It is better to believe in the God of the Bible than to be an Atheist

My basic criticism in Round 1 was that Pro is "starting with a completely arbitrary idea and concluding that since things would turn out best for him if he believed in it and was correct, he should believe in the idea." I illustrated this point with a couple of examples that were intended to reduce his argument to absurdity, namely Islam and anti-God. I concluded that we should go by the evidence. Pro responds in four basic ways: 1. My Islam example misunderstands Islam. 2. My anti-God example is inconsistent with atheism. 3. Christianity is supported by historical evidence. 4. Going by the evidence does not lead to atheism. Let's consider these points one by one. Point 1 is based on Pro's belief that the Islamic God is all merciful. Even if this is what the Quran says, that only shows that there are contradictions within the Quran, just as there are contradictions within Christianity. Muslims will adopt one side or the other of the contradiction, rationalize the other away, and arrive at different views about the nature of God and the afterlife. Plenty of this goes on in Christianity as well - witness the endless divisions between denominations within Protestantism. All versions of God are arbitrary inventions, and plenty of them are incoherent. My point with the Islam example is that there is a version of God that some Muslims believe in that would send Christians to hell. These Muslims could pose the same wager to Pro that he poses to atheists. Point 2 misses the point of the anti-God analogy. All that it is intended to demonstrate is that there is a logically coherent version of God, evidentially on par with the Christian God, that would result in religious people going to hell and atheists going to heaven. There is no contradiction in the idea that God both exists and sends people who believe he exists to hell. If what Pro is asking for is an explanation of why a God would act this way, one possible explanation is that this God regards it as morally good to go by the evidence, and knows that the evidence we mortals have does not support the claim that there is a God. Such a God might decide to reward people who did not believe in God, and punish those who did. Point 3 isn't really explained or elaborated on in Pro's post. Is the claim here that the Bible qualifies as historical evidence for the miracles reported in it? But that's not how we treat the miracle claims of any other religion, nor should we. A miracle will always be a less likely explanation of the evidence than that the author was mistaken or lying. To answer point 4, I need to make a distinction between negative and positive atheism. [1] Negative atheism is the position that there is no good reason to believe that God exists. Positive atheism is the position that God does not exist. In practice, both of these positions amount to the same thing, since neither of them will take the idea of God seriously in deciding what to do, which politicians to vote for, etc. Negative atheism is justified if all of the arguments for the existence of God that have been put forward are unsuccessful. The only way to demonstrate this conclusively is to review the attempts of religious philosophers to defend theism, which would take more space than I have, although it has been done in the literature on philosophy of religion. [2] In the context of a debate, however, my opponent has the burden of proof to present arguments for the existence of God, which he has not done. Positive atheism requires that there be good reasons to believe that God does not exist. My opponent has not defined God, so I'll assume he believes in the orthodox conception of God as all powerful, all knowing, and all good. This version of God famously faces the problem of evil. If God is all powerful, all knowing, and all good, we would not expect there to be any gratuitous evil. But there does appear to be a lot of gratuitous evil. Therefore, the reasonable conclusion is that there is no such God. One last point: Pro says that his argument is about "accountability," not hell. But it is not clear what the distinction is supposed to be here. Accountability in Christianity usually means that Christians (or some other group, like virtuous people) go to heaven and everyone else goes to hell. In addition, Pascal's wager in Christian apologetics typically does depend on the threat of hell contrasted with the promise of heaven. Clearly, Pro needs to explain what he is talking about here. [1] See Michael Martin's book Atheism: A Philosophical Justification [2] Good authors to look into include A. C. Grayling, Michael Martin, Graham Oppy, Jordan Howard Sobel, and J. L. Mackie.