WHY IT IS BAD TO BELIEVE IN GOD

God is the supreme being who has power without limit and who is all loving. God is believed to have made all things and to be the one that keeps things running.

This belief is bad for countless reasons. A few are listed below.

 

*  Self-deception is the most dangerous of human traits.  People underestimate how much they do it.  It is too easy.  Encouraging belief in God is bad because religion causes the worst form of self-deception.  Moses and Jesus and Mohammad for instance blinded their followers to the evil of sentencing adulterous people to death by stoning.  Yet their dangerous faiths prevail in the world.

* It is mature to do what I do because I want to do it and not because other people approve. The God concept implies that I should do what I do because God is good and wants me to do it. It makes me worry about what God thinks. God therefore is opposed to self-esteem.

 

I should know myself what good is and I wouldn’t need a God to command me.  You are only good when you follow commands you know are good.  When I have to judge God good before I can be good in obeying him, it follows that I should do good because I see it as good in the first place.  I shouldn’t be doing it to obey him but because it is good.  The God belief opposes this attitude.  The attitude makes the belief unnecessary and God claims to be very necessary as a belief. 

 

God shouldn’t be commanding me so what I do against other people shouldn’t concern God.

* It follows from this that it is none of God’s business what I do to others. I must try to do my best for myself and others and do it because it is my concern and I want to do it. He has no business forgiving my sins against other people. If I hit a child I hurt the child not him.  If it is God’s business then my needs and wants do not matter and I should be forced by religion to submit to it’s credo. To delight in the mercy of God is to delight in degradation and we must make ourselves feel that for feelings are contagious.

* Rather than say evil is a mystery when God can stop it but won’t, it is better to say that an impersonal intelligence not a God created all things and set a good but not all-powerful entity over the universe. That avoids the mystery. It is callous to create mysteries in such an important matter as human suffering for not understanding creates more misery. The Church will reply that then you don’t have the consolation of a God who will make all things right in the end. But even if there is a God there is no guarantee that everything will be okay for me and you.  And besides the intelligence has done its best.

 

*There is a cruel streak in anybody who would condone a God standing by and allowing dreadful suffering to happen and who makes diseases and killer viruses and who damns many to an eternity in the torment of Hell.  If somebody abuses a child you don’t try to condone it.  If you do, you are just a sweet monster.  If you can condone the things God does you can condone anything.  God is only a belief.  Do you see how awful it is to create a belief and then insult people with it?  Do you see that though people see this as harmless that it is still fanaticism?  Fanaticism is just fanaticism.  When fanaticism doesn’t lead to violence it still could.  If I am a harmless fanatic I can hardly complain if somebody decides to adopt a fanaticism that gives them a bloodlust.

* God by definition does not need our love or our service for he is perfect and almighty and so is perfectly happy. So he makes us suffer for the sake of virtue he does not need and which we will not need in Heaven for there are no tears or death there. Any good our actions do on earth could have been done by God himself. But I need to feel that my good works for him are needed. Atheism not theism is what makes us more eager to do good for it holds that good makes a real difference. Theism demands good that is nothing but wasting time thanks to God and it is anything but encouraging. Would you like to have a cleaning job in which the employer deliberately dirties the place in order to give you something to do? The God concept was set up as a soul-destroying enterprise that vibrates with distaste towards human happiness.

* There is no point in serving God who has all he needs when he is almighty.  The only way out of this is for Christians to say that God determines morality in such a way that hate would be right if he commanded it. But back to this God who we are supposed to love and who does not need the love.  Why not serve good instead? In other words, why not do good because it is good and not because God commands it? It cannot be good to put a person however great before goodness so you have to serve goodness. You cannot give him all your love unless you save a bit for goodness but if he is goodness itself to love him is the same as to love goodness. From this it follows that if God should be served, it is just because he is powerful for good is not worried about for it could be served without putting all the devotion on him. It is clear, an act is wrong not because it is bad but because God says it is bad. The God concept is in opposition to morality. To refrain from stealing because God says so is evil because you should be doing it because stealing really is wrong. God is only useful for those people who want blind obedience to what they say God wants so God gets the blame while they reap the benefits.

 

*God sees all.  He can forbid women to have abortions even to save their lives because he sees that in the long run this will have slightly better results than allowing the women.  So this tells us that we should obey God despite the consequences for our perspective is too limited.  This belief that God can command what seems bad to us has led the Roman Catholic Church to establish the Inquisition and kills thousands of heretics and witches over Europe.  It has led Islamic fanatics to deliver a horrible death to thousands in New York.

 

*Suppose I need healing of the vice of impatience.  I pray to God to help me.  If he wouldn’t have helped me without praying then he is encouraging my sin.  He is not worth worshipping.  If he would have helped me then what do I need to pray for?  I cannot learn to be patient unless there are people to make me feel like being impatient.  So God has to encourage them to sin for me.  Prayer is the biggest dose of arrogance and hypocrisy possible.  What is so special about me that I ask that my virtue be put first?

* If there is a good God then he would do infinite good for me and so to sin against him is to insult him infinitely by throwing back the infinite love he has for me in his face. If I believe in him my sins are worse than they would be if I did not. Also all sin is equal. Doing little damage is as bad as murder.

* It is certain that happiness is found when you reduce your emotional needs to a minimum. Then you are also less under the grip of fear which is the root of all evil. If there is a God then we have to need him so that is an extra need and therefore the God belief is bad. I have to pine for proper union with him in Heaven.

* God implies altruism, the doctrine that I should hurt myself to help others and get nothing out of it, and since I am most sure that I exist it follows that I should put my development in altruism first and let others walk all over me. Love has to start with God and not with loving myself as the commandment of Jesus suggested, “The greatest commandment is to love God with all your powers. The next is to love your neighbour as yourself.” That blocks you from loving yourself for all love starts with self-love. You cannot love others unless you love yourself. Or if you like, if you think you are bad then when you give yourself to others you are offering them what you think is bad so you don’t respect them – not genuinely.  Egoism teaches that we must be good to others for in doing so we grasp how to love ourselves. Liking means finding satisfaction so when you like a person you are not valuing that person but how they make you feel. You cannot do anything unless you like it under the circumstances – making the best of a bad situation at least. Liking is a selfish act and it is one we all commend for we prefer people to have warm feelings for what we do and are.

Believers in God say we must love the sinner and hate the sin for we are all sinners. This is dishonest because if you say John’s essay is stupid that is the same as calling John stupid though many pretend it is not. Religion does this which shows it is wilful dishonesty and false charm. This makes altruism impossible for it is meant to be free from lies but this idea that to oppose the sin is not to oppose the sinner makes it all lies and whitewash. So egoism is the only option. It is bad enough to be an unbeliever and promote the lie of loving wrongdoers and hating wrong but it is worse to say that God does the same, to blacken the being you say is all good. Despite all its “love” for God, God-religion is intrinsically blasphemous and deepens vice. In time, belief in God should lead to violence for when the concept corrupts that means logically that if you think it is good to believe in God then it is okay to believe that it is his will that you should hurt people and persecute atheists.

 

Religion sometimes says that God considers each person to be of the utmost significance.  It says this makes belief in God healthy.  Religion says God made us all to experience this health, this intimacy with him who thinks we are so special.  But we cannot live a normal life without sin.  Eating out instead of giving the money to the poor is a sin.  How could we feel we are special?  Evil is bad enough without believing in a God who is offended by it as well.  A person who believes that hurting people is wrong but not in God will believe he only hurts people when he does wrong.  A person who believes in God has to worry about God as well. Also, strictly speaking God doesn't think anything or have any opinions.  These only happen to beings that don't know things but God knows all things. To say that God knows you are special sounds ridiculous and like false self-esteem.  True self-esteem is taking pride in your good points and your flaws as well but for God only perfection will do.  You can't be special to a God who could have made another person instead of you and who may let you go to Hell forever and who treats most of us like we are not special.  You can't be special to a God that is so big.  And God doesn't have feelings either.  Saying he likes us and loves us is not far from symbolism.  Also, by believing in God we may make it as if it were true for us that God thinks we are of the greatest importance to him. We are really giving ourselves the significance.  God can only condemn this.  Even if God really exists and really regards us as that important we don't know that.  We are still creating our belief, we are still making a god out of our belief in him.  We are really making an idol.  Human nature cannot allow me to be happy with a God who regards everybody on earth as being of extreme importance as well as me.  Believers who feel that they get meaning from belief in God for life and feel warmed by it are thinking in terms of ,"God loves me," and paying only lip service to the idea that God loves others just as much.  Also, God must infinitely value himself so there is no room for him valuing anything less than himself.

 

Believing that God regards you as of extreme importance will make you feel your life has less meaning not more if you are unable to feel that the doctrine gives you meaning or is important to you.  It will compound the lack of meaning you will experience because it will make you feel like you are a flawed and bad person.  If God made us for finding meaning in God and religion says he has done this then it follows that you are evil if you are unable to value God so much that your belief in God confers meaning on your life. 

 

God giving me the utmost importance means my life is meaningful to God but not me.  It is like the master valuing the slave.  That doesn't do the slave any good.  And it is ridiculous to say that God needs me for anything for he is all-powerful.  God based spirituality is all contradictory nonsense.

We do not need religious faith and need to rescue people from it because it is an unnecessary evil and something extra for people to fight and kill over. We can have right and wrong and comfort without it. God could do miracles of healing without it. God has no need for religion or even for us to be theists provided we listen to his voice in our hearts and use our heads so religious faith is anti-God.

Friday, 07 December 2007