal evidence then yea, I'm pretty much screwed in that case.

NetRunner says...

What if atheists are wrong?

Then you should pray for God to have mercy on them, and judge them by how they've touched the lives of others, and not by whether or not they've heard His call.

Should work as a response to a questioner from any monotheistic faith I'm familiar with.

If you're looking for something less nice:

"Then you'll get to say 'I told you so' while we're both burning in hell."

Then there's always some choice Gallileo Galilei:

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

If you're looking for famous quotes, I know a good place to find them.

Farhad2000 says...

Atheists can't actually be wrong because all religions were created by man, atheism is against religions created by mortal men.

If God exists, he is unknowable and impossible to understand. Human vanity is responsible for the idiotic belief that the entire known universe was created for them.

I say we are simply an anomaly in a chaotic system governed by solid rules we are still trying to understand fully.

imstellar28 says...

Q: What if you're wrong?

A: I'm often wrong. I form my beliefs with evidence, and there exists no evidence for or against the existence of any god. If I am wrong, then I will have spent my life living it in greater freedom than any theist ever could, and the fate of my soul will be equal to that of the billions of innocents who did have faith, if only in the wrong god.

Send this Article to a Friend



Separate multiple emails with a comma (,); limit 5 recipients






Your email has been sent successfully!

Manage this Video in Your Playlists

New Blog Posts from All Members