Why I Don't Believe In God (or Any Other Deity) Anymore

I once believed in God.  Technically I believed in God twice.  First, when I was young, malleable and didn't know any better.  The second was when I was a little older and more psychologically and emotionally vulnerable.  Eventually, both times I came to reject theology as a plausible theorem for understanding the nature of things and the nature of things to come.  But it wasn't until the second time around, when I came to fully appreciate, through observation and analysis, that there are reasons why I bought into the whole "Jesus loves you and has a plan for you" marketing ploy, and it all boiled down to matters of basic psychology in terms of needs and wants.  In addition, it was full of toxicity, hypocrisy and ignorance, where people cherry-picked what they wished to believe and dismissed the rest out of convenience.  I could get technical and delve into things like Maslow's Pyramid and the like, but that's beyond the scope of what I am writing about here and now.  Suffice to say, I see religion, and Christianity in particular, since it has been the spiritual modus operandi of the West for millennia, to be social control mechanisms and nothing more, preying on the fears and ignorance of people and capitalizing on their hopes and dreams of continuity beyond death.  I'm quite prepared to believe in God, but based on material evidence and fact, not wishful thinking and flights of fancy.  I don't accept the Bible as being infallible and inerrant, because deep down we all know that the Bible is replete with contradictions and mistakes, no matter how hard some of us try and obfuscate that reality.  Ask atheists like Aron Ra or Penn Jillette why they became atheists, and they will tell you that it was because among other things, they read the Bible.  Some of their detractors, when presented with this fact, conveniently argue that if they had read the Bible, they wouldn't be atheists.  And yet they cite Bible passages just as well, if not better, than many of the most ardent believers.

I try and avoid getting into debates on comment threads pertaining to theological or scientific discourses, but sometimes I will do so in an attempt to probe the motivations of some of the most hard-line believers.  I've come to deduce that, in a nutshell, Christianity is nothing but a sales pitch with an excellent marketing ploy selling a fundamentally defective product.  It knows exactly which buttons to press - the one pertaining to the need of a powerful father-like figure for whom nothing is impossible (look up the omnipotence paradox), the one pertaining to the need for order in a chaotic and unpredictable universe, the one pertaining to the need to be loved and feel relevant.  These are all powerful psychological needs.  It's the reason churches are so attractive to recovering drug addicts, alcoholics, and former criminals.  They are also potential weak spots - one kick to this spiritual groin, and they will be in a world of hurt.  It's no wonder some religious people hate atheists with a passion, despite the Bible threatening those believers who hate non-believers with eternal damnation (read the book of 1 John in its entirety!).  But to be fair, a lot of atheists are angry and arrogant people as well, mostly, of course, due to their experiences with organized religion.  It is therefore of utmost importance that the more zealous Bible-thumpers that frequent online comment threads come to accept and realize this fact.  But as I already said, Christianity provides people with a sense of hope, of purpose and belonging, and it excels at it.  it is the very reason for its success as the most popular religion in human history.  Die-hard atheists need to come and accept this fact as well.

Below is a response to a comment thread on YouTube on which Richard Dawkins explains his analysis of irreducible complexity.  Naturally, many fundamentalists across the Abrahamic spectrum were quick to attack and ridicule what he had said, most of which demonstrated ignorance of the theory of evolution (yes, evolution is a theory, but so are the branches of physics undermining the technology used to type and display this article on electronic displays across the globe!).  The commenter I chose to respond to argued there was no scientific observation of any mutation that led to beneficial phenotypes in organisms.  This is my response:

In the context of natural selection (which is the process which drives evolution over vast periods of time) phenotypical advantage is completely relevant - so much so, that natural selection, and thus evolution, could not be possible without it.  Now, you would accept that each and every individual is either better than, or worse than, somebody else at something, would you not?  Someone else is invariably stronger, smarter, or faster than you, correct?  These are determined by our genes.  Selective pressures, such as predation and environmental conditions, weed out those carrying genes that render then slower for instance by making them easier targets for predators to snatch and consume.  Because these phenotypical variances determine how well a specimen thrives in its environment, the continual process of selective pressure gradually and logically singles out traits that produce superior specimens in a given environment.  So yes, I am talking about the length of finch beaks, because when you understand how they precisely operate within their environment, then it makes perfect logical sense and thus is relevant to the line of discourse being discussed.

While it is true that most mutations either confer negligible or even detrimental benefits, in rare cases they may even benefit the organism, and this is observable in organisms that have exponentially high reproduction rates, and thus provide feasible timeframes in which we can observe demonstrable changes in genetic makeup.  We see this in antibiotic resistance in bacteria, in which mutation plays a considerable part to play, as well as the genes responsible for spike proteins and their resistance to antibodies (this is partly why you get the cold more than once in your lifetime.)

Of course, because of the rarity of these mutations, it would literally take millions of years for them to accumulate to a point in which phenomena such as speciation would take place, but we can demonstrate its very existence and validity through scientific methods and frameworks such as genome mapping and phylogenetic trees.  The problem is, said timeframes aren't tangible to our finite brains, and thus we seek simpler solutions in the form of theology and organized religion.  This is where fallacies such as the argument from personal incredulity, God of the gaps, etc. come into play.  Simpler solutions are easier to grasp than more complex ones.  But this does not logically imply that the more complicated frameworks offered up by evolution and genetics are wrong.

It is abundantly clear that you lack a sound understanding of even the basics of both genetics and evolution, given your woefully ignorant assumption that genetic information is static and unchanging, which is not what the science is telling us.  

Having said all of that, perhaps the juicier question to be asked here is this - why do you feel the need to come here and try and refute what Mr. Dawkins says, even though you and I know full well what you say won't make a lick of difference in changing your opponent's opinions and vice versa.  I'm particularly interested in that fact.  Because for me, it lies at the heart of why people choose to believe in a supernatural being.

Now, I'm no biologist, nor do I pretend to be, and my knowledge of biology, genetics and evolution is somewhat limited.  But suffice to say, I do understand enough of the basics to know that evolution is observable, tested, and verified in concordance with all standards pertaining to the scientific method.  What I am seeing in action is ignorance as a result of confirmation biases and fideism, the product of fundamentalist thinking in which the Bible, despite all evidence to the contrary, is held to be true and without error.  For me, fundamentalist thinking is both dangerous and irrelevant, since many mainstream Christians accept evolution without compromising their faith.  But faith is also irrelevant, and often just as dangerous.  For example, there are people of various theological walks of life who are willing to kill people en masse because of some theological instruction or conviction telling them they shall receive heavenly rewards for their actions.  They have no proof whatsoever that they will be rewarded in the afterlife for their deeds.  But it is their faith nonetheless that convinces them that this is true.  Thus, faith is something that isn't automatically dangerous, but it is certainly something that can lead to potentially disastrous consequences if taken to extremes.  And this problem of literalism and extreme scriptural exegesis running amok is an issue that has plagued Abrahamic faiths such as Christianity for millennia.  The witch-hunts and the persecution of Galileo immediately spring to my mind.  And I fear that this extremism, and the real-world consequences of said extremism, are coming back again.  Most flat-earthers identify as being very religious - they talk of a "firmament" in accordance with a literal interpretation of scripture.  Fortunately, most fundamentalists, as misguided as their faith in creationism is, don't subscribe to this extreme degree of lunacy and understand the Earth is an oblate spheroid suspended in the vacuum of space, an immutable fact first postulated and determined by the most revered and respected intellectual figures of ancient Greece thousands of years ago (Flat Earth theory is another subject matter beyond the scope of this article, and thus I won't elaborate on it further).

For me, there is not one modicum of evidence for the existence of the God of Abraham and Jacob, Isaac and Ishmael, nor is there any evidence for any of the existence of the Gods of the Hellenic pantheon (for your reference, look up modern-day Hellenism - it actually is a thing!) or the Zoroastrian God or any other deity-centered religion.  For me, the Judeo-Christian God is, in loose terms, an amalgamation of the Canaanite supreme deity El (this is where the visual representation of God as an elderly, bearded man comes from) and the Canaanite war God Yahweh, who first showed up around the time of the Israelite exodus from Egypt.  I'm particularly enthralled by the anthropological and archeological origins of the Judeo-Christian deity, but until he reveals himself in a way that is not muddied by the innumerable contradictions of the Bible, I for one, will not be attending a church service any time soon.  I have found more peace in disbelief than belief, because I have learned to not fear things that are non-material, and not subscribe to the folly of faith.

On a final note, I understand that some (but not all) people may take umbrage with what I have to say here.  This only serves to confirm what I have elucidated in my earlier remarks.   But mark my words, I will make no bones about what I feel regarding the whole God and church shebang - it's a deep, deep, cesspit of toxicity, hypocrisy, and ignorance.  It has been that way for a long time now, and is something I can bear no longer, and something from which I am immensely pleased to have separated myself from.  Indeed, and perhaps ironic in some ways, I feel like Moses on the steps of Mt. Sinai, watching on with wrath as his brethren down below fashioned their jewelry into a golden calf to fetishize in a frenzy of hypocrisy.  There are many things perpetrated in the name of religion that for me, are beyond the realm of forgiveness. 

Finally, if you feel compelled to respond in the form of name-calling or other ad hominem fallacies and emotive retorts, remember the golden rule of any argument - ad hominem attacks serve no purpose other than to prove that the individual responsible for said attacks had no rational argument to begin with!