Why You are Stupid for Believing in God

April 14, 2009. Note from Euphorix: I regret the arrogance with which I wrote this article. At the time of writing, I was in the dawn of my interest in religion, and in the wake of this article I have learnt more and advanced intellectually to the point that I no longer agree with the certainty this article was written in. Were I to re-write this, I would word it very differently indeed. Regardless, the article remains in its unedited form.

You must be incredibly stupid to believe in a God. It’s probably not your fault though; you were probably brought up religious and indoctrinated from an early age. You might have been taught that anyone who differs from your opinion is a heathen; that if you dare to differ or question what you are told you will suffer eternal fire in Hell. You have been given the shield of faith, told that you must keep your faith with you always, never letting any heathen’s words of sin reach you, never opening your eyes and seeing the world for yourself but following blindly whatever your priest says. Whatever the pope says. Whatever Imam says, whatever the Qur’an says, whatever the interpretation of theism that you were happened to be born into says.

You are living your life in delusion. You delude yourself that there is a God, there must be a God, otherwise there would be no morals, no reason to live a decent life, no reason to live in the first place. All of this is true, uncomfortable as it is. The harsh reality is that life is just a figment of chance, the right ingredients happened to be here, in the exactly right atmosphere for intelligent beings to develop. The mathematical chance for life is smaller than can be comprehended.

Tell me, why do you not believe in Thor, Zeus, Aphrodite? Had the vikings not been reached by missionaries, had the Greek not been conquered by the Romans and the Romans fallen to the Barbarians, had the word of Jesus died, well, you tell me, would you still be a Christian then?

Why are you forbidding yourself to think through and accept what I am putting forward now? Because if you do, you will go to Hell. You are constantly kept in check and forced to do what you are told by the threat of damnation; merely considering if your religion really does work is a sin worthy of the most extreme punishment. Why? If your religion is the truth, why should it be scared of people doubting it; it should be able to explain its beliefs fully. Something perfectly logical needs not to be hidden away and banned from questioning.

The Vikings used to believe that lightning was caused by Thor riding in a carriage above the sky, throwing Mjølner down to earth, which would bounce right back into his hand. They also believed that one could walk up rainbows and knock on the doors of Valhalla. God was an invention to explain what could not be explained otherwise, and now so many previous beliefs that were held dearly have been eliminated by science, God having to vacate to make room for what could be explained by fact and logic. And where is he now? He is hiding in the few places left: what happened before the big bang, the ontological argument, for example. Incidentally, the ontological argument makes no sense upon closer inspection, as Gaunilo’s island proves. Using the ontological argument, one can make anything at all perfect. Picture a perfect pencil, it must exist because it is perfect. Picture a perfect lizard, a perfect helium balloon, a perfect island. Imagine a perfect layer of plastic covering the earth. It is perfect, and must exist according to the ontological argument, yet we all know that it doesn’t.

Paradoxes in God are plentiful. The following terms of God are claimed to be true by Christians: God is omnipotent, he can do anything. God exists outside of time. God is pure good, and will always do what will lead to the best outcome. This would mean that God has already made every single decision and defined every single course of action ever to take place, since he is omnipotent and exists out of time, and these decisions are for the absolute best, as God is good. This means that God cannot change his mind; that would mean that he is either not pure good or not omnipotent. Take your pick.

Although it may seem so, I am not trying to convince you with this article. I am only asking you to open your eyes, to dare question what you are told, to realize that you have been peppered with religious propaganda since you were born, and it is that which is forcing you neglect what I am saying. Forcing you to neglect logic. Forcing you to live in a world with magic and enchanted fields and cursed plains. I’d like to leave you with this quote from Douglas Adams: “Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”