Why I do not believe

Christian morality makes me laugh. It takes a lot of special pleading to make yourself ignore all contradictions and fallacies. It is truly an art. The most immoral part of Christianity is, in my opinion, the following loophole. Let's do a thought experiment.

1. Do you believe that all people sin? Christian doctrine will tell you we were all born sinners. So if you are okay on that premise, let's continue to point 2.

2. Jesus died for our sins. If you did not believe that, you would disagree with all christian denominations so far. Which would be a first, since I cannot think of many ideas two different denominations would see eye to eye on. So, Jesus died, enabling you to be forgiven when you sin (not 'if', we covered that under 1). I will ignore the downright outlandish claims that nailing somone to a piece of wood is going to make the world a better place for now.

3. In order to be forgiven, you need to pray and repent. Then your deity will forgive whatever sin you committed and when you die, you get to go to heaven. Mind you, nobody has yet seen heaven and reported on it, so we just need to trust those pastors when they say heaven is super duper great. The heaven as described in Revelations is not that fancy BTW.

This means that common scoundrels, adulterers, rapists, slave-owners, animal-abusers, wifebeaters, criminals, holocaust-deniers, dictators, murderers and Republicans can confess their sins to Jesus, ask for forgiveness and enter heaven. Isn't that sweet?

But wait, the story is not done yet! We have just deducted that people go to heaven if:
- they are really good at never committing any sins, which would be impossible (see 1)
- they are really good at asking for forgiveness after sinning

But people would not go to heaven if:
they are incapable of asking for forgiveness.

Now, atheists are vile sinners of course, because the biggest sin you can commit is not believing in a deity. Because they do not believe in this deity, they are also not able to pray to this deity and ask for forgiveness. So, atheists go to hell, which is the not-very-happy place that most denominations either a. prefer not to talk about b. deny vehementlyto be part of their teaching. Funnily enough, the next thing they will say that being not in the same place with their deity (heaven) is even worse (hell version 2 - so still a hell). Let's face it: there is no christianity without hell: you need a reward / punishment system.

So how does a christian solve this cognitive dissonance? The one created by: a good person who happens to be an atheist goes to hell, a bad person who turns good before he dies, gets to go to heaven? And of course the lingering question on what is so evil about somebody not believing, since the simple act of non-belief does not cause harm.

Most christians will tell you that non-belief is a choice. All you have to do is turn to Jesus, and accept his as your saviour, and why the hell are you being so difficult? Why are those darn atheists complaining about christian morality (oxymoron!)? All you need to do is believe and all will be well and you too will go to that magical place in a couple of years, to be blissfully happy for eternity, because God loves you! Lend me your ear and I will show you the fallacy in this reasoning.

Think of all the atheists you know. Count them! Your atheist friends, neighbours, classmates, colleagues, family members..... Now count the number of atheists you know vaguely: that bloke who works in the supermarket who never comes to church, that girl with the pony-tail who is a the niece of your friend from school from when you were young..... To top it all off, count all the atheists you heard of. The Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennetts and Stephen Fryes (Fries?) of this world. Add them all up, total them. You should have a pretty massive number (unless you lie in Saudi Arabia, but then you won't believe in Jesus anyhow).

How many of these people, do you think, were raised in a religion? How many, do you think, ever wondered about religion, searched God, visited churches? Don't you think they were sincere? None of them? Why did your god not help them? Give them a sign, so they can also believe? And by belief, be saved from eternal damnation?

If your god is omnipotent, he would know exactly what it would take to turn me into a believer. I am not opposed to belief, as long as there is sufficient and proper evidence for it. I believe in lots of things (algebra, heliocentrism, sex abuse scandals in the church, Abu Ghraib controversy, gravity, personal hygiene), I can be swayed by good evidence. How can you claim that your god loves me, when he is ready to condemn me to eternal torture, because he refuses to supply me with the evidence I require? My character, my personality, my thinking brain.... according to your religion God created me, and he created me in such a way that it is impossible for me to be anything but an atheist.

Perhaps I am an evil person. Can you say the same of all those other atheists you heard about?

Let's face it: atheists have a friendlier idea of your deity than you do. You believe your god to be an immoral masochist, we think he has a perfect excuse: he does not exist.