The Five Most Powerful Reasons Not To Believe

I'm being approached on Facebook by Dr. David Geisler in his attempt to change my mind. He's an Evangelical scholar/leader and the son of the late Norman Geisler. His focus is on philosophical arguments to the existence of his god, especially the ones of his father. Those kind of arguments bore me to death, especially since Christian apologists Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne and John Feinberg don't place much stock in them. Over on Twitter there are a cadre of atheists who love to debate these philosophical arguments with Christians back and forth, to what effect I don't know. So I asked them in a Tweet: "Let me know when you're having a discussion about the value of debates with fundamentalist Christian philosophers over beliefs that have no objective evidence." I'm still waiting for that discussion. My take is they don't want to deal with the arguments in my book, Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End. 

So I've put together the five most powerful reasons not to believe, and they're not philosophical arguments per se, but evidential ones. Keep in mind it's brief for effect:

My Response:

You were never reasoned to believe. People who were never reasoned to believe cannot be convinced by reason not to believe

The bottom line comes down to five powerful reasons against belief in your god. They are all evidenced related. My critiques of the Christian faith focus on the lack of objective evidence for its claims, summed up in five powerful reasons.

My critiques won't change no matter which philosophical theology is fashionable.

1. The Bible. It debunks itself. It contains forgeries, borrowed pagan myths, and is inconsistent within itself. It tells a plethora of ancient superstitious tales that lack objective evidence for them that don't make any sense at all. It has a god that evolved from a polytheistic one who lives in the sky above the earth, who does both good and bad, who makes room for both angels and demons and thinks a god/human blood sacrifice can magically ransom us from the grip of the devil (the first widely accepted atonement theory). For this case see the later half of my book Why I Became an Atheist, and especially the books by Dr. David Madison, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief, and Dr. Hector Avalos, The End of Biblical Studies.

2. The Church. It's supposed to be an institution of God's people, who claim they are the only ones who have God the Holy Spirit inside them who informs them of the truth, teaches them what is good, and empowers them to do good deeds. Yet we see no objective evidence on behalf of this and plenty of disconfirming evidence against it. Their first mistake was to choose the currently accepted canonized texts of the Bible, which in addition to reason #1 above, contain many barbaric texts which should be rejected by all civilized people (called "condemned texts" due to "inspired imperfection" by apologists like Gregory Boyd). Where was the Holy Spirit when they choose those barbaric texts? The only excuse for the church of today is that they do not read the Bible. Ignorance is bliss they say. The history of the church and of the people claiming to have God the Holy Spirit inside them reveals a continuous spectacle of atrocities, such that its history is a damning indictment upon the god they profess to believe. Why can't God do any better than that? Contrary to their empty rhetoric that atheists live as though their God exists, believers live as though their God doesn't exist. But when they actually do read their Bible and follow its barbaric morality it's additionally clear that their god doesn't exist. Either way their god doesn't exist. Get it? For this case see my anthology Christianity is Not Great, especially the books by Dr. David Madison, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief, and Dr. Hector Avalos, Slavery, Abolition and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship.

3. There is no objective evidence for any of its miracles. For this case see my anthology on miracles. As a prelude you should see why I claim there's no objective evidence for any miracle in the Bible. At this time of year just consider one miracle, the virgin birth.

4. Science. It's answering the very mysteries that produce religious belief in the first place. The fewer mysteries we have in the world then the less we feel the need to believe. Furthermore, when we put Christianity under the microscope of science, as we do in my anthology Christianity in Light of Science, Christianity doesn't survive. As a prelude you might want to consider the top seven ways Christianity is being debunked by the sciences.

5. The problem of horrendous suffering. This evidence is as close to a refutation of your God as is possible. I wrote two chapters in Why I Became an Atheist for this case, and I'm doing an anthology on it now.

This is a massive amount of objective evidence I've presented for these five reasons not to believe.