Why I am not a Christian

I am a seeker and looking for why this universe is as amazing as it is. I present many thoughts about life and the universe in this web site. But still there are those who insist I should follow Jesus. Well, been there, done that, and I have concluded for many reasons it is a sham. This page is to bring all that together.

• God gave us brains to use them.
• Humans routinely gain by fooling others.
• If one religion mattered, God would not permit other religions.
• The number of fake religions means they are all fake.
• The human desire to escape death is inexhaustible.
• The bible was written by ancient ignorant people.
• It is evil to punish one person for the deeds of another.
• The universe is not done creating.
• The future has unlimited possibilities.

God Gave Us Brains To Use Them.

God gave humans the ability to be able to work to logical conclusions based on the available evidence. There is no possibility that God would grant this ability in order that you have to ignore it to follow him.

If God made a religion, that religion would be logically credible and consistent with the world. A true religion would never contradict the facts of the real world. God would never insist that a follower ignore reality in favor of a story like the flood myth, but grifters would.

If there are many paths to follow, and only one path is favored by God, then clearly God would make the favored path be the one that any honest seeker would find using the logic found in a human brain.

Humans Routinely Gain by Fooling Others.

There are millions of people out there that would happily fool you in order to take something of yours. Fraud and con schemes are found every day in every corner of the Earth. I am not paranoid, but it is a fact that so many people are willing to lie in order to steal from you.

Religions are structured just like a large con job. You pay up front, and what you are promised in return can not be confirmed until after you die.

When I see an organization that collects a large amount of money to be used by few, I see a scam. Even if God started a true religion, humans would immediately jump in and try to scam people off the side. God would never allow a true religion to be used to defraud innocent people. God cares nothing for worldly riches, and would not set up an organization for people to get rich.

If One Religion Mattered, God Would Not Permit Other Religions.

If there is a single true religion, and the purpose of that religion is to bring humans an important message, then having a bunch of other religions bringing false messages would not be permitted. There might be fake religions, but there would need to be a logically consistent provable way to distinguish the true religion from the false ones.

People instead find themselves comparing religions based on the merits of the message. You can't judge a message without already knowing the answer. Letting humans receive false messages without any clear way to know which message is the one from God would defeat the purpose of the true religion.

The Number of Fake Religions Means They Are All Fake

If the message is important, the true religion would need to be clearly distinguished from the fake ones. That distinguishing factor would need to be a logical operation that would be clearly identified by every person no matter their background, no matter how they grew up, and no matter what their culture was.

The geographical argument against religion is that people in certain regions tend to adopt certain religions simply because they grew up in that region. The same person growing up in a different region would adopt a different religion. If God has an important message, he would not allow you to be excluded from that message just because you grew up in a different country.

The fact that there are so many established religions, and there is no clear indicator of which religion is correct, is evidence that none of them are correct. Without a clear distinguishing feature on any of them, they must all be equally false.

Human Desire to Escape Death is Inexhaustible

Humans really really don't want to die. We are conscious of our own existence. We have a built-in desire to stay alive and extend that existence as long as possible. We simple are not comfortable contemplating that our existence will some day end. We can't imagine what it means to simply not exist.

This drive to escape death is perfectly understandable in evolutionary psychology terms. Death is the worse possibility conceivable to an ego whose only purpose is to exist. We really wish there was a way to escape death. Religions offer such an escape, and this is so attractive, so comforting, so powerful, that we will ignore a lot of logical problems to embrace it.

Religions offer the most desirous thing imaginable, but at the same time can't prove their claims without you dying. Religion depends on the dead never telling the truth. The claims of religion are simply too good to be true. It is easier to believe that frauds found this as an easy way to attract fools. Religions are pandering to the public.

The Bible was Written by Ancient Ignorant People

There is nothing in the bible that was not be found within a day or two's walks of their pastures in Palestine during a bronze age culture. Clearly God would know all the possible technologies of the far far future, but not a single mention is made of anything we have discovered since then.

The concepts of 'electricity', 'atom', bacteria', 'virus', 'genes', 'energy', 'galaxy', 'thermodynamics', 'chemistry', 'physics' and, of course 'evolution' are all as absent from the Bible as are elephants, penguins, north and south-poles, democracy, civil rights, or gender equality. The authors knew nothing about them and had no way of knowing anything about them.

To make a clear signal to the divinity of the Bible, God could have simply put something like E = mc2 in there in a mathematical form that is undeniable, but at the same time would not be understood for thousands of years. But we see nothing in the bible that did not come from bronze age cultures.

It is Evil to Punish One Person for the Deeds of Another.

Christianity is based on the idea that the sins of one person might be redeemed by another. Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, so therefor all people must sin and die. The death of Jesus redeems the sins that others do. A blood sacrifice is rooted in the idea that killing one animal can save the killer from other wrong actions they have committed.

This was ancient ignorance and superstition. Killing something alive produces at a strong emotional response at a minimum. That emotion was thought to be powerful in the realm of spirits.

The very idea that punishing person A has any bearing on the deeds of person B is pure evil. The suffering of one does not compensate the mistakes of another. You might think that punishment is for rehabilitation of the individual, deterrence of others, or even retribution against the actions of the individual, but none of these theories of punishment consider consider it valid on any level to punish a person different from the wrong doer.

Christianity is built on the idea that punishing Jesus with death will then make everything OK for the rest of us sinners. I find that idea repugnant to the core. I am not impressed by a God offering a son for this purpose: any God who makes a universe where one person can be redeemed by the death of another should take a long hard look in the mirror, and find a way to redeem everyone without the unnecessary and pointless blood sacrifice.

The Universe is not Done Creating.

Christianity is also built on the idea that creation happened at one point in time, and we have been playing out the result of that one time creation, heading for an end of times. Such a short, linear start and finish to the universe is exactly what a primitive bronze age person might imagine knowing so little about the real universe.

Today we have a much better understanding of the universe, and what we see is a continual progression from the big bang until now, with new things being created along the way all the time. Atoms formed, molecules formed, stars formed, planets formed, mountains formed, life formed, intelligence formed and none of this all at once. We see new forms appearing literally all the time. When a baby is born, that is a new human being created where there was no human there before. Creation is happening continually.

If we observe the fossil record, we see that life has been steadily more and more complex. Once humans started communicating about abstract concepts, our culture and our collective knowledge has been getting more and more complex. This tendency to create new and more complex forms is seen all across the universe. Christianity does not reflect our modern understanding of the universe, but is instead stuck in a bronze age view about death and the destruction of the universe.

The Future has Unlimited Possibilities.

The universe was not created with the purpose that we humans can inhabit it. That would be the view of a terribly arrogant bronze age mentality. We are not separate from the universe in any way, but we are part of the universe.

We are the product of a steady process of continual creation of higher and higher forms. We are not the end of that progression. Human are not the final product of the universe.

We are however part of the continual creation of new and more complex forms. Humans are social animals that work together to accomplish things that could not be done individually, like build bridges, or fly a rocket to the moon. We have cultures that lay down laws, and work collectively to protect the weak from the unjust actions of the strong. Cultural movements, like democracy, have an existence that outlives all the humans that are involved. These cultures are new complex forms above the human level and there is no reason to believe that this progression will stop there, but will continue to form new and more complex patterns that we probably will never be able to understand.

The future will be more glorious that we can imagine, and we will be part of it.

At Peace With God

I have given you all the reasons that I can not accept Christianity -- or most any religions today -- as a path that leads to the truth. Christianity is just so obviously wrong on so many levels.

Still I am open to the idea that there is a God. The universe exists, and I can't explain that. Maybe there was a creator, maybe there was not. I am looking in every place I can to see if I find some evidence of that.

It would be very cool if there was a God. I would welcome that idea. I certainly have nothing against it.

I am convinced that if such a God exist, it does not want us to know about it. God is very carefully hidden. Anyone saying otherwise is lying because of the reasons I give above.

That makes me a hard agnostic: I don't know if there is a God, but this lack of knowledge is not because I am lazy, but because God has made it impossible for us to know whether there is a God. It is the will of God that we don't know about God, and who am I to challenge that?

Maybe some day we will discover a trace that God has left in the world. Maybe, when the universe reaches it paramount form, there will be an undeniable signature on the ultimate outcome. I don't know. That is all speculation. For now, all I know is that Christianity is not a path to the truth.