Posted by Jason on: 03.09.2009 /
Over the last several months I’ve tried to list common reasons why many people fail to believe in gods or God. I’ve talked about different kinds of atheism, about how evidence and how it does not lead to God, about how God isn’t necessary to living, about how some of the common argument for God are not convincing for me, the Problem of Evil, science as a better way of explaining things, the lack of meaning in the term “God”, god belief as a function of the mind. and as a function of society.
These are common reasons really and not exhaustive. If you ever choose to spend time looking at deconversion forums you’ll also note others. What all of these boil down to and indeed what every reason for disbelief boils down to is that God is not apparent. It is not obvious that God is real or, for those who choose to put their faith in the spiritual, which god is real.
There are some fine things in religion. There is a message of charity and kindness, of love and acceptance. A supernatural agency lends credence to these ideas and further motivates people who choose to follow a faith. Religion is cause for great beauty in this world, of fine art and sublime music. Belief in God has inspired people to do great things. Belief in God has also inspired people to do terrible things but I’m not going to dwell on that today.
Despite the huge influence that god belief and religion have had and continue to have on people none of it proves that God is real or false. None of it. Logic and reason can take us down both routes if we follow them in certain ways. Evidence can show nothing of God or everything pointing to God if we let it. We can explore our own psyches as individuals and as society and either see God in our hearts and minds or find them lacking any trace of the divine.
There are lots of people who aren’t aware of the existence of a loving God. There are lots of people who see only their (perhaps false) gods and dismiss others as unreal. It’s difficult to credit any one religion as being true or any one god as being true when there have been so many throughout human history. None appears to have any greater claim to being more credible or reliable than any other. Shouldn’t God, a true God, be more obvious? Shouldn’t the words of the bible reveal themselves perfectly to the reader? Shouldn’t God be apparent?
I want to thank you for sticking with this latest series. That’s all I have to say about reasons for disbelief except that I don’t see any of them as a choice or as a reaction. I don’t think that people choose to believe or disbelieve but find what works well for them. God belief doesn’t present itself to me even though I have explored the idea and I’m sure the same is true of those Christians who have explored life without God. I think we all look at things in a way that reinforces our own notions and even when we are aware of this we cannot avoid it. It’s just the way we’re made.
Finally I want to point out a few things that I have not given for lack of belief. I think that the reasons I have given are reasonable, even if you do not agree with them or that some might seem weak. I have not written anything about the actions of the Old Testament God and of religions in waging wars or annihilating whole nations, or nearly everyone if the Flood story is true. I have not mentioned anything about the way religions treat those who do not conform to their ideas. I have not written anything about atheists hating God. I’m sure I don’t need to separate the action of religious men and women that may give some atheists a reason to hate the faith and the God that we do not believe in and so have no reason to despise. In short I’ve tried to avoid the emotional response to the idea of God as a reason not to believe in God. I don’t think that it is helpful.
Comment by: Eliza
1This story today on NPR was timely:
To the Brain, God is Just Another Guy
Comment by: Seren
2What is probably my favourite God story comes from Martin Buber, “Dialogue” (1929).
I find your description of the non-apparent God oddly comforting.
Comment by: Chris C
3With 10+ reasons why people fail to believe in God, you’d have thought that if God didn’t exist one or more of them would have nailed the non-existence of God by now. However, the debates over the last few months show that they have individually and collectively failed to do so. One might say that the non-existence of God is not apparent.
However, the question here is not one of God not being apparent (He’s very apparent to Christians in both faith and evidential terms) but, if He exists, why is He not more apparent than He is to non-believers? My response is contained in that to Eliza at the end of the ‘unconvincing arguments’ debate. Essentially the reality (the apparentness) of God is experienced through a journey of both faith and evidence into a relationship with Him. Like any journey, we have to undertake it, rather than finding reasons not to do so and like any relationship it’s two sided. God has come to us in Jesus, we now need to receive Him: make a step in His direction. If God has to make all the running, without any response from us, then that’s not a relationship, but an imposition.
I wish you all well and God’s speed on the journey into a close relationship with our Father.
Comment by: Eliza
4To summarize:
God made a creation, which turned out to be flawed, which he presumably would have (or should have) known would be the case.
God blames the individual members of his creation for being created as flawed.
God sent his only begotten son, who was actually himself (or part of himself), to earth as a human, to serve as a sacrifice to himself (God), so that God would forgive the sinful members of his creation (whom he loves but whom he will otherwise torture for eternity) of their sins, but he will only forgive the ones who accept this whole story as true.
And he purposefully remains out-of-view to many of the members of his creation, because they have to discover him on their own (often through other created ones who have discovered him). If he made his existence apparent to those who don’t already believe, that would be unfairly coersive to the non-believers, who will be tortured for eternity because they don’t believe but weren’t given access to evidence which they can believe, which their creator would presumably have known. Whereas the believers, who will experience Heaven for eternity, get the opportunity to experience evidence of God’s existence essentially constantly, but that’s OK because that doesn’t affect their free will.
Hmm. This story needs revision; it’ll never sell as is ;-)
Comment by: Chris C
5I don’t know whether it needs revision or not Eliza. He’s your God not mine. I don’t believe in this God you describe.
Comment by: Jason
6Chris
Not at all. It was never my intention to prove the non-existence of gods but to show that there are plenty of reasons for non-believers to doubt. That really is all there is to it. The arguments for God are not compelling so we doubt that God (or any god) exists. It wouldn’t take much for me to change my mind. Evidence would be a start.
Comment by: Chris C
7The arguments for God do not compel us to proof, but are, I believe compelling. Still that’s in the eye of those who behold God as, surprisingly, also it would seem is the evidence. Over the last few weeks we’ve seen evidence for the existence of God, whether this is in the reliability of the main thrust of the NT message, the experience of the promised relationship with God that many Christians claim or the logic of the faith (as mentioned by Mike). I know, before anyone tells me again, that some do not accept these things as evidence, but that’s simply a personal choice: it does not mean that they are not evidential, especially as atheists are unable to say why they are not, other than that, for them, they are ‘not compelling’. No doubt all readers will draw their own conclusions from the last few months posts without us needing to trawl through the arguments once more.
May the Lord bless you all and make His face to shine upon you and bring you peace.
Yours in Him
Chris
Comment by: Mike O
8I don’t know. This is the question that nags at me most. But I think it’s because it requires faith in addition to logic, and atheists are only willing to use logic. So, by definition, God can never be apparent.
Comment by: Jason
9For those who follow the doctrine of hell this is awfully cold hearted.
Comment by: Mike O
10I don’t get your point. I’m just saying atheists may think God is not apparent because they limit themselves to physical logic, and maybe God can’t be apparent in logic alone. What does that have to do with hell?
Comment by: Jason
11Mike, all I’m saying is that it seems cruel to me to set up a punishment and reward system and not make it apparent what the rules are. If a Christian follows the idea of hell, and most of them do, then they believe that atheists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, agnostics, and even a lot of Christians will all burn for eternity. This is not because of something that can be found through logic or evidence but through a system of faith that presupposes a degree of indoctrination into a faith. ignorance is no excuse, dissatisfaction with the explanations is no excuse, the dogma is that of hell.
I could believe in such a fickle and capricious deity with the right motivation but I could not worship and love him.
Hell is a barrier to my belief because it is illogical and cruel. I would require faith, as you say, to accept the idea and many other Christian ideas. At this time though I have no incentive to believe and plenty preventing me from believing. I cannot base my life of a faith where it is not supported by evidence, reason and logic. I most certainly cannot base my life on a faith that sometimes flies in the face of evidence, reason and logic. I am unwilling to perform the mental gymnastics required to reconcile any religious beliefs with that which I can see, smell and touch or determine to be true through my own abilities.
I may expand on this next week but there are more than one step required for me to believe in God. So far I fail to reach the first one.
Comment by: Chris C
12We’ve looked at the Biblical view of Hell and judgement before and seen that it’s not as Jason chooses to see it (see Hellfire and damnation topic started in Nov). Further, in spite of all Jason’s topics on ‘reasons not to believe’, I’ve yet to see one which shows that Christianity “flies in the face of evidence, reason and logic”, to quote Jason’s last post. We have a measure of agreement that the evidence is insufficient for atheists to believe: and without needing to revisit the quality of that evidence and assess again the coherence and reasonableness of the atheists view, that is probably a conclusion we could have started with. But to say, as Jason does, that there is no support from evidence, reason or logic, or worse, that the faith flies in the face of such things, is simply wrong as we have seen over the last few months.
Comment by: Seren
13Mike O:
i’m not sure. i think i have faith in alot of things. but i’m not currently convinced that any of the many deities that have been described to me exist.
perhaps i’m using “faith” in a different way. but there is certainly alot of mystery in my universe. i act with faith at times, as if i was certain when infact i cannot be, in the hope that my faith will be realised.