Most personally convincing reasons you don't believe.

[emjay]

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 

[Joods]

For me it's the contradictions in the buy bull along with the fact that when I was a christian and I did believe, I was continually let down time and time again. Additionally, whenever I asked a church elder a question challenging the existence of god, I was given a ton of excuses and told to "get it right" with god.

[Aoi Magi]

For me the stories in christianity, islam, and hinduism all seem to make zero sense and often contradict the very god/s they are trying to portray. When I look at the religions I have come across, all seem quite man-made and seem to reflect the ignorance and bigotry of the respective time periods of their origin.

I can't say I lack belief in a god because I am not sure what that term is supposed to mean. But I believe, even if there is a god of some kind, some super sentient originator, at my current level of knowledge I have no hope of comprehending that being until I can reach the same level of intelligence, so I will just keep gaining more knowledge for now.

[Whateverist]

I spend much more time trying to imagine how anyone could believe in God/gods than in looking for reasons not to. I think god belief must have served a purpose but the bible just couldn't be any less useful. The origins of religious experience interest me but I have zero temptation to join a society of bible worshipers. If you think the bible is your ticket into the mysteries you're basically just screwed.

[vorlon13]

Hard to pick one, and the 'one' can change as new outrages occur, but for today the incredible rate of schisms occurring is to me, an insuperable problem for the theists. And if you think about it, that problem is entirely of the theists making, no atheists had to 'do' or say anything to 'induce or contrive' that problem for the theists, they did it entirely on their own to themselves.

Even a small, recent off shoot of Christianity, Mormonism, has schism-ed itself well over 100 times in less than 2 centuries, and some of the offshoots are PROFOUNDLY different from the original LDS (which itself in it's current form is grotesquely and copiously changed from it's original invocation) such as the Baneemyites.

How can an 'Eternal and Unchanging God' as virtually all of them assert exists be so maddeningly vague, confused and confusing, so as to inspire over 78,000 (and counting) variants in just the Christian portion of human religiosity??


Any theists here want to weigh in on this and try and convince me not only is schismatism A-one okey dokey and a salient feature of their God, and/or, despite all the schisms there is still an absolutely reliable means of determining amidst all the dross, chaff and spuriously plentiful mutations of Christendom, the One True Faith ???

[pocaracas]

If there was a deity that wanted us to worship it, it would make itself known to us ALL.
As it stands, faulty human psychology seems to have been at work and generated all the presently known mythologies.

I'm open to "believing", if everyone suddenly starts "believing" in the same one deity (or deity group)... and, by believing, I mean "knowing".

[Chad32]

My most convincing reason is that the creation story, and jesus story, is not really all that unique. It's not difficult to find a long list of creator gods, or individuals who had lives similar to the Jesus story. Yahweh had a son. You want to know how many sons Zeus had?

Even if Yahweh and Jesus were real, I'd have reasons for not worshiping them, but as far as just not believing they exist, it would be the fact that stories like this were pretty common throughout history. Yahweh and Jesus are not unique, and judaism is not the first religion in history. Not even the first monotheistic one.

[Red_Wind]

Because you can ask an informed atheist a bunch of questions regarding their lack of belief and they would be able to answer them in a logical way. Ask a theist of any religion the same questions regarding their beliefs and they will either give you word salad, circular reasoning or unsupported claims (just to name a few).

[Mister Agenda]

500+ arguments for God and not one has both sound premises and no fallacies.

[emjay]

I spend much more time trying to imagine how anyone could believe in God/gods than in looking for reasons not to.  I think god belief must have served a purpose but the bible just couldn't be any less useful.  The origins of religious experience interest me but I have zero temptation to join a society of bible worshipers.  If you think the bible is your ticket into the mysteries you're basically just screwed.

It's not like this for me all the time, just occasionally. Most of the time I operate from a much more positive position like you of asking what possible reasons there are to believe - and there aren't any that come to mind, but since I have this Christian baggage occasionally I have doubts. But it's only because I have knowledge of the religion that I haven't 'unlearned' (not sure if you can unlearn anything per se)... I don't have similar doubts about any of the countless other religions I have no knowledge of. So it's just the doubts that come from the fact that once something is posited it exists in a sense to be disproved.