[ItsDarts]

I saw this on an atheist site and kind of liked it and thought I'd share it here.... it goes like this...

The Atheist's Wager:

Why don’t you just be an atheist? If there is a god, and it is moral and loving and worthy of respect, then it won’t mind if people have rational doubts about it and rational reasons for not believing in it. This god won’t punish people for exercising their critical thinking skills and are skeptical of the claims of other, fallible humans. Thus, you wouldn’t lose anything.

And if there is a god who punishes people for rational doubt, why would you want to spend an eternity with it anyway? Such a capricious, egotistical, and nasty god wouldn’t be much fun. If you can’t trust it to be as moral as you are, you can’t trust it to keep its promises and make heaven nice or even let you stay for long. Not spending eternity with such a being doesn’t sound like much of a loss.

I’m not asking you to choose atheism — that doesn’t make much sense, obviously. However, I am asking you to take atheism seriously. I am asking you to consider that atheism might be at least as reasonable as theism, and in fact might actually be much more reasonable. I am asking you to be more skeptical about religion and ask harder, more critical questions about traditional beliefs, regardless of where the consequences take you.

Perhaps your beliefs will be unchanged — but after being questioned, they should be stronger. Perhaps some of the details of your beliefs will change, but you will remain a theist — but this new position should be stronger. And, if you do end up an atheist because you lose any good reasons to continue with your current religion and/or current theism, what have you really lost? Source

So my questions are this.... does it make sense? Is it a rational point of view in your atheistic or theistic minds? Can this be easily shredded in a debate?

Discuss.....