Why I am not a Christian

When I was about fourteen my mate at school starting going out with a born again Christian. 

She was in a club called The Christian Union and one dinner time she dragged me and my mate along to a meeting they were having.

During the meeting I pointed out a couple of things to them which to me at fourteen seemed quite obvious. They of course had no sensible answer to my points and so they told the rest of the group that I was in league with the Devil.

Now before I continue with this post I need to inform you that to the best of my knowledge I am not in league with the Devil or with anyone else for that matter.

And the reason for this is because is not because I don't have any allegiance to Satan but because he, like God, does not exist.

'How can you be sure God does not exist?' you might thinking....'just because there is no proof He exists doesn't mean there is any proof that He doesn't'

I hope in this post to show that is not true.

But whatever argument I come up with to show God does not exist, it will have no affect on your average Christian because, as my experience showed me that dinner time at the Christian Union, logical arguments don't work on christians. They have this thing called 'faith' where you believe something regardless...it's one of the things you need to have to be in the club. And believe me, it is a club. Most people I think are christians not because the doctine actually makes sense, but because they are in a club and their friends are in that club. And they have things they do together in that club together. To me being a christian is like being in the scouts, it's somewhere you go every week and see your mates and and discuss wholesome things. But with added guilt and dogma. (and of course a dash of pedophilia)

You might be wondering what I said to the people down the Christian Union that upset them? Well, it's not the argument that I'm going to expound today that shows how God cannot exist. It was another one (there are so many!). 

The argument I put forth is a famous one and it goes like this. If God is not omni-potent and omni-present then he is not a God. If he is these things then He has control over everything and so the fact that there is evil in the world fundamentally has it's source in Him. And even if he chooses not to act when there is evil it is still, if you are an all powerful entity, an evil act. 

Because God is all powerful and has control over everything He is controlling me writing this and He has chosen that I am not a believer. In other words there is no choice to be a christian because there cannot be free will in a universe created by an omni present and omni potent God. Again, if He chooses to give me free will (which logically He cannot do as he is by definition pulling all the strings) He gives away agency and is no longer all powerful and logically not God.

Now, of course, the christians how no argument for this that fourteen year old me could not easily counter. And so I got branded as evil.

For me this the real problem with Christianity (and many other religions). This branding of people as evil in the subjective viewpoint of your average dogmatic Bible interpreter (a much better name for them) is the source of much of the nastiness that has existed throughout history. I will not accept that every native American murdered in the name of God, or every person tortured in the Spanish Inquisiation, or any country that suffered under the imperialism of countries in the name of Christianity, or every war fought in the name of Christianity did not suffer at the hands of Christians. They did. And they did so because when you believe in dogmatic ideology that is based on YOUR interpretation of a book YOU have decided is the Word of God, you can brand anyone as evil and act in whatever way you want to deal with your subjective perception of 'evil' because you are 'doing the Lord's work'..............yack!

And yet this again is not the argument against Christianity I am going to explain today. 

My proof that God does not exist is based upon the fact that I do not need to prove He exists. It is as simple as that.

There are in fact an infinite number things of things that might exist. God is only one of those things. All these things that might exist only actually exist when there is proof for them. By proof we mean empirical evidence. Now empirical evidence can only be as good as the veracity of your evidence and the logic you use to interpret that evidence, but just because we can never be certain anything truly exists because the evidence may be misinterpreted, does not mean we can accept the existence 'all things that might exist of which God is one'.

So the burden of proof lands with the believer. If you are a Christian you need to come up with some proof God exists. And the proof of your feelings does not count I'm afraid. Feeling in your heart that He exists can also be applied to Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny (two concepts I'm sure are there only to indoctrinate young children into the habit of dogmatic belief).

So if the burden of proof lies with believer. And if you are are tasked with coming up with proof, the first thing you need to do is to define what it is you are about to go looking for evidence for.

And here is the rub...

YOU CANNOT DEFINE THE CONCEPT OF GOD THAT IS SATISFACTORY WITHOUT THAT CONCEPT BEING INHERENTLY CONTRADICTORY!

Now this idea is quite hard to grasp, especially if you have been indoctinated to think like a christian thinks. But I will try and explain this further. You need to be able to define what something is before you can claim it exists. If I say there is a thing called a 'kimeepatipoocha' but then I cannot tell you what a kimeepatipoocha is then you can automatically discount it's existence.

So I will tell you what a kimeepatipoocha is. It is an all powerful entity that is in everything. That's the same as saying it's everything. kimeepatipoocha=everything. It's just another word for everything. Then I get all upset and say 'No it is that but it is not the same as everything' and there we have a contradiction that cannot be gotten past. No entity can be both everything and not. In the same way that we know square circles cannot exist because of the logic that is inherent within any definition, and so it is with God.

You cannot have an all powerful God that grant's us free will. You cannot have an omni present God that is not completely a part of all the evil that has ever existed. 

It is for the believer to come up with a definition of God that is satisfactory and not based upon hunches or feelings. This argument also counters the arguments for God that come from the existence of things in the world (ie. the one that goes that the proof of God lies in the design of the Universe or the Word of God that has come to us in The Bible) because even if this proves that there is an entity that has created everything or transmitted an objective moral code to us in a book, these things still point to a being that needs to be defined. In other words I don't think saying God is just powerful wizard or ghost with magical properties is enough to satisfy anyone who actually believes in God, as a definition of what God is.

God needs to be contradictory conceptually. The God that is in everything must also have the potential to not be in everything, as He is all things. It is a mess conceptually. 

('Look, there is God!'...'No.that's a rock')

God does not have the attributes that Father Christmas or the Easter Bunny have (ie. defineability) and that is why we can easily disprove their existence. God is indefinable by His very nature. He is all things to all men. And the reason for this is simple. It is because he was invented by humans in their image. Stop looking for a more complex answer!

Despite the restrictions that religion has imposed on the respect and aquisition of facts, humans have been pretty good at aquiring them. And the method that has worked best for aquiring facts about the universe is to use science. Science is is basically a methodology for checking evidence. And this has worked. It has cured disease, taken us to the moon, created the internet and aeroplanes and pot noodles and all the incredible things that mean we don't have to spend all day looking for food until we died at thirty at the hands of some vicious animal, unamed disease or another human who wanted the bit of food we had found that day. 

And science has discovered things about the universe that are far more fantastical and mystical than some old, beardy father figure sat up in sky looking after us all. The world is a far more interesting place than that. And perhaps there are very powerful entities out there in the universe somewhere waiting to be discovered, but they aren't God.

God is a subjective creation of a species on planet Earth who transfered the feelings of parental protection onto the world around them. Science is the emulation of objectivity, the attempt to see things form God's viewpoint. But our viewpoint in the end is entirely subjective. In reality there is only 'out' and the all and everything is contained in our subjective viewpoint of 'out'. 

In that sense the whole universe is contained completely within ourselves. And so when you look and think you see God really you are seeing yourself. 

Now that IS a profound thought....