The simplest answer is usually the correct one: There is no god

The struggle to explain away inconsistencies, illogic, outright contradictions and plain silliness in the Bible and Christianity over the years, to myself and others, was mentally and emotionally exhausting. All in an effort to avoid the simple, obvious truth. There is no god.

In this regard, Occam's Razor is apt. As explained in good old Wikipedia, it holds that "the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory." In other words, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

Along these lines I found the following on ExChristian.net, written by Marcus:

Then finally I realized that the reason nothing made sense anymore was because clearly there is no God. That was the simplest, clearest, most obvious answer out of all the possibile conclusions. The contradictions and implausible, weak arguments and ridiculously flawed conclusions that consist of Christianity and any religion, they had been piling up in the back of my head all my life and I stubbornly ignored the facts and the obvious logic. This is already aside from the mountain of self-contradictions present in the Bible, and the oceans of additional contradictions in our various interpretations of it, something I had a hard time reconciling all through my life reading and studying it; trying to explain away to others (when I didn't know myself) why every church and sect cherry-pick the verses that suits their taste, why there's a verse to directly contradict every other verse; a myriad of scriptures directly refuting the established doctrine of every church denomination on earth, from the most orthodox Catholics to the wildest Pentecostals and everything in between. Let alone the simple lack of logic and common sense in the very basic story so far that even a child could point out in a matter of minutes of considering it.

Ultimately I realized I believed in God for the same reasons I used to believe in Santa Claus. Santa rewards you when you've been good but gives you a lump of coal when you've been bad. There's no evidence of his existence either, and the entire mythology of Santa is incredibly dubious, implausible, ridiculous and fantastic at best (traveling down the chimneys of every household in the entire world in one Christmas eve night? I'm pretty sure that violates the laws of Physics as well as common sense). The only difference is that children stop believing in Santa past a certain age. Ultimately there is literally no difference between God and Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, zombies, goblins, unicorns, etc. etc.

Bad things didn't happen because I did something wrong and God was punishing (sorry, "chastizing") me; good things weren't rewards (or in Christianese, "fruits") of good or right behavior. Wealth wasn't a sign of blessing, neither was poverty a mark of holiness. Things weren't "destined" to happen. God didn't have a will or plan for anyone's life. Guilt wasn't punishment from God or condemnation from the devil, just consequences of actions you don't feel good about later. Repenting of sin wasn't making me more holy; it was making me stupid and causing me not to learn from my mistakes and change on my own but rather depend on some external spiritual force to be a better person. Neither beauty nor tragedy required an explanation; neither did our existence itself. There's no meaning other than what we make. And we need neither God or Hell to motivate us to be good; we know why we should be good people already.

Read more>>

Follow me on Twitter. Golden Platypus is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.