13 Atheists Explain Why They Don’t Believe In God
“I must have prayed for something like 25 or 30 years. Not one single prayer was ever answered.”
1. I must have prayed for something like 25 or 30 years. Not one single prayer was ever answered.
“The bottom line for me is this. If God isn’t prepared to answer prayers in a very concrete way, i.e (Hey, God, I don’t have a job or I don’t have money to pay the rent), then s/he is less than useless to me. I see absolutely no reason whatsoever to have a God in my life who is unwilling or incapable of answering emergency prayer.
In any event, I must have prayed for something like 25 or 30 years. Not one single prayer was ever answered.”
2. If God is the only creator, why did he create evil, and how could he do that if he is good?
“The concept of God is logically inconsistent. How can anything imperfect come from a perfect God? How can there be evil in the world if God is good. Who created evil? If God is the only creator, why did he create evil, and how could he do that if he is good? How can God have a nature at all if he is omnipotent?
3. ‘God’ is just Santa Claus for adults.
“• It’s blindingly obvious that all world religions are the product of extremely ignorant (not stupid) near-barbarians who didn’t understand much about the world around them and made up stories to explain things the best they could.
• It’s also blindingly obvious that most people who say they believe in God believe in the God that is worshiped by the culture in which they grew up. And everybody is convinced that their religion is the only ‘right’ one. They can’t all be right, but they can certainly all be wrong.
• It is also blindingly obvious that the universe is just too vast and full of stuff not in any way related to humans to seriously believe that it was all made just for us and that we are the pinnacle of all creation.
• It is also blindingly obvious that the religious beliefs of today are substantively the same as every other discarded superstitious belief of the past. If it’s silly to believe in Thor and Osiris, it’s just as silly to believe in Allah or Jehovah.
• It is also blindingly obvious that every single bit of proposed ‘evidence’ for the existence of God has either been totally debunked or can be explained through other means. And it is blindingly obvious that any justification for believing in God is part of an ever-shrinking ‘god of the gaps’ argument.
• It is also blindingly obvious that the holy scriptures that supposedly provide the only source for knowledge about God are riddled with internal inconsistencies and blatantly wrong information about the world and world history.
• It is also blindingly obvious that every depiction of God that is actually worshiped by anybody is riddled with logical inconsistencies. How can God be all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving if he permits massive suffering throughout the entire universe (and not just suffering caused by man’s free will)? Why would an all-loving God set up a system whereby the vast, vast majority of his children would never get a chance to hear the ‘truth’ and be saved, and thus be condemned to an eternity of torture? How can God simultaneously be immaterial and timeless (‘pure mind’) and still interact with the material world?
• It is also blindingly obvious that things like ‘God moves in mysterious ways’ and ‘God always answers prayers, but sometimes the answer is no’ are just lame excuses to explain why God rarely (if ever) keeps his supposed promise to actually GIVE the faithful what they ask for in faith (not just ‘answer their prayers’).
• It is also blindingly obvious that ‘God’ is just Santa Claus for adults. Believing in Him may give you comfort in times of trouble and give you something to look forward to, but that doesn’t mean He is real.
4. I can be good without God.
“There were many lessons taught in my religion class. In retrospect, I think that the purpose of my religion class is to teach the values of the Catholic Church and to foster a good individual. I am in full support to that end, which is to be a good individual. However, I don’t like the idea that the motivational force behind it is the reward of salvation or the punishment of eternal suffering; mainly because it means that the only thing keeping a person decent is the promise of a divine reward. For me, being a good person is a choice anyone can make, regardless of belief.
5. All of the arguments for God’s existence are ridiculously weak.
“I have seen a lot of arguments for the existence of God. And they all boil down to one or more of the following: The argument from authority. (Example: ‘God exists because the Bible says God exists.’) The argument from personal experience. (Example: ‘God exists because I feel in my heart that God exists.’) The argument that religion shouldn’t have to logically defend its claims. (Example: ‘God is an entity that cannot be proven by reason or evidence.’) Or the redefining of God into an abstract principle…so abstract that it can’t be argued against, but also so abstract that it scarcely deserves the name God. (Example: ‘God is love.’)
And all these arguments are ridiculously weak.
Sacred books and authorities can be mistaken. I have yet to see a sacred book that doesn’t have any mistakes. (The Bible, to give just one dxample, is shot full of them.)
6. Evolution makes more sense.
“The question that comes up again and again is this one: you have this god with unlimited powers, who knows everything, and who is all-good, so why is there so much suffering in the world?
Inevitably when you ask a version of this question, your religious elders will give you answers that sound like they’re making up excuses. Or they will shut you down by telling you not to ask such questions.
But the questions don’t go away. You’re left still wondering. Then you learn about evolution and you think: that makes sense! And you learn about religious myths from other cultures and you think: hmm, that’s kind of like what I grew up believing. Then slowly the weird stories from your religion stop making sense.
You cross out the talking snakes and the walking on water and the flying horses, etc.
Okay, you think, now I have a good religion without all the hard-to-believe stuff.
Then you dig deeper and you realize that even the ‘good’ parts have problems: xenophobia, sexism, slavery, exhortations to kill people who offend your faith or to go to war against them.
That makes you uncomfortable.
You decide you need a break from religion to think things through.”
7. People try to convert atheists by insulting their intelligence and expecting enthusiastic acceptance.
“I guarantee neither you nor anybody else has an argument that hasn’t been tried before. And I have never, NEVER heard of any argument that had even a hint of factual basis. EVERY argument is either word games (‘how can something come from nothing?—therefore the Christian God’) or a complete distortions (‘gaps in the fossil record! Thermodynamics! Complexity! Therefore God’) or utter bullshit (‘where does goodness come from, if not from God?’).
Frankly, it seems as if the entire Convert-an-Atheist strategy is based exclusively on insulting their intelligence and expecting enthusiastic acceptance.
—Luke
8. The majority of the members of the human race still reject reality in favor of make-believe.
“I think perhaps the more profound question is, ‘Why does anyone still believe in a god?’
We now understand the workings of so many things that were previously attributed to gods. We know that we are a product of evolution and not the whimsical conjurings of a capricious deity. We know that the universe works very well on its own, without the need for any interference from a supernatural agent. And we know that there is no objective evidence at all to support the notion of a god, or a heaven, or an afterlife.
Logically, the human race should had rid itself of this often-destructive cerebral error fabricated in infancy. Why has it not? The majority of the members of the human race still reject reality in favor of make-believe.
9. Protip: if you want people to worship your God, try not to make him sound like a sadistic narcissist asshole.
“Hell. God will straight up send you to Hell. Forever. Unimaginable torment, forever. He loves you, just as if you were his own child, which is why you must never question your faith or you will burn for all eternity. You have to accept his truth, even if all your family and friends (who will burn forever) do not, or else you go to Hell. That church was big on Hell. Protip: if you want people to worship your God, try not to make him sound like a sadistic narcissist asshole. That was the end of me listening to a damned thing in that church; I don’t respond well to bullies, and the God they worshiped was the ultimate king of bullies. Adore me above all else, or I will make you suffer in ways you can’t even understand. Seriously, you get past the flowery language, that was the message being taught.
10. The Christian god is logically inconsistent. He will mete out eternal punishment for offenses committed in a finite lifespan. This alone proves he is unjust.
“The Christian god is logically inconsistent. He will mete out eternal punishment for offenses committed in a finite lifespan. This alone proves he is unjust. Humanity has existed, as a distinct species, for 100–200 thousand years. Were we to accept the biblical account, we must accept that God stood idly by for 98–99% of our existence, and only sent a redeemer ~2000 years ago. This shows he is without love or mercy. The realities of his actions disprove the claims made by his followers. If this god exists, he either does not live up to the words of his followers, or his followers have not properly defined him (and by the previous point, they would be unable to do so).
11. Religion is about control and limitation.
“Religion is about control and limitation. Rules, laws and rituals that restrict and govern behavior. In some cases – say the genital mutilation of infants in barbaric rites of passage practiced by religions such as Judaism – they actually persuade nice people to do awful things.
Which is to say nothing of the countless other horrors committed in the name of God and religion. Suicide bombings, torture, genocide, forced marriages, unwanted babies, war – the list is endless.
A life without religion and without God thus offers freedom from all of these miseries. It offers a person the opportunity to do what they like, in line with their own moral code, within the parameters of the society in which they live. Each decision to be taken is evaluated on its own merits, weighing up the pros and cons, and is not forced down a path by a pre-existing code of conduct dating from a time of ignorance and superstition.
12. If God were really the author of the Bible, it would probably be much less full of atrocities, contradictions, plagiarisms, and absurdities.
“The God of the Bible (and the Koran, and the Book of Mormon, etc.) already has enough going against him… If he were really the author of the Bible, it would probably be much less full of atrocities, contradictions, plagiarisms, and absurdities. Considering the only real knowledge we have on the subject comes either from numinous, unverifiable personal experiences or ancient books of mythology which can be proven to be as I’ve just described them (in a word: nonsense), the God which they describe can thus safely be assumed to be fictional.
13. Because he’s the only being supposedly powerful enough to prevent suffering yet he chooses not to.
“Suppose you are God. You created evil and calamity (Isaiah 45:7). When horrible things happen to your creation, you watch and do nothing. When a human steps in to solve the problem, you take the credit and demand to be praised. And you expect me to die and spend eternity worshipping the only being who was powerful enough to prevent the suffering, yet chose not to? It’s much more logical to assume that no god exists, and this book was written by Bronze-Age fisherman trying to understand the world.”
