Most personally convincing reasons you don't believe.

[robvalue]

What are your most convincing reasons for not believing in god? I don't mean convincing to other people (necessarily) but convincing to yourself... what reasons stop you going back (if you are an ex-theist) even if you wanted to?

I'm an ex-Christian so I have baggage and I admit that very occasionally I am tempted back but one of the reasons that prevents me is simply the fact of contradictions in the Bible: if there are contradictions it can't be infallible, and if it's not infallible but only 'inspired' then how can you trust any of it (or know what to trust)? Ultimately it is that reason that stops me in my tracks if I'm ever tempted to read the Bible again... I literally cannot get past the first few pages of Genesis without thinking 'this is silly' even if I actually want to go back to Christianity.

I'd love to hear what other core reasons people have for not believing... reasons that act like mental blocks to ever returning. Ashamedly I do have doubts from time to time and so am not 100% certain like Rob, but I'd like to be, and I think having a few more core reasons (rather than superficial/semantic reasons) would help 

For me this is quite straightforward: no theist can even tell me what a "God" is. All I get is "everyone knows what a God is". I've not heard anyone say the difference between a god and a non-God, that wouldn't also make me a god with respect to a computer program I create that happens to become self aware. Why exactly people assume an intelligent creator of our reality isn't itself just some unexciting entity in another reality, I don't know. "Made this reality" =/= "Made everything ever".

So that's the biggest thing. Even the people who claim they are having a "personal relationship" with this thing can't even tell me what it is. And that brings me to the number two reason: if there actually is/was a creator of some kind (no reason to think it's not dead now), then people are not having a personal relationship with it. This is obvious, because no two people can agree on what this being is like and what it wants. The only explanation for this is that "god" is fucking with people and deliberately sending out mixed messages when it "interacts" with people.

It's kind of the same point, but all the actual evidence we have regarding "gods" fits perfectly with the model that each theist has "what they think God is like" in their mind, and they are having a relationship with that. I'm planning to do a video about this particular point. The correlation here is pretty much perfect. Psychology easily explains all the "feelings" and "experiences" they report. This is especially clear since you only have to listen to "experiences" from people from different religions to see at least one of them is imagining it all. However, trying to fit what we hear from theists against the idea that there is actually just one "God" that is interacting with everyone requires reams of ad-hoc explanations.

I have no opinion whether or not there is/was "an intelligent creator" responsible for our reality. To me, that's the only sensible definition of "God", and it's purely relative. As I said, I'm a "God" in relation to a computer program I make. I can be all powerful and all knowing with regard to my program, without the same thing applying to my own reality. If there is/was one, it seems entirely irrelevant. It appears indifferent. In fact, there's no reason to assume it's even aware itself that we have become self aware. How would it know? How would we know if a computer program became self aware? We would be of no significance to it, and to think otherwise is unbelievably arrogant. And it's no significance to us, for precisely this reason. All we can do is deal with reality as it appears to be, and get on with it. And stop making up fucking stupid stories about it. If there is/was an intelligent creator, it's not any of the ludicrous all-too-human cartoon characters people worship.