As stated above, none of the arguments I have seen so far for the existence of a god, have withstood close scrutiny. But it gets worse: Some of the attributes, ascribed to various gods, leads us to conclude that those gods logically cannot exist, while others make them seem very implausible.

Most of my arguments in this part of the essay will only cover some gods, and for each of them a lot of theists will be able to say, that the argument doesn't cover their particular god. This however is unavoidable given the sheer number of different conceptions of gods.

An Omnipotent God is a Logical Impossibility

A lot of religious people claim that their god is omnipotent (all-powerful), this however leads to a lot of problems, which have been pointed out by numerous people. One of these problems is the consequences of the simple but a bit naïve question: “Can God create a rock that he can’t lift?” If God can’t do this, then he isn’t omnipotent, and if he can, then he still isn’t omnipotent, because then there is something, that he can’t do – i.e. lift the rock.

This means that omnipotence is a logical impossibility, and therefore omnipotent gods are also logically impossible.

Omniscience is Incompatible with Free Will

Some Gods are also supposed to be omniscient (all-knowing), and humans supposedly have a free will. But how can humans have a free will, if a god in advance knows what is going to happen? There can be no choice in any meaningful sense of the word, if there is only one possible outcome to each and every situation (that is the outcome that the god has foreseen).

This leads us to conclude that free will combined with omniscience is impossible, and if we want to keep omniscience and thereby have to kill off free will, what does that do to the concept of sin?

Contradictions

Being a logical impossibility isn’t the only problem facing gods and the holy scriptures of the religions. One should for example think that an all-powerful god would be able to make sure that his holy scriptures were relatively error free.

However upon examination one finds that this isn’t the case. Internal contradictions run rampant, and descriptions of the universe tend to be downright silly. A good example of this is the Bible:

• In Exodus there are two very different versions of the Ten Commandments, and God is claiming that they are exactly the same (Exo 20:1-17 vs. Exo 34:1,12-26).

• According to Gen 2:18-19 God created man before the animals, but Gen 1:25-26 tells us that it was the other way around.

• The Earth is claimed to be flat (see http://www.answering-christianity.com/earth_flat.htm).

• Jesus is said to be born while Herod the Great was alive (Mat 2:1-2), and while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luk 2:1-7). Unfortunately Qurinius became governor ten years after Herod died.

This list could be continued for a long time, and it makes it seem quite implausible that the Bible is the word of God or even divinely inspired.

Such problems aren’t confined to the Bible. The Quran for example states that Heaven was created before Earth, and that Earth was created before Heaven (http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/contra/first.html) and Hindu scripture apparently claim that the bottom of the universe is filled with water (http://www.veda.harekrsna.cz/planetarium/index.htm).

The Absurdity of Religion

Why is it that if I claim that the keyboard, I’m typing this on, regularly turns into green cheese from the planet Krypton, then everyone will call me insane, but if someone claims that the bread they are eating and the wine they are drinking are turning into the flesh and blood of a guy born of a virgin, who is his own father, and who rose from the dead 2000 years ago, then he’s called a Catholic and should be respected for his faith?

When an absurd belief is labelled religious, then it suddenly isn’t considered absurd any more. This seems pretty weird to me, and let’s face it, most religions are based on beliefs that really are silly. A typical example of this is the story of the Ten Commandments.

In this story God calls Moses to Mount Sinai to give him the divine will about human conduct. God then lets Moses walk up the mountain, down again and up once more, before giving him the Ten Commandments. Afterwards the tablets with the commandments are broken, and Moses must ascend the mountain yet again, to get a new copy. Now imagine yourself in Moses’ place. You have climbed three times to the top a tall mountain enshrouded in clouds and lightning to receive the divine guidance of the almighty God, and then it turns out that he can’t remember his own commandments and therefore makes up some completely new ones, while claiming that they are exactly the same. And to make matters worse the tenth commandment is “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk” (Exo 23:19). That is the guidance that God in his infinite wisdom wants to give us? We can’t cook a goat in the milk of its mother?

Can anyone really look me in the eyes and with a straight face say that this story wouldn’t be considered plain silly, if it wasn’t a religious story? In my opinion it could have been taken straight out of a Monty Python sketch.

Of course being silly or absurd doesn't rule out existence, but it doesn't seem to be likely attributes of a being with infinite wisdom.

Occam’s Razor

I have argued above that gods tends to be logically impossible, and the stories about them are absurd and contradict themselves and well known facts. This in my opinion should be enough to dismiss them – at least until someone present some very solid facts.

There are however one more reason to do this, and it’s the principle known as Occam’s Razor. This principle, which is widely used in science simply states, that when trying to explain something, one shouldn’t add unnecessary elements to the explanation – or stated in another way, which is more useful in this context: If something can be explained with reference only to things we know to be true, then one shouldn’t invent and add new things.

This principle, while only a rule of thumb, ensures that our explanations are more likely to be true, and applied to the concept of god; it tells us to cut him away, because we don’t seem to need him as an explanation of anything.

Why Haven't We Seen Any Gods?

If any gods really exist why haven't we seen any of them? If they really want us to worship them, why should they want to hide from us? I know that this is no definite proof against the existence of gods, but it should give anyone pause that religions have existed for thousands of years and a huge number of people have done their best to discover gods or prove their existence, and as far as I have been able to find out, we still have no real evidence.

If it were anything other than religion we were talking about, wouldn't you have given up if such a search had failed to find any evidence? I know I would, and I don't see any reason to make religion a special case.

Updated 2007-04-15: Switched references to Gen 1:25-26 and Gen 2:18-19 in the section on contradictions.

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