This question always bothers me, but it presumes something fundamentally wrong about belief.

Belief is not a choice, belief is a conclusion.

If you think belief is a choice, then please believe that god does not exist for a day, and then get back to me.

Taking the christian god as an example – since I used to be a christian – my current belief is that there is inadequate evidence to believe that he/he/it (F/S/HG) exists.

If that god exists, he knows the amount of evidence it would take for me to believe (omniscient, right?). I see three possibilities:

1) God exists, but for some reason he doesn’t want me to believe.
2) God exists and is indifferent to my belief.
3) God doesn’t exist.

If it’s the first, then I can honestly say that I was only following my heart. If it’s the second, then clearly my belief is of little import. And if it’s the third, well, I think you can figure that one out on your own.

Sure, god could exist, and could torture me for eternity. And he might, as he’s a bit of a bastard, at least when he’s in his OT mood.

What are your plans if Odin or Thor exist? In that case, you chose the wrong god, and looking at their writings, I don’t think they’re going to take kindly to it.

What if you’re wrong, and there’s no god? What about all that time you wasted sitting in church, and all the money you gave to the church when it could have been doing something to improve the human condition? How would you feel about that?

Posted: September 28th 2009

See all questions answered by Eric_PK

If I’m wrong, I go to hell. I’m sure enough of my convictions that the concept of hell doesn’t keep me awake any more than the concept of a Muslim, Greek or Old Norse hell keeps you awake.

Posted: September 26th 2009

See all questions answered by Reed Braden

If the God of the Bible is real, he’s got a lot of explaining to do. I’d want to know why he condoned slavery, rape and incest in the Old Testament. I’d demand an explanation of why he created homosexuals and then condemned them to hell. I’d want to know why he let the devil cause millenniums of misery just to prove a point to an unimportant angel.

In other words (and my apologies to believers who may be offended) I’d demand to know why he’s been such a dick.

Posted: September 16th 2009

See all questions answered by Dave Hitt

If I’m wrong and the god of the bible does exist, and wants the things that mainstream Christianity currently says he does, then after my body is dead, a non-physical part of 'me’ (that somehow manages to carry my identity in a way that doesn’t depend on the existence of a living brain) will go to a 'place’ (the word is senseless in a non physical realm) 'where’ it will (somehow) suffer eternal agony.

I’d like to ask the questioner to reflect on their reasons for asking the question.

Since you use the words 'you atheists’, it’s likely that you’re a theist who believes in things like heaven and hell. This being the case, it’s striking that you’re asking atheists what will happen if you’re right. I expect you already have a good idea of what will happen. If you don’t, it’s not clear why you’d approach atheists to learn about things they don’t believe in.

I looks to me as though you’re asking the question in bad faith. It sounds like you’re not really asking for information, but that you’d like atheists to reflect on the horrors they’ll face if they turn out to be mistaken—this would be a veiled appeal to Pascal’s Wager, which has already been discredited on this site.

Posted: September 10th 2009

See all questions answered by bitbutter

It is natural to think about what happens to us after we die. The human brain has, after all, evolved to the point where it is able to consider all kinds of questions. Most of these questions are useful things to think about, things that actually aid our survival because they help us to reason out the best possible answers to them. We are also able to imagine things. Again, there are many situations where the ability to imagine would have a survival value: think of an early berry-gatherer who is able to imagine how he would respond if a leopard were to leap out at him unexpectedly: the ability to imagine dangerous situations and make contingency plans for them can undoubtedly increase our ability to survive them.

But not everything we are capable of imagining is helpful to us.

The idea of an afterlife is appealing to many people, for obvious reasons. But even if there were such a thing, by definition we could not have any idea what it would be like. There simply isn’t any data to work with. So the human race has imagined the answers instead. And what an amazing array of answers it has imagined! Just look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterlife to get a feel for the range of stories on offer! Why should the story you have been taught to believe in be right, and all the others wrong?

Why are they all so different? Why is the afterlife a physical life in some, a spiritual life in others? Why only for the rich in some, only for the followers of one particular religion in others, only for the good in others, and for everyone (including animals) in others? Why do bad people simply not get to partake of the afterlife in some versions, and get hideously tortured in others? Why are there different versions of it, even within Christianity? Why is 'badness’ sometimes defined by actions, and sometimes defined by beliefs?

Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s because they are ALL made-up stories: stories generated by our imaginations to fill the gap in our knowledge. There is no reason to believe any of them! Not the slightest shred of evidence to suggest that we are aware of anything that happens to us after our death – and every reason to believe (because our awareness of anything at all is the result of physical processes in our physical brains, and we know that physical matter breaks down and ceases to function after death) that death is simply the end, so far as our ability to experience anything at all is concerned.

Back to your question: if the story about the afterlife that you have been taught to believe did turn out to be true, then sure, atheists would end up in hell. But if one of the other stories is true, YOU will end up in hell because you’ve believed in the wrong god. What is FAR more likely is that none of these stories is true – simply the product of our febrile imaginations – and that you are worrying about nothing.

The human brain can imagine all sorts of terrors, but it is not helpful or healthy to believe all of them. Are you going to lie awake all night tonight just in case a vampire comes to get you? Or just in case there’s an invisible goblin under your bed which will strike a dagger into your heart the moment you fall asleep? Of course not! Because, although you are able to think such thoughts, there isn’t the slightest reason to think they have any basis in reality.

It is precisely the same with your story about hell. It is one of any number of ghoulish stories that humans in different times and places have been able to imagine, but which there is not the slightest reason to believe. The only life we know we have is this one: it is a life full of opportunity for love and friendship and learning and knowledge and compassion and achievement and wonder and enjoyment and growth. What a terrible tragic waste to live it fearfully, in the shadow of a hideous story which there is no reason whatsoever to believe to be true.

Posted: September 10th 2009

See all questions answered by Paula Kirby

If I’m wrong and there is a god, a heaven, and a hell, then we’re all screwed. No living person can ever gain reliable knowledge about the afterlife, so not only would atheists be screwed, theists, including the person who wrote this question, would be screwed too. How would a theist know s/he had chosen the right religion, or even if one exists?

For all we know, whether we end up in heaven or hell may be determined by the flip of a coin, or what day of the week you die on, or other such nonsense. Even if we suppose that there is a code of ethics that would get us into heaven, how would we know what that is?

There are many people who claim to know the answer, but these claims usually amount to mere superstition (I read it in some old book).

Theological arguments promoting one ethical system or another are no more effective than their secular counterparts unless we presuppose certain knowledge about divine justice. If the theologian attempts to justify this knowledge, he must rely on superstition or he is again on a level playing field with secular ethics. He must justify god’s values on the same bases as I would justify my own, namely experience, reason, and intuition.

So we’re no better off with certain knowledge that hell exists unless we also have certain knowledge of divine justice. No such knowledge is available, so it’s a moot point.

If the questioner’s particular views on divine justice are correct, so much the worse for me, though hopefully s/he is better off. I can imagine all sorts of circumstances, which, if true, would induce me to wild behavior. Basing moral choice on a pure hypothetical is clearly insupportable.

Edited 9/28/09

Posted: September 9th 2009

See all questions answered by George Locke

In that case, it’s still up in the air where we’ll go when we die.

Even if all three things are real, AND the god is the one you think it is, it’s still possible that God’s criteria for entry into each place aren’t what you think they are. Good works might trump faith or grace, for example, so that altruistic actions are worth more than worship in the eyes of God and generous atheists go to heaven more often than Christians who spend their time converting people instead of helping them.

You could now ask the next person, “What if there is a god, a heaven and a hell, and to get into Heaven you have to do what it says in the Bible?” Hopefully at this point, though, you realise how many enormous and separate presumptions you have to impose on top of “what if you’re wrong” for it to have any persuasive power.

Your full, unspoken question is, “What if you’re wrong and I’m right?” If we’re both wrong, and there’s a god other than the one you worship, or it’s your guy but he doesn’t behave as you expect, then your fate and mine depend on criteria we will probably never work out. Given the number of possible gods, and the number of different temperaments the Abrahamic God could possibly have, this is not the most unlikely scenario.

Posted: September 9th 2009

See all questions answered by SmartLX