Trite but True

1.Belief in God is a superstition that arose over time based on human fears and hopes, fears of the unknown and hopes for protection against both those fears and the forces of nature. The idea of God was the human imagination’s attempt to explain the unknown and the inexplicable. Now that we understand the world better, we do not need to imagine God as an explanation.

2.Religious belief has been, and still is, a source of hatred and strife. The competing claims of the various religions cannot all be correct. Indeed, they tend to cancel each other out. If there were a God, he surely would have revealed himself more clearly and convincingly.

3.Religious belief has obviously evolved like everything else. Monotheism is a fairly recent phenomenon. Ancient peoples were animists or polytheists. They didn’t believe in one God so why should we? Indeed, why should we, who are no longer primitive and barbarous, believe in any God at all?

4.Most belief in God is founded upon “proof” supplied by miracles. Real miracles, like "the sun standing still," are violations of the laws of nature and are, as such, impossible. People believe in miracles because human nature enjoys the agreeable emotions of surprise and wonder. Nevertheless, there are no undisputed miracles recognized by the scientific community. It is strange that, if such things as miracles really are possible, we never see them happen in our own day.

5.Belief in God is not necessary to establish good government or good morals. The existence of pedophile priests, adulterous preachers, and active church members who embezzle money, deal drugs, or commit serial murders proves that belief in God is no barrier to unlawful and indecent acts. Society can develop a system of laws and morality independent of religion.

6.Religion tends to divorce morality from the reality of human and animal suffering. It allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are not. Many aspects of religious morality have nothing to do with suffering and its alleviation. On the contrary, religious morality sometimes inflicts unnecessary suffering on innocent human beings or animals.

7.The order, beauty, and seemingly wise arrangement of the universe do not necessarily point to a supreme and benevolent intelligence called God. If God created the universe, who created God? To say that God, by definition, is uncreated simply begs the question. In point of fact, when we look at the natural world, we see extraordinary complexity, but we do not see optimal design. We see redundancy, regressions, and unnecessary complications; we see bewildering inefficiencies that result in suffering and death. For example, children sometimes choke to death because the human respiratory and digestive systems are connected at the pharynx.

8.To infer that every effect in the universe has one and the same cause is illogical. Experience teaches us that separate effects have separate causes. One cause does not produce a multitude of varied effects. A cause is limited and proportioned to its effect. One cannot repeatedly go back to a specific cause to find new or additional effects. God may be a hypothesis, but there is no proof God is the ultimate cause of all we see. Other hypotheses exist as well that are just as logical if not more so. Furthermore, the design of the universe is no sure foundation for religion because it tells us little or nothing about the character or will of God separate and apart from his power and intelligence.

9.Religious dogma and science often disagree. To read many parts of the Bible as literally true (like Genesis 1) is simply preposterous from a scientific standpoint. Religious belief has often stood in the way of scientific progress from the time of Galileo (the truth that the earth revolves around the sun) to the present (the potential benefits of embryonic stem-cell research).

10.The sacred books of the various religions are not credible. The Bible, for example, is not scientifically credible (Joshua 10:12-14); it is not historically credible (Luke 23:44-45); it is bloodthirsty and odious (1 Samuel 15:3; 32-33; Joshua 6:21; 8:25-26; 11:20; Leviticus 27:29; Numbers 31:7-17; Deuteronomy 3:6; 7:2). Furthermore, the Bible contains many internal contradictions (for example, the attribution of a quote from Zechariah 11:12-13 to Jeremiah in Matthew 27:9-10) and inaccuracies (for example, the inaccurate estimate of the number pi in 1 Kings 7:23; 2 Chronicles 4:2).

For all these reasons and others, some people do not believe in God.