Preaching to the unconverted.

One interesting aspect of being an atheist is the way that religious people often try to persuade you that their beliefs are valid. You've probably seen signs with witty messages outside churches; "CH__CH. What's missing? UR!" or "How dare you call yourself a self-made man - I distinctly recall creating you! - God".

Many of these also quote from the Bible, complete with chapter and verse references, as if these help to validate the whole thing. Here's a helpful hint for those who would try to persuade non-believers - quoting scripture will not convince us. Telling us that Jesus or God loves us or died to save us, or that we will have everlasting life if we believe has no meaning to most atheists, simply because it does not fit in with the frame of reference which we call real life. It may sound arrogant, but what most of us would ask in order to sway our view is concrete evidence, no more and no less, of the existence of God.

"Why should I believe in God?"
"The Bible says so"
"And why should I believe the Bible?"
"The Bible is the Word of God"
"How do you know?"
"The Bible says so"
Ever heard of a circular argument? I've said it before - scripture is not evidence.

If you look with a radio telescope you will see a Universe which is billions of years old and billions of light-years across, containing trillions of stars, many of which have their own solar (stellar?) systems of planets, some of which may more or less resemble our Earth. Now, nobody knows what set off the Big Bang at the beginning of time - you can call it God if you like, but it's not going to be the Judaeo-Christian God described in the Bible... If there was or is a Creator and Guardian, do you think He could really be bothered with a bunch of hairless apes on a smallish planet orbiting one of a billion small stars on the edge of one of billions of galaxies? OK - maybe we are only one of many of God's pet planets - perhaps each of his billion or so Chosen Planets has its own Species created in His Image. In that case, does each one have its own Ten Commandments, its own Adam, Eve and Moses? And its own Jesus? This is of course ignoring all the other Terrestrial religions, both past and present, which offer differing views and doctrines regarding Creation and Divinity.

Once again, a simpler view is "God doesn't exist". The Big Bang happened. What set it off and started time and space is simply not known, and the scientific process says "if you don't know, 'We don't know' IS the correct answer so far". Religion tends to say "if you don't know, attribute it to God or to an unknown property of God". In other words, in absence of all evidence, take a guess. But present it as inspired doctrine.

William of Ockham was a 14th-century English philosopher, a Franciscan friar to whom is attributed the logical principle known as Occam's Razor. It may seem churlish to invoke the name of a deeply religious individual in order to deny the existence of God, but William's blade is a very handy instrument. Essentially, Occam's Razor is the principle that, faced with evidence of a phenomenon, the simplest explanation is the most likely. We can apply this to various phenomena attributed to God. A simple one is creation of species. We can observe, for example that there are no fewer than 17 (some authorities name as many as 21) species of penguin in existence, forming at least four separate families.

Did God, on the fifth day of Creation reach out his hand towards the Southern Hemisphere (conveniently unknown to the authors of the Bible and unexplored by Europeans until the 16th century AD) and create 17 (or up to 21) different penguins which in some cases are only distinguishable by an expert or by another penguin? Why? Of course - He moves in mysterious ways; we are not meant to know why.

Or did birds evolve over millions of years from a branch of the dinosaurs (we have fossil evidence for this); one genus of birds living in the Southern Hemisphere take to an aquatic life and lose the power of airborne flight, and local populations in Antarctica, Australasia, South America and Africa evolve to suit local environmental conditions?

No guesses as to which I believe. No supernatural powers are required, no reason for a Creator to have separately sculpted the apparently near-identical but genetically different Royal, Macaroni, Chatham Islands, Snares, Rockhopper, Fjordland and Erect-Crested Penguins. Oh, and on the penguin front, one of the contested species is the White-flippered Penguin, a slight colour variant of the Little Blue Penguin of Australia. Maybe God wanted to try two different colour schemes...

I do believe I don't believe.

Here's a simple question. If God exists, why does he allow an innocent baby to suffer in agony and then die?

Ask half a dozen believers and you are likely to get as many different answers. Here are a few.

1. It is God's way of testing the faith of the baby's relatives; they are obviously not praying enough.
2. If God was obliged to intervene, then he would be obliged to save every sick or injured baby, and people would lose faith because there would be no miracles.
3. If God was obliged to intervene, then people would be denied the free will He has bestowed upon them.
4. The parents made their home in a place known for natural disasters. She is being punished for her parents' stupidity. Or if they survive, they are punished with her loss.
5. She is "collateral damage" in the punishment of sinners.

OK - let's make it trickier. Say the baby's parents are devout Christians. Say they live exemplary lives far from any obvious hazards such as earthquake zones, ferocious wild beasts or epidemic diseases. What possible reason can the benevolent, omniscient, omnipresent Lord have for allowing a baby to die painfully?

1. The baby, like all humans is not innocent - she was born with Original Sin, and God is saving her soul by letting her die.
2. It is part of God's plan; He moves in mysterious ways.
3. God knows that she will be happier in the afterlife than on Earth.
4. The baby is under the influence of Satan; God will not intervene for reasons best known to Himself.

How about "God doesn't exist"? That would explain a lot of things. We are under only two influences - the forces of Humanity (and its creations) and the forces of Nature. Things happen under these influences and sometimes the innocent suffer and die. We can try to prevent this by any physical means available, but praying to a non-existent being in the hope of a miracle won't help in the slightest. Decapitated Christians have exactly the same survival rate as decapited atheists - 0%.

We are told that the Christian God is:

1. benevolent
2. omnipresent
3. omniscient
4. omnipotent.

If He is benevolent then why does He allow any suffering at all? Oh, because He isn't aware of it... no, He's omniscient. Hmm... maybe He can't be there because He's too busy... no; omnipresent too. I know - He can't do it! Don't be silly - He is omnipotent - He can do anything, even contradict Himself! Well, in that case maybe He just can't be bothered. Perhaps He actually doesn't want to. In either case, is a lazy or apparently sadistic God really worthy of your veneration and devotion?

If every devout Christian in the world prayed at once for all cancer to be cured forever, what do you REALLY think would happen? See - you're thinking like an atheist already! Of COURSE nothing would happen. Yes, we know the mind of God. We know that He has his own mysterious reasons for not curing cancer. Maybe all those Christians weren't praying HARD enough. Maybe it's just not the kind of miracle we're supposed to pray for...

Or perhaps, just PERHAPS, there IS no God. It wouldn't make any difference to the outcome of the above thought-experiment. And it would make the rest of human existence a lot easier to understand too.

Yours in peace,

Simon