Why I Respectfully Don't Believe In God

Let me tell you about one of my best friends and how it relates to my skepticism regarding God.

She stayed in touch with an acquaintance despite it putting her in political danger after he was wrongly accused of sexual assault and all his friends abandoned him. She has helped multiple people, including me, navigate mental health struggles. She wants to become an engineer so she can build nuclear reactors that will fight against climate change. She pets her dog.

She also happens to love women and is not Christian—so apparently, she’s going to Hell…

It’s for this and many other reasons I have long been skeptical of believing in Christianity (and any religion). I grew up in a small rural town with three Christian churches under atheist parents. I’ve seen all sorts of Christians from those who take everything in the Bible literally, to those with hearts so full they have a gravitational force, to those who treat it more like a hobby they get back into every few months.

I have a deep deep respect for Christianity and many religions. I resonate with the values underlying lots of religions like not murdering people (except in video games). I have great religious friends. I've dated a Christian woman. I'll even admit I sometimes find atheists to be more stubborn and irrational in their arguments than Christians; Atheism and science itself can become their own religion.

Just as believers must learn to look for reasons behind their faith, skeptics must learn to look for the faith behind their reasons.

That’s why I'm writing this article. I want to help both religious and non-religious people appreciate the other side more. At the end of the process, even if you remain the skeptic or believer you have been, you will hold your own position with both greater clarity and greater humility.

I’ll admit I’m biased because I believe in atheism and science and more specifically optimistic absurdism. If I get a little heated in the writing of this article, remember I'm talking mostly about a faith which believes one of my best friends is going to spend eternity in hell. How would you feel if someone believed the same?

I will focus specifically on the Christian God because it’s the religion I’m most familiar. To format this article, I will go through the strongest six arguments against Christianity, the strongest Christian counter-arguments, and finally why I think their counterarguments are invalid. When it’s relevant I’ll specify between various Christian denominations but the core of the doctrine remains quiet similar across denomination.

The Faith Problem

"Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand." - Neil Armstrong

Just today I was asked by three Mormons alongside my aforementioned friend at lunch about what it would take to convince me to convert to Mormonism.

I said three things:

• Justification for why Mormonism itself is the superior religion compared to other religions and better for the world and myself compared to living an atheist life.
• Justification that God exists beyond the probabilistic occurrence of “miracles” in my life.
• Justification for how the world works that would work in tandem with science or prove it wrong.

After a long albeit warm and kind debate, the Mormon argument always came back to the same thing: you don’t have enough faith.

Nothing will ever convince you about the truth in Mormonism unless you open your heart and put your faith in God. I can respect this. Some degree of faith is necessary for anything. As we’ll get to later in the article, science itself is based on faith (but of a different kind than religion).

But Faith itself is not enough.

First, it’s circular. In order to justify Gods existence I need to have faith God exists. That’s not justification, that’s blind belief.

Second, it gives no justification for why Mormonism or any other religion is the true one. Any religion can be the true one if I just have faith. There has to be some logical justification, some evidence of some sort for why that religion is right (we'll get more in depth into evidence in the section on science).

The Mormons in the discussion began to cite evidence for their faith based on personal experience of their prayers bringing good to their lives. The miracles they experienced proved the Mormon God.

But how do you know these prayers came to fruition from God?

All Christian denominations are based on great advice (mostly) for living a more meaningful and fulfilled life. Take the average person who enters into Religion and you’ll see they have a lot of problems. That’s often what makes them seek out religion in the first place. They begin praying and following some of the other great principles for living a good life and of course there life gets better. How can you know it was Gods influence rather than simple regression to the mean? How can we be sure we haven’t sunk cost biased (it’s a verb now I made it one), or fooled ourself into believing in God?

Often Christians will point toward miracles. I prayed my father would overcome his terminal cancer and he did. Miracles do happen but I believe they are simply very unlikely events. Over a large enough time scale, it would actually be a miracle for them not to happen, especially when you are looking for them say--because you’re searching for a reason for Gods existence. I have yet to experience a miracle which is not explainable with probability.

Who’s to say it was God who made it happen rather than simple chance? How do we know it's causation and not correlation?

Christians point back to faith. Well, now we’re back to the same problem again aren’t we?

Science Has Disproved Christianity

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan

Evolution. The fallibility of Miracles. Physics. And so much more aspects of science seem to be at fundamental odds with Christianity. What gives?

A common religious response is science and religion address different questions. Science answers 'how', religion answers 'why'. They're complementary, not contradictory. Many brilliant scientists throughout history were deeply religious.

This is true and yet it doesn’t stop the fact that religious claims often make testable predictions. When they do, they often fail to meet scientific scrutiny. For example, the Earth seems to be 4.5 billion years old rather than only 6,000 to 10,000. There's no geological evidence for a worldwide flood. Humans aren’t special, we just wiped out anll the other human species which existed before us. And so much more.

Brilliant scientists weren’t brilliant because of religion, they were in spite of it.
One more religious response is science itself is faith based. Science can only study natural causes, not supernatural ones. That is because natural causes are the only kind its methodology can address. There would be no experimental model for testing the statement: “No supernatural cause for any natural phenomenon is possible.” Therefore even taking science into account, it’s still an article of faith that God doesn't exist.

That's true. There is literally nothing I could do to argue against that. There is also no way of proving 100% that I can't coalesce a pet Alpaca using my bare hands. Yet I'm not going to claim I can.

It would be unfair and disingenuous to claim that Alpaca statement were in the same vane as saying God exists as there is quiet a bit of evidence in Christianity for why they believe in some form of divine presence. But this doesn't change the fact not all faith claims are made equal.

The faith that underlies trust in the tenets of science are simply not the same as the faith claims underlying the truths in religious doctrine. One is based on empirical study, cross examination, and continual refinement. The other is based on strict belief in doctrine.

I don’t believe in anything in the sense that I’m open to having even my most fundamental beliefs (like my cat Lola is objectively the best cat) questioned with enough evidence. I believe in probabilities. The probability that evolution exists seems pretty great in that there is a titanic amount of evidence for it in the world. The fossil record, vestigial structures like tail bones in human buts, and the use of artificial selection to create most foods we eat. So I choose to believe in it, but always remain open to evidence which shifts the probability to something else.

A religious person might say we can't trust what we see with our senses--that's why we ascribe to a God. I would agree, we can't trust what we see with our senses! That's why we follow a set of principles which help us mitigate human bias as much as possible. It's called science.

Reality is that which exists even when you stop believing in it.

That's the nice thing about science, it continues to tick even when you don't tock.

I should make clear, I don't see science as the be all end all solution to understanding everything about the world. Science itself is inadequate for explaining everything regarding how to live a good life, how the world works, and more. But I do believe it's a lot better at doing so than religion at least in regards to the second question.

You Can’t Take Christian Texts Literally

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Those who sanitize the past are condemned to justify it." - Modified from George Santayana

So many Christian texts are no longer relevant to the socio-cultural landscape of today. Science proves many testable statements wrong. So, why should we listen to the texts now?

One Christian response is we’re taking an overly literal approach. The Bible in specific uses different literary genres: poetry, metaphor, history. Not everything is meant to be read literally. Genesis might be explaining WHO created the universe, not scientifically HOW.

My response is this creates a convenient moving target:

• Comfortable passages are literal
• Uncomfortable ones become metaphorical
• No clear criteria for which is which

It’s worth mentioning many Christian denominations like Catholicism take value in both The Bible and the Church’s interpretation of it. This gives more flexibility to its beliefs. but that doesn’t stop the fact interpreting The Bible literally has many flaws.

Another religious response is it's unfair to judge historical texts from the socio-cultural climate of today. In the words of Timothy Keller: "Of course, we think of the Anglo-Saxons as primitive, but someday others will think of us and our culture’s dominant views as primitive. How can we use our time’s standard of “progressive” as the plumbline by which we decide which parts of the Bible are valid and which are not? Many of the beliefs of our grandparents and great-grandparents now seem silly and even embarrassing to us. Wouldn’t it be tragic if we threw the Bible away over a belief that will soon look pretty weak or wrong?"

I agree to some extent. Hundreds of years from now if we haven't wiped ourselves out from climate change or something else, we'll look back upon Tik Tok and think, what the bloody hell happened there?! Even if stories don't agree with our socio-cultural landscape they can still have value. You don't have to believe a story happened or even agree with it for it to grow you.

But here's the thing: can you honestly say slavery should ever be seen as a morally good thing? Or that women are lesser than men? Sure it might someday be that way, but I would see those cultures as misguided rather than truly moral. Yup, this is making a socio-cultural value statement for the value of human rights. But I don't ascribe to moral relativism.

The Bible has some beliefs regarding slavery and women (especially the Old Testament) that are lets say, less than ideal. I don't think this should ever change and Christians should take responsibility for these aspects of The Bible rather than saying, "that's historical relativism." That's the theoretical equivalent of saying "it's not a bug, it's a feature."

A common Christian response is you should first focus on understanding the fundamental beliefs of a religion before worrying about its teachings on gender or slavery. Some might object (including me): 'I can't accept a doctrine if its gender views are outdated.' A Christian response is--does disagreeing with a religious texts stance on gender roles logically disprove something, like say, Jesus's resurrection? If Jesus is truly divine, we should take his teachings seriously, including his belief in the Bible's authority. If he isn't divine, then the Bible's other teachings become irrelevant.

Is gender a nonsequitor belief? It effects everyone. The belief Christianity has regarding this is therefore extremely important, and this applies to many of Christians beliefs. It's unfair to ask people to ignore the glaring problems on the outside of a faith before looking at the root. A cover does speak volumes about the book.

Christianity Is A Straight Jacket

"The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off." - Gloria Steinem

Christianity requires not only specific pre-requisites to become a member of any denomination but forces you to agree with doctrines that are unfalsifiable. That's a unprecedented restriction of freedom.

A common religious response is any community that did not hold its members accountable for specific beliefs and practices would have no corporate identity and would not really be a community at all. Political parties, club sports, and my hard drug friend group--I'm kidding, it's a hard drugs friend group--all have pre-requisites. Yet we don't complain about their biases.

I actually think this is a fair argument. It's being forced to ascribe to unfalsifiable doctrines that's my problem. The religious response is freedom is overrated. In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions--like sticking to only 12 hours of video games a day.

True, constraints can be liberating, except when they aren't. The difference between the examples I gave earlier and religious doctrine is the first can be proven wrong. Trust me, playing 8 hours of Minecraft daily is more than enough for me. Religious doctrine, however, is rooted in faith.

This brings us back to The Faith Problem. At the end of the day, no matter what you say, a Christian can always pull the Trump Card: you simply must have faith.

This is how you get incredibly outdated and in my opinion heinous beliefs like homosexuals are sinners (Leviticus 18:22), women are lesser than men (Timothy 2:13-14), and abortion is a crime, remaining cardinal ideas in Christianity.

Christians respond by saying in many communities they are still expected if not encouraged to doubt. That's great, really. The problem is this doubt and questioning is all meant to lead to one pre-ordained conclusion: realization in the truth of God. There is no other option, aside from leaving the faith of course. Something more and more people are doing in modern society.

So, is it really questioning, or following a maze with only one exit?

In fairness, science operates on faith as well. After all, we can't fully prove anything. Remember when we thought the womb wandered around a woman's body? Remember when Newtons Laws Of Motion were as foundational as peanut butter on banana until Einstein's theory of relativity came along? Will something take over Relativity like Quantum Mechanics? We don't know, we just have to have faith Relativity works for now.

This is true, in part. The thing is Sciences faith is a different sort of faith. Religious faith is rooted in historical evidence and experiences--things we know are full of bias. Science is rooted in experimentation and revision. It's rooted in falsifiable evidence. Albeit science is done by scientists but at its best science itself is meant to help us overcome the biases inherent to our human nature.

There Can’t Just Be One True Religion

"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also." - Mark Twain

There couldn’t possibly be one true religion. There’s Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and so so much more. How could any of these one religions possibly hold the full truth let alone claim to have it? Isn’t it ridiculous to push that belief on others?

One common religious response is by saying we know there isn’t one true religion, we ourselves must have the superior, comprehensive truth.

I respond you don’t have to have the full comprehensive truth to believe we don’t have it. Must you see the whole Universe, every star, every black hole, every version of McDonalds on other Alien planets (I hear their McFlurry machines work there) to know we don’t see it? If The Bible had the full truth it would be infinitely long and explain everything. Yet, we routinely have to rely on other faiths or philosophies or science to make meaning out of things.

To say one belief system has uncovered the full truth is not only presumptuous, not only arrogant, but dangerous.

Christiantiy take one of the thousands of hues of starlight filtering through the Universes glass and claim it’s the only one. In the most respectful way possible, if you put on rose tinted glasses the only color you will see is red. So don't be surprised when you do.

Another common religious response is by saying it’s ethnocentric to push your beliefs onto others, you are yourself being ethnocentric. The idea that it’s wrong to push your beliefs is deeply rooted in Western notions of individualism.

I commend the value rooting this idea. Absolute relativism is ridiculous. If all truth were relative, then I’m an Ostrich and I can finally shit an egg big enough to use as a football. Some religions do have better truths than others. We should seek harder truths about how to live with kindness, integrity, harmony, and more.

But that doesn’t put the ethnocentrism from both sides on an equal playing field. The Western notion of individuality prizes a duplicity of perspectives whereas many religions only promote their own. Which sounds more ethnocentric?

How Could A Good God Allow Suffering?

“If a good and powerful God exists, he would not allow pointless evil, but because there is much unjustifiable, pointless evil in the world, the traditional good and powerful God could not exist. Some other god or no god may exist, but not the traditional God.” - Philosopher J. L. Mackie, The Miracle Of Theism

Every day while I play video games, write silly articles, and sleep on a fluffed bed, children are put into slavery in Bangladesh, Palestinians and Israelite innocents die in crossfire, and people spend months in agony from Cancer. How could a God allow this seemingly pointless suffering?

To me there are only a few answers:

1. There is no God and the Universe is indifferent
2. There is a God, but they are certainly not loving, and I wouldn’t want to believe in them anyways
3. There is a God, and they think this pointless suffering is love, in which case I don’t want to believe in them anyways

The common religious response is that tucked within the assertion that the world is filled with pointless evil is a hidden premise, namely, that if evil appears pointless to me, then it must be pointless. The problem with this argument is it’s infallible. No matter what anyone says about any suffering a religious response can always be: you could never comprehend Gods plan.

Because I can’t falsify the premise of this argument, the only thing I am left able to do is argue against its effect. With this belief, any suffering can be validated as “Gods plan.” You’re poor and don’t understand why, God’s plan. Your child died in a car crash at ten, God’s plan. You have a lower happiness set point than everyone and constantly struggling with depression, God’s plan.

Of course, most Christians actively fight against suffering and seek to bring kindness to the world--that's awesome! But that doesn’t stop some from weaponizing the belief. There’s a reason many Christians tend to be conservative: planned suffering can help validate why things are as they are, with the justification being it's Gods plan.

The problem isn't that suffering exists, but its scale and distribution. Suffering helps us take gratitude in what we have. A loving God could allow suffering that builds character while preventing suffering that only destroys. Instead, we see suffering that breaks rather than builds. We see suffering distributed randomly rather than justly. We see suffering that serves seemingly no purpose beyond pain.

The Church Is Responsible For So Much Injustice

"With or without religion you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that [(often)] takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

The church has been responsible for the Crusades, the colonialism of indigenous people, LGBTQ+ persecution and so much more. This leaves many non-religious people skeptical about Christianity simply for the acts of some of its members.

The Christian response is the church should not be seen as unanimous with Christianity itself. Growth in character and changes in behavior occur in a gradual process after a person becomes a Christian. You don't have to rise into the air in golden enlightenment before you enter the church. Therefore, you will still find broken and hurt people in the church everywhere. As the saying goes: “The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.”

Another way Christians respond is by saying the people responsible for this injustice are not truly Christian. In the words of Timothy Keller: "Think of people you consider fanatical. They’re overbearing, self-righteous, opinionated, insensitive, and harsh. Why? It’s not because they are too Christian but because they are not Christian enough. They are fanatically zealous and courageous, but they are not fanatically humble, sensitive, loving, empathetic, forgiving, or understanding—as Christ was."

Both of these are fair arguments. But it doesn't take away from Christianity's responsibility for having influence on the actions of its believers. Think about some of the core parts of Christianity:

• Faith in strict doctrine
• Daily prayer
• Sunday community church
• Baptism
• Encouragement of evangelizing
• An inexplicable urge to build tall things

This combination can lead to a strong myside bias for fellow Christians, an unwillingness to see other perspectives, and a fervor for evangelizing, potentially leading some to the acts above. Sure, the faith itself can't be put as fully responsible for the actions of its followers but when you create a map where all paths must lead to one destination, you're partly responsible when people bulldoze through other people's gardens to get there.

While individual Christians can be forces for tremendous good, Christianity's institutional structures often enable and protect harmful behaviors. The question isn't whether Christianity can produce good - it clearly can--but whether its institutional elements systematically enable abuse of power and resistance to reform. History suggests it often does.

Why Do Good People Go To Hell?

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by." - Marcus Aurelius

Remember my friend I mentioned in the beginning? Seems like a good person right? But she happens to love women and isn't Christian, so, she's going to Hell for eternity. Period.

The Christian position is God’s grace doesn't come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and acknowledge their need for a Savior. According to this view, Sin is not just doing things commonly seen as bad like sexual assault, indulgence, or pouring milk before cereal, but doing anything in separation from God.

My problem with this idea is simple: why should belief in God be held higher than being a good person?

Using Christianity's logic, a serial killer who converts to Christianity at the last moment before death (assuming they do so with good intention) could go to Heaven, where as someone who was good their whole life but never Christian is going to Hell. What?

In my opinion the ultimate point of a religion or philosophy should be to help one be a better person and make the world a better place. Why should it matter if I do so in the name of Jesus, The Buddha, or The Spaghetti Monster? If God is really such a loving person, wouldn’t he care more about the love people show than they do it in his name? As Brendan Urie says in Panic! At The Disco: “If you love me, let me go.”

So God, you gonna let me go? If you ascribe to the bible, no.

Think of a parent telling their child that 'no matter how well they behave, they're fundamentally flawed unless they worship the parent. Most people would call this emotional manipulation. But when God does so it's called love.

It’s worth pointing out some denominations of Christianity like Catholicism don’t believe faith alone is what leads to Heaven or Hell. Good works matter too. I resonate a lot more with this concept of Hell and Heaven. But it still doesn’t address the problem of eternal Hell existing in the first place.

If God is loving and perfect shouldn't he have the ability to forgive and accept those who aren't Christian instead of sending them to eternal damnation?

The Christian response is typically all loving persons are sometimes filled with wrath, not just despite of but because of their love. Think of a parent disciplining their child after they do something naughty.

I completely agree. Love isn't infinite forgiveness--that's idiocy. It requires a balancing. The logic around Hell is if you are punished eternally for your Sin, then you will try extra hard to live well under God while alive. But that seems like an overreaction. Finite crime doesn’t justify infinite punishment. Finite beings can’t even comprehend infinite punishment which defeats the whole point of a punishment considering it should incentivize us not to do the thing. How can we do that if we don’t even understand it?

Why do we need to spend eternity in hell to realize the error of our ways? In fact, it doesn't even matter if we realize the error, it's eternity--as in, it goes on forever.

A punishment that lasts forever and ever and ever isn't love, it's maliciousness.

Isn't the knowledge that all the most important people in your life and the world at large will continue to be effected by your actions after you die enough?

Another common Christian response is humans are inherently sinful and we need God’s grace to help us along our paths. After all, some of the most horrific acts in history have been done by atheists. Without a God giving us moral order, wouldn’t we succumb to moral relativism, claiming morality is whatever we deem it to be?

Firstly, there is simply no argument that a non-religious person can’t be inherently good. The fact is there are incredible religious people and incredible non-religious people. You know them. Think of one now. Point made.

Secondly, the alternative to God’s morality is not moral relativism. Moral relativism is the notion that morality is simply what we say it is. But just because we don't believe in a rigid God morality like the ten commandments doesn't mean the only alternative is moral relativism. That’s a false dichotomy. We have to do the hard work of figuring out what is moral considering the context. We can’t give up and ascribe to the universal morals God gives simply because it’s hard. Something being hard doesn’t invalidate the journey.

I would say we have made a lot of progress in finding what's moral without God. Lots has happened throughout human history. Human rights seem pretty nice eh? What about The Golden Rule? Keeping slaves to do your laundry is no longer cool. According to The Better Angels Of Our Nature by Steven Pinker, there is statistically less violence now than ever before in human history. Of course not everything is sunshine and rainbows. But clearly, we have the capacity for moral growth, and it doesn't require Religion.

Concluding Thoughts

I want to end by acknowledging the profound good that Christiantiy has brought to countless lives. It has given hope to the hopeless, community to the lonely, and moral guidance to those seeking direction. Many of the kindest, most thoughtful people I know are deeply religious.

But perhaps it's time for believers to consider that faith, like any powerful force, needs to be wielded with great care. Just as a doctor must constantly question whether their treatments are helping or harming, perhaps it's time for religious communities to examine whether certain doctrines are truly spreading love or inadvertently causing pain.

This isn't a call to abandon faith - it's an invitation to evolve it. After all, if God is truly infinite, shouldn't our understanding of Him be capable of growth? Just as parents adjust their guidance as their children mature, perhaps it's time for religious institutions to consider whether some traditional interpretations still serve their ultimate purpose: bringing more love, understanding, and compassion into the world.

In the end, what if God's greatest test
isn't faith that puts doubt to rest,
but courage to question, strength to be,
beyond the walls of certainty?
For maybe religion's highest art
lies in opening doors--letting all colors flow free,
now that's the God I want for me.