"Does God exist?" is the wrong question.
If you answer yes, the world is one way.
If you answer no, the world is the exact same way.
Verification: care to propose an experiment to tell the difference?
E.g. I can be sure Zeus doesn't exist because he's supposed to live on Olympus, and no satellite can see him. But the monotheistic God has no analogue.
Which means the only difference is how the belief makes you, personally, feel. Even, "I follow the Bible because I believe in God" is a non-sequiteur. The key spiritual truths in these books are equally untestable.
There's a reason they're all about 'faith' and it is because their founders weren't idiots. They knew they were, experimentally speaking, shovelling bullshit that nobody can prove or disprove. So they exploited the guilt-by-association fallacy in reverse.
Both atheism and theism are wrong, in exactly the same way both are wrong in a debate between someone who thinks green dreams sleep furiously and someone who thinks green dreams party sedately.
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Of course, you can know that the god described in the bible doesn't exist in exactly the same way you can tell Zeus doesn't exist: by using the reference material that gives his properties to show that he isn't "where" he is said to be. When you see that god is said to be X, Y, and Z- and you find that nothing X, Y, or Z exists, it leaves only one reasonable conclusion.
For example (and this is only one out of a great many): In Genesis God told Adam and Eve they could eat any fruit except that from "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil".
They ate from that tree anyway and were punished harshly (condemned to experience physical death, and spiritual death, unless they were forgiven- and all their descendants were condemned to the same)for "disobedience".
Until they ate that fruit and thereby gained, for the first time, knowledge of "good and evil", how could they have been expected to know it was wrong/"evil" to disobey God? How could any rational or good being punish people when it was impossible for them to know what they were going to do was wrong and should be punished?
Since that is the basis of the "need" for salvation, it undercuts that part of the story. That little literary oversight shows the entire story is fiction, and not even very good or consistent fiction. It disproves a big chunk of the claims about the biblical god. It shows that "god" as described in the Bible doesn't- can't- exist. He couldn't be omniscient or "all good" if that story were true. His support of slavery and false health information in other parts of the Bible show the same. How many holes must he be allowed before it is admitted he doesn't exist?
But some people try to say, "well, the Bible was written by men so there are some errors in there". So, then they come up with their own version of god that doesn't have those flaws. But, that is NOT the god described in the Bible, but their own, personal, definition of god. Each believer has their own. No two people really worship the same god; they only believe they do because they haven't really compared their gods.
Assuming they made mistakes is the charitable thing to do. Making up replacements isn't valid, though.
I don't end up with a whole lot after disregarding things like Adam vs. Eve, but even an incomplete theory can be tested. And found meaningless.
Well...I can come up with replacements, but I have to be exhaustive, come up with every replacement, and test them all. Which I'm not willing to do, and shouldn't be my responsibility anyway.
I doubt Christianity for reasons like this. (Via .)
So are ancient and future Christians going to hell, or are modern Christians going to hell? They disagree, so it has to be one or the other.
Even more likely: they're all mistaken.
That's a very good reason, too.
Either democracy or monarchy is evil. (Of course both, but that's begging the question here.)
Monotheisms support or have supported both democracy and monarchism.
Thus religion must offer negligible protection against being subverted by evil.
Morality from God? He doesn't seem good at it. Atheocracy is just bad.
As a result, religions are net negatives on justice. Their adherents forgive injustice here, looking to the afterlife.
Hmm...who benefits by convincing voters to overlook injustice?
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