Atheists: Why don't you believe in God? Reasons? Be Very detailed, Flaws in God/Bible???

Question

DETAILS I'm writing a part on why people don't believe!!!

Answer 1

Then do a search, because we have answered this a trillion times.
No evidence.

What god did you want me to tackle?

Answer 2

I was once a theist. I was raised in a very Christian family and, under their instruction, I believed in God and most of the bible stories when I was a kid. Then, when my age hit double digits, something changed in the way my mind operated. I began to really start thinking at a deep enough level to really question what I believed and decide what was worth believing in and what wasn't. I noticed many contradictions and inconsistientcies in the theistic principles I'd been taught, such as:

God is the all power, all knowing creator of the universe who loves us and influences our world, yet no one can see God or show me God.

As a youth, I had a lot of problems in my life (poverty, depression, mental illness of my parents, eviction and so on...) and I prayed a lot for relief or for God to just communicate with me and explain why life is as it as, but I never got a response or anything that could be interpreted as a respone.

God is supposed to be all loving, yet all I had to do was turn on the news to see many many people suffering unjustly at home and abroad.

There is supposed to be just one true God, but all I had to do was go to library to see an inumerable amount of other religions with different conceptions of God(s). What made our God more right than theirs?

And so forth...

So as I thought and studied and simply observed the world I was living in, I realized that the idea of God, or at least a God that was concerned with human affairs, was totally unsupported by empirical evidence, philosophical inquiry or even my own common sense. When I first had these Atheist and Deistic thoughts, they made me a little uncomfortable and confused, so I sought answers from family, people who were older and I felt could give good answers. But they couldn't. Their answers basically consisted of "Read the Bible again" and "Have faith". But an old book and faith weren't nearly enough to answer all the questions I had. Then, one day when I was 12 and riding the bus, I had an ephiphany. Life and the world only began to make sense when I concluded that God is imaginary. That's why all the suffering and injustice in the world and in my life goes unfixed by God, because God is just an imaginary being, like all the magical characters I'd read about in novels and stories. The Bible was a story, only a lot more preachy, but there wasn't anything divine about it. It's just a book like any other book, and no particulary well written either. God didn't really exist.

So, in short, I stopped believing in God when it no longer sufficiently explained life. And , at that point, Atheism was the only logical conclusion.

Answer 3

First, you have to define the term "God." The problem with most theists is that this term is a moving target.

In addition, because there is no evidence either for or against the existence of God, you cannot use deductive logic (a+b=c; therefore c-b=a). You can only reach a conclusion by inductive reasoning using the balance of evidence (90% of A is also B; C is B, so the chances are 90% that C is also A).

So to begin with, I will assert (and others may shoot this down) that the only RELEVANT definition of God states that GOD INTERVENES TO CIRCUMVENT NATURAL LAWS.

If God circumvents natural laws, then it becomes impossible to understand natural laws. All scientific findings would have to include the stipulation, "It is also possible that these results are an act of God, a miracle, thereby making our research meaningless."

However, we have been able to expand our knowledge of natural laws (evidenced by every appliance in your kitchen). Therefore, because the scientific method leads to applicable discoveries, and the likely conclusion is that God, at least the intervening kind, does not exist.

Additionally, if God is defined as all loving, all powerful, and all knowing, then it is impossible to explain suffering. Either God is not all loving (he acts sadistically), not all powerful (he cannot prevent suffering), or not all knowing (he created suffering by mistake because he didn't know the consequences of his actions). A God who is not all-loving, all-powerful or all-knowing is also not sufficient for the definition of God, because any God that fails to meet these criteria becomes bound by rules that are greater than God.

If God is bound by external rules and/or does not intervene in our existence, then God is either non-existent or irrelevant. The classic Bertrand Russell argument is that I cannot prove that a china teapot is orbiting the sun between the earth's orbit and Mars. But while I cannot prove this is not true, the evidence against it is compelling.

The evidence against God is equally compelling, and while it is not possible to prove beyond any doubt, it makes enormously more sense to live your life as if there were no God.

It is more compelling to me that humans have invented God (a) to help people deal with the pain and fear associated with death and loss, and (b) to reflect the thoughts of the ruling powers in a particular time. Humans are always searching for explanations. When none were found, it was the natural inclination to declare that the cause of the unexplained was "God" (or gods). As the faith grew, miracles (coincidences) and laws were ascribed to this Divinity, and an orthodoxy grew up around it.

Now it seems unhelpful to believe in such superstition. The only matters that aid in our ongoing well-being are work, location, health, sustenance, and pure, blind luck.

So that's why I don't believe God exists. And you know what? It's okay if others believe God does exist, so long as they don't try to impose their beliefs on others.

(If you use any of this in a play, you must first have my permission.)

Answer 4

Firstly the sheer number of Gods, amke it hard to choose which one is right.
Secondly, lack of evidence. A book, is not evidence, it is someone's account of what happened (second hand info). In the case of the Bible over 80 author's works were considered, most contradicted each other, and those which were selected were altered to suit the needs of the times. Hardly undeniable evidence.
Third - Religion teaches people to believe without questioning.
Fourth - I personally find most religious people are narrow-minded, hateful and closed to new thought.

There are others, I may add later.

Answer 5

I'll make this short and simple.

Why I don't believe in god:

1. There is no evidence for a deity, or anything supernatural.

2. There are over two thousand competing religious belief systems, all based on faith. Over 4 billion years of earth's history, there has been no evidence that any one of them is correct, but all of them could be wrong.

3. Ancient religious books are not evidence of the supernatural-- that would be circular logic.

4. Faith is based on psychology: To take something on faith means to believe in it without any evidence. This makes it equally likely or unlikely as any other faith based idea. To put this in perspective, pink unicorns are just as likely to have created the universe as an omniscient being. Naturally, faith is no way to construct a belief, much less an argument.

5. Many aspects of the religious experience, such as gods, justice, life after death, reflect the views of ancient men and women living in primitive conditions with no access to medicine or representative government. Even the most religious Christians on the planet could not stop the black death from eliminating 1/4 of Europe's population in the 1400s.

6. I think religion is human wish fulfillment: It is the human ego that wants a universe that grants men and women significance above other stars, planets, and species. But this human-centered view does not mean it is true. Ancient people used to believe that the heavens were perfect, that the sun orbited the earth, and the sky was a crystal dome. Science chipped away these assumptions. Wishful thinking does not translate into reality.

7. Cosmology and Evolution: Recent scientific theories have uncovered the origin of human beings and their place in the universe. No creation story prior to Darwin has incorporated observations consistent with evolutionary theory. Assuming that religions are made to be taken literally, none stand up to empirical scrutiny. There was no worldwide flood, no six day creation, no genetic diversity created by two people in the garden of eden, etc. The authors who wrote ancient texts did so with their own cultural assumptions.

8. Religion as a form of social control: Religion, like governments, have organized large groups of people under a single doctrine, and history is rife with examples of religion used as an excuse to oppress minority groups (including women), seize land, and stop dissent. Due to religious freedom established in the past few centuries, faith has stopped being a justification for war (exceptions include Islamic countries, for obvious reasons). Today, faith-based groups compete in the marketplace for monetary donations.

9.Opposition to science: Some religious groups do not like scientific findings that contradict their belief systems or established predispositions. There is widespread fundamentalist opposition to evolution in the United States, despite undisputed evidence, including fossils and DNA. Evolution is not random, but it has no set path or fixed ascension -- so I do not believe humans are the result of any supernatural process. There is also undisputed evidence that the universe is 14 billion years old, much more ancient and beautiful than the 6,000 year-old earth that creationists choose to believe in.

Those are the reasons I am not religious. I favor a secular government that allows everyone to believe as they choose.

When religions become a part of government, a universal consequence is tyranny and the abuse of human liberties (see Sharia Law in Saudi Arabia).

I hope this helps. Cheers! :-)

Answer 6

There is not a shred of evidence for any god, let alone your's in particular.

And if you really want a good comprehensive list of things that are flaws in the Bible, this is a good place to start: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/ It has margin notes on the whole Bible.

Answer 7

The prejudice in the bible, and stories that are simply ridiculous, like the Flood story. And I wish you guys would stop asking. Go to the Skeptics Annotated Bible online for the problems with the bible.

Answer 8

Nobody has ever provided any evidence that any gods, much less a specific god, exist. People believe in specific gods because of indoctrination from an early age, tradition, hallucinations, fear of torture (for gods sadistic enough to threaten it) and other similarly illogical reasons. But no gods exist in reality; these are all stories, created for people who were scared of the world long before we understood it. Now we have no more reason for these superstitions.

What's the harm in religion:
http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/harm.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_religion

How harmful the bible is in particular:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/
http://www.evilbible.com/

The origin of the Jesus stories:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa5.htm
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/origen048.html
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa2.htm
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/jesus.html

How illogical religion is in general:
http://godisimaginary.com/
http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/

The alternative:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/
http://www.infidels.org/
http://www.positiveatheism.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism

Answer 9

I used to be an atheist simply because I didn't know God. I never went to church growing up, never read the bible, and by the time I was a teen I didn't care to know.

Answer 10

I was raised a non believer, "god" was no more real to me then Santa is to Jewish raised kids.

Not some mind blowing reason...just the simple truth. I go with what my gut says, and my gut says it's not real.

Answer 11

That's similar 16789 questions! We're getting close to the infamous redundancy award for the 20,000th duplicate question regarding on why you don't believe!