For Non-Christians What is it that keeps you from believing in God?

Answer 1

I'm Christian so your question isn't for me, but I find myself intrigued by your assumption that a "non-Christian" does not believe in God. Those who practice Jewish or Muslim faiths are not Christian but they do believe in God.

A Christian believes, without requiring proof, that Jesus Christ was the embodiment of God made man, that he lived here on earth and that he died for our sins.

It makes me sad to see some of the answers here, because it means that organized religion (not just Christianity) is not doing a good job of educating people and delivering the message.

The message is this: God created us in His image, and gave us the gift of free will. He wants us to love each other, to love and praise Him, and to make good choices. But it's all up to us.

You can choose to do the right things in life, or not. You can choose to believe that God watches over us or not. You can wait to find out if you're right or if I'm right... but don't wait too long, okay? God wants us all to choose Him, but He'll leave it up to us. That is His gift to us...


This link says it better than anything I can say. Yes, it's very much a production, but it delivers the message that I believe God wants us to hear.

Answer 2

I don't need to believe in God. I find the mere presence of things more miraculous than their origins, and I have no immediate quarrels with a meaningless, chaotic existence with no justice as corporeal as heaven and hell. I think of the bible as a great story, full of lessons like any other great story, that, through age and worship and translation and bowdlerizing, has become something of a legend that can't live up to its own hype. God's a character. And why not?

That being said, I'm also not a big proponent of some of the scientific explanations that people use either (e.g. the big bang). Some people quote big bang theory as if it were truth incarnate, which is ironic because the lack of evidence and the near impossibility of hypothesis testing in that area means that most physics proselyters are really taking leaps of faith themselves.

Long story short, I'm more of a Cartesian philosopher than a believer in any grandiose scheme, and I feel that the microscopic, face value of life is much more interesting than the esoteric quibbles with which we've polluted it.

Answer 3

I choose not to believe in a god because such an idea is so improbable, it might as well be consider nonexistent.

Sure, it's impossible to disprove a god, but it's also impossible to disprove the existence of unicorns, faeries, Santa Claus, and vampires. However, since such magical beings are OBVIOUSLY pretty impossible, the human race on a whole believes that they do not exist.

Also, who is to say which god is right? Back in Rome, people believed in Zeus. If you did not believe in him, you were seen as strange. However, looking back at Zeus and the other gods of Mount Olympus, we act as if we know for sure that they can't exist. For all we know, they DO.

As Stephen Roberts said:

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

(And yes, I am currently reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. While Dawkins does use the above rebuttal often in his own discussions, I found this as a separate quote on a website that I cannot currently recall.)

Answer 4

Wow, there are too many things to count. Just off the top of my head: the suffering of so many people in the world, the suffering of animals which lack free will and so could not have made any choice deserving punishment from God, the existence of so many other religions with just as valid a claim to being true as Christianity, the contradictions in the bible, scientific proof of evolution and the old age of the earth which proves that the bible cannot be literally true (and if it isn't all literally true, then picking and choosing what to believe as literally true is pretty arbitrary), the incompatibility of a loving all-powerful god with hell, the idea that such a God would send good people to hell simply because of what they believe, the failed prophecies in the bible, the Great Flood story, the violence in the bible... I could go on all night.

I think you should ask Christians what keeps them from believing in other religions, Islam for example. I imagine most of the answers will be similar. When non-Christians, atheists in particular, question Christian beliefs, Christians inevitably fall back on the defense of "faith." They claim that logic and evidence have their limits and one must take the leap of faith. But the thing is, that defense can be used to justify any belief. What do Christians say to Muslims who justify their beliefs on the grounds of faith? They use logic and evidence to argue against the koran. So apparently logic and evidence can be used to disprove other religions, but when its one's own, faith is acceptable enough of a defense to discredit logic and evidence. If Christians are going to use evidence and logic, then they should go where logic and evidence lead: away from a belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing, good god. If Christians aren't going to use those tools, then they need to accept that other faiths are as valid as their own.

Answer 5

It is other people's system of belief. Like someone having grown in a community of Muslim or Buddhist or other religious communities. Non-Christians are not apt to just believe in God as the Supreme Being. We all grow up in certain system of belief, even the non-believers whose number is more than half of the world's population.

Answer 6

I am a Christian myself, but you do not need to be a Christian to believe in God.

In fact, if a man practicises the two and only commandments Jesus gave us, even if he never heard about Christianism, than he is on the path to purify his soul.

God put the knowledge of his existence in every single man and woman that he created, so the only thing that makes us deaf and blind is our selfishness and pride, our attachment to this world (materialism).

So that's why many men do not believe in God, and I am quite sure that many men who call themself Christians do not really believe Him, otherwise they would love every single man and woman upon the Earth as a brother and a sister, always showing their love to God through Charity, for WITHOUT CHARITY THERE IS NO SALVATION.

Answer 7

You take as your basis the idea that believing in God is the natural state and that anyone who believes differently has deviated from that. I submit that there is no basis for your belief. Man invented God as a convenient superstition to explain everything he didn't understand and a way to make him feel like he was in control. That he, singularly, had a purpose. So he created God in his own likeness.

What prevents you from not believing in a God? Or believing in a multitude of Gods as the Romans or Greeks did?

Answer 8

The funny thing is people who dont believe are ridiculed. I actually think its funny that people who do believe in god actually believe in god because someone told them to.

This is the real question. How would your life change if you stopped believing in god?

I bet you can't do it can you? Because those funny people dreesed up in fancy suites on tv tell you how the non believers will NOT be saved. lol


First of all who is god and where does he live? Do you have his contact details?

If you can answer these questions then I will ask him direct.

Answer 9

anymore i dont think christianity and god should be in the same sentence. christianity has turned into a club of judgemental finger pointing jerks. you believe as i do or your going to hell. but its ok, lets give everyone a label because we are right and they are wrong. its a sorry state of affairs.. i thank god im not a so called christian.

Answer 10

Primitive man wanted to believe there was some being that was superior to all humans that would protect him from nature. Didn't work did it? Modern man is coming to believe that the consciousness of all beings through the power of our thoughts is our protection. Is that God?