My friend Chad had read yesterday's post on Atheism/etc and we were chatting about it, when he said there was something he'd always wanted to ask an Atheist. So I said "sure, go ahead!" and his question was (and I'm paraphrasing...)

So, ok, hypothetically, what if it happens, when you finally die, it ends up that there is some God/spiritual realm/whatever - what would you say?

To which I could only respond,

Oops.

Heh. See, though, that's the beauty of following The Scientific Method! You don't get emotionally/egotistically attached to an idea or theory or hypothesis. When you receive new evidence that contradicts what you believe, you simply adapt your thinking. No big deal.

I of course went on to point out that while, yes, if I die, and then am suddenly in front of some God, I wouldn't sit there and try to deny his/her existence as that would be stupid. I deny the existence of a God because there's no evidence to support the belief in one. Standing in front of one would be evidence. And, I think, after thousands of years of human history with countless millions of people trying to prove existence of Gods and other spiritual beings, and completely failing, that it's safe to say that it isn't likely that any exist.

Humans are hard-wired to assign "supernatural" origins to things they simply don't currently understand. In the way distant past, humans didn't understand a damn thing, so they made up Gods for everything. The Sun, the Moon, fire - you name it. But now the Sun is very much understood, and so you don't see many/any people worshiping a Sun God anymore. As humans came to understand more and more things, there became less and less Gods and Demons. Mental illness used to be thought to be caused by Demons or the Devil; now we understand it's mainly just chemical imbalances in the brain. The list goes on. But yet many humans still hang onto the idea of a God, because we're hard-wired to.

There is still that "what if?" barrier for some people. "What if I choose Atheism and I'm wrong?" Well, ok, sure, that would suck. But, look at the evidence. It's more likely, far more likely in fact, that there are no Gods, than that there are. You should instead ask yourself, "What if I waste my entire life, worrying about, stressing about, and basically agonizing over, some invisible, non-communicative, vengeful, Sky-bully, and it ends up that he/she doesn't exist?"