"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God."

I propose that one of the following statements is the absolute truth in regards to a supreme being of the universe:

(A) God doesn't exist at all

(B) If God exists, It is either all-powerful OR merciful-- but not both

(C) If God exists, It either is completely unaware of mankind's existence OR doesn't care one whit about it at all, one way or the other. And so those worshipping It are as misguided as the lowest primitives worshipping a dead stone idol.

(D) If God exists, It is actually much closer to being what most people would define as evil rather than good. That is, It has shaped the entire universe to be forever tilted in favor of evil, waste, and suffering-- and as a result mankind can only progress by actively battling against the works of It rather than worshipping It

Now let us examine some supporting evidence for these various possibilities.

(A) God doesn't exist at all

A purely objective scientific perspective would tell us there's precisely as much tangible evidence for the existence of God as there is for UFOs being spacecraft piloted by aliens: namely, zero.

-- God is Imaginary - 50 simple proofs

-- Pay No Attention to the Deity Behind the Curtain

-- God Is...

-- Religion a figment of human imagination by Andy Coghlan; 28 April 2008

-- Born believers: How your brain creates God 04 February 2009 by Michael Brooks Magazine issue 2694.

-- Why do we believe in God? I By Satoshi Kanazawa on March 24, 2008

-- Why do we believe in God? II By Satoshi Kanazawa on March 28, 2008

-- Could it be pretty obvious there's no God?

-- Common Absurdities Atheists Hear From Christians

-- The One Minute Case For Atheism May 15th, 2007

But the faithful will frantically wave their arms in the air and say all creation is the proof of God's existence, from the mosquito that gives us malaria to the nuclear bomb which kills hundreds of thousands of us in one shot.

Well, they'd prefer to use different examples from those, but technically they'd have to admit if pressed that those samples are just as valid as any others they might offer up. Oops!

So logic and evidence really don't matter to some people so far as proving or disproving the existence of God. They might vigorously support the evidentiary method for most all other matters like criminal court cases, and the scientific method which enables us to fight disease and build TV sets and automobiles. But not for the case of God.

No, they say that God is above the law, beyond scientific method, isolated from the works of man-- practically aloof, unreachable, and incomprehensible in many ways-- and yet God at the same time gives very specific instructions to some men, according to all the mainstream faiths...and those guys should be trusted with no questions asked to tell us what God wants us to do.

For some reason God can't or won't speak to the rest of us personally-- and whenever it seems so those of us so contacted are usually shipped to the nearest looney bin as soon as possible for the safety of themselves and others...

So tell me again how we determine who's crazy and who's been honestly contacted or "inspired" by God?

And while you're at it, include a method by which to separate the con-men from the truly chosen, please. The faithful could use some help here lord!

(B) If God exists, It is either all-powerful OR merciful-- but not both

Just a brief close up view of the awful heart-rending suffering going on in the world today-- let alone throughout all history-- would offer powerful evidence of this notion: that if God exists, either it is all-powerful OR merciful, but not both. For being both would imply It would have to take action to alleviate such massive suffering-- and thus all such suffering would be completely eliminated. And yet such a thing has never even come close to happening. Yes, occasionally the worst tortured among us catch a tiny break. But the reasons for those instances of relief are always indistinguishable from the acts of other people like ourselves, or random accident. Never any more indication of divine intervention than the mere wish on the part of some that it be so credited. Which takes us back again to the zero evidence, 100% faith requirement.

Of course if God doesn't care at all for us-- or actually sort of dislikes us--or is even utterly unaware of our existence (as described elsewhere) then the clues currently available would allow It to be an all-powerful entity as some suspect. But worthy of our worship? It seems not.

-- Why Won't God Heal Amputees? by Marshall Brain

-- "I can imagine something better than God, and you can too"

(C ) If God exists, It either is completely unaware of mankind's existence OR doesn't care one whit about it at all, one way or the other. And so those worshipping It are as misguided as the lowest primitives worshipping a dead stone idol.

-- Religion - The Commercial; Alternate link

-- Religulous - Full Movie

-- Instruction Manual for Life

"Nevertheless the Bible writers claimed repeatedly that they were transmitting the very Word of God, infallible and authoritative in the highest degree. This is an amazing thing for any writer to say, and if the forty or so men who wrote the Scriptures were wrong in these claims, then they must have been lying, or insane, or both."

-- How do we know the Bible is true?

Apparently the majority of the strongly religious don't enjoy much comfort about the afterlife, as they seem to fear death more than the less religious. Why? Perhaps because in their hearts they know they're likely wrong about the nature and existence of God. Or...they know they lived their lives doing wrong against others, merely using religion as a convenient excuse for some of it-- and therefore deserve punishment from any truly righteous deity which might exist.

-- Pious 'fight death the hardest' 17 March 2009

Might God (if such a thing exists) be apathetic? Care not at all about humanity?

It's very possible. After all, the universe is so big as to be unimaginable for us. It seems highly unlikely that a being whose awareness spanned trillions of worlds would even notice our little speck of mud-- let alone elevate it to a special status above all others.

"The rash assertion that 'God made man in His own image' is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths, and as the hierarchy of the universe is disclosed to us, we may have to recognize this chilling truth: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods."

-- Arthur C. Clarke, scientist and author, 1965

--Arthur C. Clarke By Frank Houston; March 7, 2000; Salon.com; http://www.salon.com/people/bc/2000/03/07/clarke

And there's quite a bit of evidence that the more power a human being possesses over others the less they tend to care about those they rule, and-- at best-- the more apathetic they become; while at worst, the more evil.

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely". -- Lord Acton -- page 615, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett; 15th Edition, 1980; Little, Brown publisher -- What would Godhood be like anyway? Pull out the history books: A couple of mass murderers basically gained power over half the industrialized world during the 20th century: Stalin and Hitler. Hitler alone wielded so much power it took everything the US and its allies could do to stop him in WWII-- even after Stalin too turned against the German dictator. Once Hitler was out of the way Stalin pretty much did as he wished with millions of his countrymen and several other conquered states until he died of natural causes in 1953. The power of Stalin and his successors managed to scare all the other major powers of the world (including the US) sufficiently for them to sink awesome sums into their respective war machines and intelligence agencies, even after Hitler's threat was long gone.

And as human beings were supposedly created in the image of God, that implies some potential for such vulnerability in the original design too-- God itself. Yikes!

But let's assume God does exist and does notice us, and has taken some sort of pains addressing our plight.

In that case "pains" would be the operative word, as the scale of human suffering on Earth is staggering today.

So let's see...we assume we have an all powerful deity taking some sort of real action in regards to us...and the vast majority of us are suffering mightily. Hmm. I don't think I like where this is going. Tell me again why we should worship an entity like this? It seems the only reason you might have under this scenario is worship out of pure fear-- the same as you might towards a Hitler, Stalin, or Saddam Hussein perhaps?

-- If genocide is evil, how is god any different than Adolf Hitler?

(D) If God exists, It is actually much closer to being what most people would define as evil rather than good. That is, It has shaped the entire universe to be forever tilted in favor of evil, waste, and suffering-- and as a result mankind can only progress by actively battling against the works of It rather than worshipping It

In other words, for most real world purposes all the mainstream monotheistic religions of today are likely indistinguishable from Satanism in their long term consequences and effects for humanity as a whole. Yikes!

Wow. The evidence for this one is overwhelming. At least for anyone who'll accept evidence at all.

Entropy makes the universe tick...well, rather, it makes the universe die. That is, it makes everything wind down, decay, age, deteriorate, and just generally go to hell.

Everything. And everybody. No matter their religion, race, sex, or whatever. Everybody goes to hell.

Of course this is only true for everything we can measure in the known universe, and among living things, with the best scientific measures we can devise. The faithful get around this by saying some of the dead of our number will go somewhere that can't be found or figured out scientifically, to ultimately avoid a hellish ending. You just have to trust them on this point. It's not like they're simply ignorant or deranged...right? I mean, they have their own reasoning...whoops! Forgot! They have no reasoning whatsoever for this. Just blind faith. Check.

Entropy means the ultimate natural fate of the universe is death and destruction, and that even now, a long long ways from the ultimate end of everything, every single game is rigged against "good" outcomes, by at least a tad.

That is, death, destruction, and decay usually enjoy the advantage in any endeavor. Time-- and luck-- are on evil's side.

Or in other words, evil usually enjoys the advantage in any event. By at least a bit. Oftentimes by overwhelming amounts.

Humanity's entire history of civilization building and technological advance has been a struggle against these tendencies. Trying to overcome, bypass, or delay the natural world's predilection towards destruction by whatever means we could devise.

Trying to keep our bridges from falling, our lights from going dark, or our children from dying.

It's a constant struggle against the universe. A universe for which the faithful say God is wholly responsible for creating.

And it's a struggle with our base human natures too. The potential for evil inherent in all of us. The potential for evil in the same human nature supposedly created by God in Its own image.

Natures which many of the devout steadfastly maintain DID NOT evolve from animals, ala Darwinian evolution.

But if we were created in the image of God either It made a bad mistake in the copying-- or else the original is as flawed as we are.

Whoops! That image thing must just be a typo in the bible then, right?

Just how many other typos are there in that thing?

-- Contradictions in the Bible available online 1-4-09

-- 101 Contradictions in the Bible available online 1-4-09

But let's tackle some of the points made above individually, shall we?

The creator of the universe encourages waste and suffering.

"As for religious dogma-- that the universe was created especially to house and nourish us and our ilk alone-- that too may fall by the wayside as more people gain an understanding of just how big the universe is, and its full potential for paradigm busting. I.e., it appears that 99+% of the universe will forever be off limits to humanity, no matter how far our technologies advance. So saying this place was built just for us is like saying a 144 room mansion was designed just for one child occupant who'll never be allowed to leave their cradle-- let alone their nursery. So it would seem supporters of supreme being dogma must explain how such wasteful extravagance universe-wide can be justified, in the face of horrific suffering here on Earth, by so many innocents-- especially children-- and especially under the auspices of a God claimed to be merciful and caring."

The creator of the universe encourages evil.

"...luck more often favors the evil or ill-intentioned over the good, and the extravagantly wasteful over the efficient and thrifty."

"This aspect of luck should be obvious to most everyone: just examine the history books. Look how far evil men like Stalin and Hitler were able to get in life, and how many innocents they robbed and killed doing so. You can check out today's newspapers for plentiful examples too...."

"...This particular aspect of luck would seem to be a glaring contradiction to the belief that there is an all powerful and just God running the cosmos. If such a being exists it would appear to be only one or the other, not both. That is, if it's all-powerful it certainly isn't just; and vice versa.

Of course even anarchy has a structure of sorts: the strongest rule over everyone else. Human society has basically followed this path for millennia. Today that means that the nearer the top of the hierarchy you are the more evil you are expected to do and be allowed to get away with. The nearer the bottom, the less."

So if the God of modern American Christianity truly exists, and is in any way reflective of American society today, He must be of the utmost evil in nature.

Some say Satan is the great trickster. Wouldn't this be the grandest deception He could ever achieve?

Want more? Then check out the links below:

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong ... have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything “chosen” about them."

-- Albert Einstein 1954; The word God is the product of human weakness 7 October 2009

-- "Science without Religion Is Lame, Religion without Science Is Blind"; Letter describing Einstein's religious beliefs up for auction By Gabriel Gache, Science News Editor 14th of May 2008

"The National Government...will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.... "

-- Adolf Hitler: BERLIN: PROCLAMATION TO THE GERMAN NATION FEBRUARY 1, 1933

Religion! video

Why People Believe Invisible Agents Control the World A Skeptic's take on souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens and other invisible powers that be By Michael Shermer From the June 2009 Scientific American Magazine

It came from reddit: All the Bible fallacies you'll ever want to know! (PIC)

God-Man: The darkest superhero of them all.

Quantum gods don't deserve your faith 22 April 2009 by Amanda Gefter; Magazine issue 2704.

The 50 Most Brilliant Atheists of All Time

Crazy vs. Religion

Is god imaginary? Let’s look at the evidence.

"I hope they speak Norwegian in HELL!" [cartoon]

What happens when we die? [PIC]

ATHEIST!!!!!!!

NoBeliefs.com (Freethinkers)

Sam Harris: lecture on religious faith - Part 01

Atheism: good enough for these idiots

Rejecting Atheism

American Atheists | Welcome