I Found one comment-response to my “Un-loseable Wager” posting quite interesting. The fellow, quite obviously coming from an atheistic point of view, blithely stated, “I’ll go with non-existent.” I thought, “Yes, and I think you’d best hope that’s what you get!”. The alternative, if he’s wrong in his non-belief, is hardly congenial! “I’ll go with non-existent”…short and to the point, but how odd, on reflection! Here’s a guy seemingly HAPPY, making a rather glib comment about his own prospects of extinction!
I’ve been thinking on this, and praying, naturally, for an honest understanding. I would never presume to “argue” or debate with an atheist. I haven’t the knowledge, and, I’m sure, the wit requisite for the joust…my whole hope regarding my blog is simply to encourage a good hard look at Christianity. My core belief is that the mind, the heart, and the instincts of one who assiduously seeks truth will bear fruit. Certainly both the atheist and Christian must agree, no one has all the truth. What puzzles me is that non-believers seem so content and even sometimes gleeful in their nihilism. I could never be so. I think there’s something else with which the atheist could hardly disagree . I can envision a scenario: two hospital beds, side by side. I am in one, our atheist friend in the other. We are in our last moments of life here. I would be a sad excuse for a Christian if I feared death. I fear the process…the pain, all the attendant mess of the body shutting down, etc….but death itself? NO! To me, this is the door to Paradise! My real life is about to begin! I believe that last instant, that last breath will see me smiling, with the name of Jesus on my lips. But I wonder what my roommate will be thinking in those final seconds as his organs begin their final failures and darkness starts to settle. Will there be a doubt, now? Will the scoffing, the witty derision still mix with his final breath? Might he then, in this extremis, think, “What if?…What if been wron (I’ve heard it said ,“Everyone has doubts” I’ve heard more than one Christian admit to the occasional doubt. Do atheists have doubts about LACK of faith? They seem so cocksure!) I know this: I would love, if able, in those final seconds, to ask my roommate his thoughts as death settles on him. What does a man have to look forward to when his highest hope is NOTHINGNESS at the end of it all…when the alternative to that nothingness (should he be wrong in his non-belief) is a HORROR…alienation from his creator, the realization, at last, of the paradise he’s passed up, even a hell, whatever its exact nature? We can’t debate the greatest of all questions. He can’t prove a negative and I can’t give him the sort of empirical evidence he seems to need. But how can he be happy? THIS, I would like some of our glib and witty atheist readers to answer for me. Forget, for the nonce, argument, pro and con, God, the nature of the universe, the truth of the resurrection…just tell me how you can so gleefully respond to the blog when your only “belief” is this bleak nihilism…this nothingness? If that’s all I had to look forward to, not only in this life, but at the end of it, I would be one sad puppy, I’ll tell you! I honestly want to understand just this little bit of it. I suppose we might have little chance at agreement on the larger issues…just give me your secret…how do you do it?