Why I Don’t Believe in God
This is not a scholarly look, or in any order; just a stream-of-consciousness accounting of why I don’t believe in God. Nor is it meant to convince anyone to believe as I do. While I don’t believe in any supernatural god, it will focus on Christianity because, demographically but not politically, the U.S. is largely Christian and further because of the rise of and desire for white Christian nationalism.
Let me start with logic, borrowing from an unknown author. I don’t believe “Because God sending himself to impregnate a (betrothed teenager) woman with himself so he could be born, pray to himself – and kill himself in order to sacrifice himself to himself so he can forgive sins he created himself in order to save us from hell created by himself, sounds like something even himself wouldn’t believe.”
It doesn’t make any sense to me. Nor does his being born and evangelizing in a desolate corner of the world.
Why did he himself author through various writers a “holy book” so full of contradictions – violence while preaching love and open to many interpretations (witness the large number of Christian denominations, many asserting they have the one truth)? Research indicates most people join a religion because of where and to whom they were born – geographic/familiar religious belief — not because of any real study of any religion. Did God preach his message knowing this would occur? Also, not logical.
At this point, a common rejoinder would be, “We can’t understand such things because we can’t know the mind of God; he’s a mystery.” This is a convenient way to give God a “home-free” pass, as well as not having the need to do any serious research and analysis. Especially when men of the cloth preach so many sermons on love and kindness while ignoring the violence, incest, genocide and female discrimination in the bible. But Christianity has long disparaged reading, worrying that it creates critical thinking and, thus, non-believers.
This leads to the “god of the gaps” reasoning, so common throughout history and in relation to the bible.
When ancient ancestors didn’t know the cause of something – a gap in knowledge (perhaps a disease or an eclipse, etc) – they simply accepted that God had caused it. Over the years, science has closed many of these gaps with experimental evidence, leaving God and religion in the dust.
It will continue to do so.
Hinted in the above, the history of Christianity and all religion is strife with violence and even genocide while love and peace are preached. Holy wars and crusades with burnings and inquisitions, ‘God is on our side’ (or so stated by the combatants on each side). More than 20 million deaths/killings are described in the bible, as are adultery, incest, rape and other such immoral happenings.
The focus of much of the ill treatment in many cases is women, a problem to this day: Get behind me, woman; don’t teach or even speak, woman; be a slave to your spouse, woman; don’t vote, woman; save the women as spoils of war, and use them as you will.
Now, sit back and picture our tiny blue dot in the immensity of space. If God created all of this, how does he treat sentient beings on other planets? Why, humans? Are we special? Is there an uncreated creator of the universe?
Will all the unbelievers go to hell just because of their lack of belief, and how loving is this?
Editor’s note: Jim Coufal of Cazenovia is a part-time philosopher and full-time observer of global trends. He can be reached at madnews@m3pmedia.com.