Most personally convincing reasons you don't believe.

[John V]

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 

How hard have you tried to reconcile supposed contradictions?

[drfuzzy]

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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  :

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How hard have you tried to reconcile supposed contradictions?

Why the hell would anyone want to try?  Seriously, hundreds of blatant contradictions exist in the wholly babble.  
http://bibviz.com/    Has a searchable cross-referenced list of over 600.  
And even those of us who had most of the damn evil book memorized at one point . . . once you realize that you can no longer believe that pile of bullshit, then . . . well, you just don't believe.  What kind of brainwashing would it take to . . . RE-believe?

[John V]

How hard have you tried to reconcile supposed contradictions?

Why the hell would anyone want to try?

From the OP: "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)?"

Someone who is occasionally tempted back should try to reconcile the contradictions. If they're real, they'll hold up, and temptations to go back would likely decrease.

[Whateverist]

Why the hell would anyone want to try?

Someone who is occasionally tempted back should try to reconcile the contradictions. If they're real, they'll hold up, and temptations to go back would likely decrease.

Along those lines I often wonder why so many Christians blindly accept the bible as their owner's manual for God. It is obviously an unwarranted leap and intellectually it should grate .. a lot. But everyone clings to it. I personally find that clinginess to be the exact opposite of faith.

Those who have an apprehension of God, something internal that they relate to in prayer, sell it short when they impose what the bible says onto it. My advice is keep the God and ditch the book. Let the God you think you believe in tell you what it is, not a musty old hodgepodge of ancient writings.

Seems to me believers have three choices. Choice #1: they can honor the presence of God they think they feel and have faith that it will reveal what they are ready to receive when the time is right while walking in humility rather than bragging about their spiritual riches. Choice #2: they can sell that out for the 'authoritative', church sanctioned "Idiot's Guide to God" and then join the chorus of the self congratulatory. Or Choice #3: they can conclude it is all poppycock and just go on with their life.

[drfuzzy]

Why the hell would anyone want to try?

From the OP: "I'm an ex-Christian so I have baggage and I admit that very occasionally I am tempted back

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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)?"

Someone who is occasionally tempted back should try to reconcile the contradictions. If they're real, they'll hold up, and temptations to go back would likely decrease.

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Oh, nearly every ex-Christian can see the temptation occasionally. Particularly when someone close dies. I felt it at a recent funeral, when everyone was saying crap like "he's in heaven now" and "he's in a better place" and "he's no longer in pain, he's running free".  Sure, I wished for a moment that I could still believe that I would see him again.  The fantasies can be comforting. But they are still fantasies that were created to minimize natural human fear - of death, of lack of control, and of the natural unfair randomness that is life.

[surreptitious57]

Now for me the most convincing arguments relate to incompatibility and fear. The incompatibility is between all the major religions but specifically the Abrahamics. Christians and Jews
and Muslims all believe in the same God but one can only be a member of one of those religions not two or three of them. They all however reference a monotheistic model. But this is
not the only model. For there are also deistic and pantheistic models. Where God is non interventionist and may not be omniscient and omnipotent and omnibenevolent [ which he can
not be since two of them are mutually incompatible ] The fear is because of our finite life span and an eternity of death after so religion was created to overcome it by [ imaginatively ]
making humans immortal. This is the reward some give them selves for believing in God. If we were naturally immortal however there would be zero need to believe in God. These are
for me the two most convincing reasons why I do not think on the balance of probabilities that the entity commonly known as God actually exists [ though I am not absolutely certain ]

[Veritas_Vincit]

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 

Top 3 resasons:

1) There are thousands of world religions. They can't all be right, but they can all be wrong. Most religious people are atheist with respect to all but one God. I just go one God further. 

2) The holy books are rubbish. I've read much of the Bible and the Quran, and they are both hideously barbaric. They were written by people with a world view so narrow you couldn't find a person alive today who was as ignorant. The God of the Bible instructs slavery, genocide, child sacrifice, murder, and commits mass extermination and all manner of crimes. He is pure evil. 

3) The net result of religion in the world is to the detriment of humanity. The Dark Ages, the Spanish Inquisition, the Witch Hunts, the Crusades, the suppression of women, the alliance between the Catholic Church and fascism and the Nazi party, creationists trying to teach pseudo-scientific bullshit to children, pedophile priests, the Vatican's stance on abortion and contraception, Islamic fundamentalism and the suppression of free speech and free expression with global jihad and terrorism - 9/11, 7/7, Charlie Hebdo. Need I go on?

As Christopher Hitchens said: "Religion poisons everything."

[robvalue]

Yeah but you can't prove any stupid random book I pick up isn't true, therefor it is. Therefor they all are

[Organic Machine]

I just can't reconcile the idea of god being both omnipotent/omniscient/omnipresent and also "all good" at the same time. So even if we have a creator, I see no reason to call it god.

[robvalue]

I can't reconcile it with anything other than a purely deterministic reality either.

Not that this makes it impossible. It just makes it really stupid; to think that this being makes all this, knowing what will happen. Why?