What if you're wrong?

The prominent atheist Richard Dawkins was asked at some point in the past, "What if you are wrong?"  His answer, of course, was brilliant, but I have an answer of my own.

"What if you're wrong?" asks the student.

"What if I'm wrong?"  I reply, "What if you're wrong?  What if all this time, you have been living a life riddled with guilt regarding the natural lusts and desires of your body for no good reason?  Hating yourself without reason or rationale?  What if all this time you have been placing your sense of natural awe and wonder of the world and the universe into a man-made vessel, causing your curiosity to short circuit and placating you with simplistic explanations to truly fascinating and complex possible discoveries?

"What if they are wrong and their children die needlessly, and cruelly because they thought some figment of their imagination was telling them that a life saving blood transfusion is a sin?

"What if she is wrong and she stays with her abusive husband because she thinks a fabricated sky father would rather see her beaten to a pulp daily than face the prospect that she might find happiness in another?

"What if those parents are wrong, and they send their child into a spiral of doubt, confusion and self-loathing because they find out the child is gay?

"What if you are wrong and all this time your faith is merely a byproduct of your family, your ancestors some time back being subjugated and forced or duped to convert?  What if your made up deity is nothing more than the continued shameful exploitation of you and yours by the descendants of those who abused your ancestors in the past?

"What if you're wrong and all this time you have been praying to a god who isn't there, when you could have been communicating with those who care about you, and getting the love and support you really needed.

"What if you are wrong and all this time you have been living in a bubble of man's fabrication, unable to see the world for what it truly is, painting the rich color palate of reality with a set of 8 crayons?

"What if you are wrong, and you have put your heart and energy into something that does not exist?  What if you are wrong and you took this one life we have, the only thing we are sure of, and squandered it away by suffocating yourself in fantasy?

"What if you are wrong and your faith in an afterlife was nothing more than a tragically unmet need that you haven't been able to make peace with the facts of life and death?  What if your delusion has prevented you from ever being able to truly cope with the fact that you will never see your loved one again?

"What if you are wrong and all this time you were waiting for god to deliver happiness to you for your piety, you never stopped to realize that you hold that power within yourself?

"If you wish to discuss the potential consequences of a lack of faith, you must first examine the potential consequences of faith."



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beYYZRN1sEs