Why I Don't Believe in God

More than enough essays have been written by people explaining why they don’t believe in God. This is mine.

Here’s the short version: I don’t need there to be a God in order to be a good person.

Common Definitions

It’s pointless to say that you do or don’t believe in God without first agreeing about what it is that you do or don’t believe in. For the purposes of this essay, and for the purposes of my life, God is an all-powerful, all-knowing, conscious entity, with awareness and influence over my life from the smallest particle all the way up through the vastness of the cosmos.

Consciousness is key, there. If God is an unconscious, non-aware entity, then that’s something more like the “force” from Star Wars. When people – especially Americans – talk about God, I don’t think they’re talking about that.

Early Years

I grew up doubting. I’ve always been extremely logical and literal, preferring empirical evidence over everything else. So when our first grade teacher told us that God talks to everybody, I raised my hand.

“I don’t think God talks to me,” I said, or something similar.

“Yes he does,” replied the teacher, “He talks to everybody if you’re willing to listen.” She was very firm about it.

That afternoon I walked around the back patio for probably about thirty minutes talking to God. Nobody responded. That’s when I started doubting. And this is also the first reason why I cringe at the thought of religion having a place in schools. Some kids are not ready for this. I am proof of that.

I spent many ensuing nights alone in my bedroom, pondering the nature of God. That’s what I was doing a lot of the time when you guys were out learning how to talk to the people you found attractive and generally getting in teenage trouble. (That, or I was playing Nintendo, or making faces in the mirror.)

I eventually concluded that the “force” type of God was the closest I was going to get. Specifically, I thought of God as a universal subconsciousness. This concept isn’t conscious, and isn’t as clean-cut as karma, but it can have an effect on one’s life in unscientific ways. For example, I can’t prove that if 1,000 people pray for their church member to conquer cancer, and she does, that their prayer didn’t help.

Why Do People Believe?

A lot of people believe in God simply because they were raised that way, and didn’t bother doubting. Other people were raised in belief, and did some doubting, and came through it with their faith even stronger. Some people were raised to believe, stopped believing, but attend religious services, anyway. There are probably hundreds of permutations of various stages of belief and implementation of religious ideas into one’s life. I think I’ve only met a dozen or so people that I would call “devout”.

In no particular order, here are the reasons I’ve observed people believe in God:

Maybe they want to live forever

Put another way, they’re scared of dying. I’m scared of dying, too, but thankfully that’s temporary, and I’m not scared of death. Here’s what I think happens when you’re dead: you stop being aware. What’s scary about that? You can’t be scared, because you’re unaware. You spend a third of your life unaware without being scared about it.

Unless…

Maybe they don’t want to go to Hell

I think this is the big one, the reason that most people keep their faith strong and (apparently) act in ways that would otherwise seem unnatural: they don’t want the experience of dying and then being tortured for eternity.

Here’s a somewhat sloppy syllogism:

• A leap of faith is a choice that you make to believe in something
• God is a leap of faith, which means you’re choosing to believe in God
• God created (or at least didn’t remove) a Hell for sinners to exist in after they die, so they can experience torture for eternity
• By believing in God, you’re taking a leap of faith that Hell exists
• Therefore, the existence of Hell is a choice that you’re making for yourself
• You want to believe there’s a Hell

What kind of a choice is that? Unless it’s because you want to believe that other people are going to Hell. In the first case, you’re already torturing yourself, in the second case, you’re being rather vindictive, which I think we can agree is not a Christian principle.

Even if I’m wrong, and I do go to Hell, I have to assume that I’d periodically have to laugh at how absurd it is.

Maybe they’re looking forward to Heaven

Is Heaven just for humans? Do you share it with other people who are also in Heaven? What if I was a really good person, but I was totally into insects, and wouldn’t want to spend an eternity in Heaven without my insect friends? Would you have to experience Heaven with my insects? Would God do that to you if you couldn’t deal with insects?

What if your best friends in life were dolphins? Do dolphins swim around in Heaven? That’d look weird, huh?

But if Heaven is a purely subjective experience without bugs or flying dolphins, that means that perhaps my wife in Heaven is not the same entity as the one experiencing her Heaven. Also weird.

Maybe they want a little magic in their lives

Eh. Just being alive is already amazing.

Maybe they’ve experienced something that proves to them that God exists

Fair enough. I have not had this experience.

Maybe because Jesus was way cool

There are simply too many coincidences with regard to Jesus’s life as told in the New Testament, and other fables from different earlier cultures of virgin births and resurrection, for me to take the New Testament seriously.

I think there was probably a real guy who walked around spreading a message of love and empowerment from one true God. And he was speaking to people who had seemingly always known oppression because of their culture. They’d been expecting a savior for a long time, and felt they needed one in order to be able to lead a life of dignity. I think they wanted him to be the son of God, and so he was.

In order to get his message spread even further, he needed to be born from a virgin mother (people had weird ideas about virginity back then), and so he was.

In order to cement his message in the public dialogue, he needed to come back from the dead, and so he had.

But this essay isn’t really about Jesus. He was this guy, and he was wise, and he inspired oppressed people, so the oppressors had him killed.

They want rules to live by

This is among the better reasons to believe in God: not because you fear punishment, but because you want a role model, someone to impress, guidelines to live by.

This is the only one I need: act around others the way you’d want them to act around you. (“Do unto” makes you sound archaic and irrelevant.) That’s the rule. It exists in just about every religion, which makes it a universal concept. Don’t be a jerk.

Don’t be a jerk

I don’t want to be a jerk, do you?

I’ve only known one person who considered himself an antagonist, and I’m pretty sure he got over it. Take away Hell, Heaven, God, religion, death, taxes, politics and romance, and there are still plenty of reasons not to be a jerk.

Here’s one of the smartest things I ever read, ironically (maybe) from a book called “Conversations with God”. I’m paraphrasing:

A person in an enlightened society doesn’t hit himself over the head with a hammer, because it hurts. He also doesn’t hit someone else over the head with a hammer, for the same reason.

I don’t need a God, or a representative of God, or a messenger from God, to tell me that hitting someone else is wrong. I feel it instinctively when it happens. Likewise with using a handicapped parking spot, not signaling when changing lanes, leaving a nearly empty carton of milk in the fridge, and making a profit at someone else’s expense. You wouldn’t want anyone to do those things to you, and so you avoid doing them yourself. That’s what being a part of a society means: helping each other out, or at the very least, not blocking someone else’s path.

I read a story last year about a young man who assisted an older resident who was filling out his absentee ballot. The ballot included a measure that would limit marriage only to heterosexual couples. The young man had to fill in the box that helped bring about this discrimination, even though he was gay, himself. He did as he was asked, because in an enlightened society, people help each other out. (Which one of the people in that story seems the most Christ-like to you?)

For me, that’s just being cultured. Religion doesn’t enter into it.

Strong morals, I think, are the best reason to believe in God, but God is not a pre-requisite for morals, or for moral behavior.

So, I don’t believe in God, because I just don’t see the point. I already know I’m not supposed to be a jerk. And I also know that sometimes I fail. I’m not going to Hell because I fail… I’m going to bed, then I’m going to get up and try again.

Afterword: The Weird Things I Do Believe In

I’ve had paranormal and/or supernatural experiences. That just means things have happened to me that we can’t yet explain through scientific methods. I look forward to the days when some of them can be explained, and especially, reproduced.

But none of them will be if we just give up and say, “well, God works in mysterious ways.” It doesn’t have to be mysterious. Let’s keep our brains turned on and figure it out.

Comments [3]

19 November 2009, 18:24