Why I Believe the Christian God Does Not Exist

    When I first began my journey out of the Christian faith, one of the biggest factors that drove me away from it was how clearly the concept of the Christian god and the Christian worldview in general seemed to clearly contradict the reality I actually lived in. The claims that were made to reinforce the Christian worldview did not seem to  conform to reality from my perspective, and so clearly made it more and more improbably and unlikely that the Christian god exists. My goal in this blog post is to go through all the claims of the Christian faith that clearly contradict the reality we actually live in and in so doing make much more probably and unlikely that the Christian god exists.

    Claim # 1 - The Bible is the divinely inspired Word of God, without contradiction or error, that leads into God's truth and His salvation.

    There are so many issues with the idea of the Bible being "God's Word" that is perfect and without error it is almost hard to know where to start. 

*From beginning to end it is filled with countless contradictions and errors, something you would expect to see from a book written over several centuries by multitudes of authors. 

*The Old Testament in particular is full of immorality, much of it directly commanded by God Himself, and its patriarchal and misogynistic system of morality given by God is more a reflection of the culture of the time rather than the unchanging morality of a perfectly moral god. 

*It contradicts science on multiple fronts, claiming the moon gives its own light and that the earth is a flat plane surrounded by a dome. God created all animals including humans separately, two of every species can fit on one boat, etc. 

*The supposed "prophecies," quoted from the Old Testament concerning Jesus are vague, general, and unimpressive. All of the supposed prophecies are ripped out of their context in the Old Testament that had nothing to do with Jesus and are misused to apply them to Him. Many of the quoted prophecies are clearly not even prophecies in the Old Testament, and on at least one occasion a supposed prophecy doesn't even exist in the Old Testament. There is nothing supernatural nor impressive about the supposed prophecies of Jesus in the New Testament, but rather what is expected from a man-made religion.

    Claim # 2 - There is one Holy Spirit indwelling all believers and leading them into the knowledge of the truth.

    While John 16:13 says the Holy Spirit will lead believers into all knowledge of the truth, and 1 John 2:27 says the Holy Spirit teaches believers everything they need to know, reality clearly shows there is not one Holy Spirit leading all believers into the same truth. There are thousands of different denominations, all disagreeing on faith beliefs. Some Christians believe in eternal security, others believe salvation can be lost. Some believe God predestines individuals to heaven or hell, others believe in free-will. Christians can't even agree on when to take communion or even what the nature of communion is (is it symbolic or literally the body and blood of Christ when it is taken as a sacrament?). Despite Jesus praying in John 17 for unity among believers the Holy Spirit appears incapable of even getting believers to agree on whether or not Jesus's death was necessary for the forgiveness of sin, as some believers believe God forgives separately from Christ's death but Christ's death showed God's hatred for sin and how much He loves his human creation. Then others believe the souls of the last are annihilated after death or on the last day of judgment, while others believe in eternal torment in hell. 

    Believers will defend their stance by saying not all supposed believers have the Holy Spirit, or that not all believers listen to the Holy Spirit, etc., but these are clearly ad hoc explanations to save a claim that contradicts the reality we live in. These arguments also show that whether the Holy Spirit exists or not everything would still look the same, meaning there is no objective way to even know for certain the Holy Spirit exists. Given what has already been stated about the Bible (why would the Bible even be necessary if there's a Holy Spirit to lead us into the truth?), it is even more likely and fits with the nature of the reality that we live in that it these ideas are simply religious ideas in peoples' heads, hence the division and fighting over them. Ironically, with everything all of these believers disagree about they will agree on one thing: the Holy Spirit has given them the truth and everyone else that disagrees with them is wrong, reinforcing even further the likelihood that it's not a Holy Spirit at all but it is simply ideas in their head.

    Claim # 3 - God has created all human beings and has a plan for their lives

    We human beings are the products of the arbitrary decisions of our parents to have children, or even just to have sex as often times unwanted pregnancies occur. When a man ejaculates into a woman he releases approximately 100 million sperm, every one of which are capable of creating a completely unique human being, and which human being gets created is entirely based on which sperm gets to the woman's egg first. You and I exist because of chance naturalistic processes and arbitrary decisions of our parents, something not reflective of the idea that a personal creator God created us with purpose in mind. Apparently God doesn't love all of the millions of the other individuals that could have lived and never will as much as He loves me. Add to this all of the still births that happen, or fetuses that die in utero. This is hard to explain under the idea that a personal creator God creates humans with purpose in mind but is entirely compatible with the idea that we are born of chance naturalistic processes and sometimes those processes go wrong.

    Chance naturalistic births aside, nature itself shows signs that it was not created specifically with humans in mind, or created to be compatible with humans. Nature goes haywire and things such as floods, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. happen, all of which are deadly to human life and take hundreds of human lives on a regular basis. The sun, while giving the earth the heat it needs for life to survive, is actually too hot for the earth and just happens to be at the right distance so it doesn't completely fry the earth, although it is getting bigger every year and will eventually engulf and destroy the earth. It gives us sunburn and skin cancer, and can make us go blind if we stare directly at it. We are just one of tens of millions of animals that have evolved on the earth through naturalistic processes, and our species has even nearly gone extinct in our history. All of these things are difficult to explain under the idea that nature was designed perfectly for man, but are perfectly compatible with the idea that man evolved through naturalistic processes in an impersonal environment that did not exist solely with his benefit in mind. The sun just happens to have some beneficial effects on the earth, but we would expect to see what we see if it was not actually created with man in mind, and the same goes for nature as a whole. 

    Claim # 4 - God is all-powerful and all-loving yet He is in control of the world

    Of the claims on this list this is the one that is probably the most blatantly contradicted by reality. The Christian god is supposedly perfectly loving, just, and completely in control of this world, yet everything about the world we live in says the opposite. Children starve to death every day and suffer unimaginable abuse, murderers and rapists get away with their crime and never see justice, natural disasters occur regularly and kill tens of thousands of innocent men women and children around the globe. Nature in general operates through sheer cruel violence as organism often times violently kill one another for survival. People die miserable and painful deaths due to diseases or maladies such as cancer, others grow old and develop Alzheimer's or dementia and live out their days in pitiful misery. Children in certain areas of the world are forced by kidnappers to kill their parents and are turned into violent and savage children soldiers. 

    The world is exactly something you would expect to see if humans are the products of chance naturalistic processes; bloody, violent, and indifferent to human life. As with the idea of one Holy Spirit indwelling and teaching all believers, Christians are forced to come up with ad hoc explanations to rationalize away this clear contradiction with the reality we live in. Again, given in tandem with the other three claims given above, it is clear the idea of the Christian claim is much less likely and probable and that it simply contradicts the reality we live in.

Conclusion - Given the facts of the claims above, it seems very clear to myself that the odds of the Christian god existing are so low I can comfortably say the Christian god does not exist, and if the Christian god does exist He has given me a reality that so strongly contradicts any claims He makes about Himself that it would be extremely unjust and cruel for that God to punish me for using common sense and refusing to follow something that clearly contradicts everything I know about the world. The world is extremely cruel, vicious, and violent, and the Christian god would be the most cruel, vicious, sadistic, egotistical, and violent being that has ever existed, not a loving god that created humans out of the pure love of His heart, but rather a god that created human beings to satisfy His own egotistical selfish need to have praise and attention. If any being would ever deserve to go to hell it would be the Christian god.

    Christians will say I have to have an experience or feel god's power to know He is real. However, as far as I am concerned if I can't trust something with the objective evidence I am not trusting it with the subjective evidence I am given. These are my thoughts and reasons for why I do not believe the Christian god exists, and if there are more claims or thoughts to add to this please feel free to comment. Thank you for reading!