It Better to Have Lived a Christian, Than to have Lived an Atheist.

First off I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I also want to thank Pro for starting such an interesting debate. I enjoyed reading through Pro's attempt try and convince us of his point of view. I think he made some good points, but there were holes in his logic and I will proceed to point them out in the upcoming rounds. I'm glad that my opponent started off with that quote from David Plat. Let me re-post part of that quote, "Radical obedience to Christ is not easy... It's not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things." Sound like much happiness so far? Let's look more at what a true follower of Christ's life looks like. In Matthew 8 it says, "Jesus replied, 'Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.'" In Luke 14 it says, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters yes, even their own life such a person cannot be my disciple." Being a follower of Christ is hard. When we look at the stories of Jesus calling his first disciples he basically just says, "you guys have to leave EVERYTHING if you want to follow me." Next we come to what Pro calls his win-win situation. In this he says, "If God doesn"t end up existing after all this, the Christian still lived a great life because not only did they think God was always watching over them (Allowing them to get through our darkest of times)" This is entirely independent of being a Christian. If God doesn't end up existing than Atheist all the same could have still lived just as great life. They also would have gotten through their life's darkest times without the "emotional crutch" that so many refer to God as.* He then goes on to explain how the atheist is in a "lose-lose" position. He says, "The Atheist will live in a world where they believe there is no God, and that being said this means there is no ultimate source of happiness" Anything can be a source of happiness. No where in round one did you show evidence that God was the "ultimate source" of happiness. With as much evidence as you have provided: God, money, sex, ect are all equal sources of happiness. Then he even goes on to say, "In addition, if they are to die, and the Christian God is to have existed, then they will most likely, under what the Bible states clearly, go to Hell." This is assuming the Christian God exists, which we obviously can't do for this debate. I could just as easily say what if the Christian dies and learns that there is actually a god who exists who punishes Christians. That would be a real lose-lose situation. Giving up your whole life for the God you believe existed only to learn that there was actually a god who punished Christians. The next argument my opponent makes is a morality problem for the atheist supposedly. This, however, is under the false pretenses that an Atheist cannot do just as much moral good in the world as a theist. I don't think anyone actually believes that, but pro even goes on to say, "Christians inherently have this kind of dedication to spreading good throughout the world." which is not true. Christians are called to help others, yes, but Christians are not born with some inherent will to help others more than atheist. I was not even planning on making an argument based upon long term happiness vs. short term happiness so I won't address that specifically, but I did take issue with one thing pro said in that section. He said, "for as long as they believe that God is with them and watching over them, and that they will have eternal life, they will always be happier than any Atheist could ever be." Yet pro has not shown that to be true. Certainly, thinking you will have eternal life is comforting and will make you happy, but so will so many other things that the atheist can be a part of. In conclusion, when we actually read the gospels we see that the lives of the early disciples were actually extremely difficult. Jesus called them, and us as Christians, to give up all that we have. Most of them lived in such radical obedience that they were martyred. Becoming a Christian is an easy thing to do, living out your life in a way that God calls you to is extremely hard. Secondly, there are no reasons to believe that an atheist cannot do as much moral good as a Christian. I thank my opponent for his round one post and I look forward to hearing more of his arguments in the future. Thank you. *I don't actually believe God to be an "emotional clutch" but I know many atheist claim that.