Why I Am Not A Christian

With an apology to Bertrand Russell

The great philosopher gave his reasons with far more erudite conviction and clarity of both thought and discourse than I ever could, but I have been asked the question often; the presumption is always that some trauma caused me to turn away from my faith.

I will state my own position clearly and without equivocation at the outset:

· All gods are man-made.

· Faith in them is a childish and deeply erroneous world view, originally derived by our ancestors from an understandable ignorance of the world and the greater universe.

· Religions are harmful to mankind.

These views are in no way driven by anger at a deity which I do not believe exists, for such would be ridiculous. Nor was it ever caused by a trauma which led me to question God’s love. My position was reached through research and thinking. A phrase well known in atheist circles is that the quickest way to make an atheist is to get them to read the bible. I have read it and continue to do. I have read the Quran too and many other tracts by religious apologists, along with, of course, the work of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Aron Ra and others.

I want to use the following quote to demonstrate how difficult it is to explain non-belief to a Christian, or a follower of any other religion.

“Therefore, when a person refuses to come to Christ it is never just because of a lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis fails to become a Christian because of a lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with god.”

William Lane Craig

I do not and have never ‘refused’ to come to Christ. I do not believe Christ exists or has ever existed. There may or may not have been a historical Jesus, but to refuse him presupposes an acceptance of Jesus as divine and, as I do not believe God exists, I cannot believe he had a son.

I cannot willingly ignore the draw of God’s spirit on my heart, because I do not believe God exists. If God is fictional, as I have every right to assert as there has never been any evidence to the contrary, how can he possibly have a ‘draw’ on my heart and how can I willingly ignore something which doesn’t exist?

The statement that “no-one … fails to become a Christian because of a lack of arguments” is patently nonsense. Just ask the adherents of every other religion.

To claim that non-believers love darkness more than light is meaningless. We do not accept that your ‘light’ is anything more than a fairy tale.

The only correct assertion in the whole of Lane Craig’s quote is the last six words. I absolutely do not want anything to do with God, because I am completely convinced that God is not real. That being so, there can be no ‘refusal’ on my part.

I have gone on, at some length, in analysing the quote, because it is a clear indicator of how difficult it is to debate believers and to make them understand non-belief. We should understand that believers are usually taught about God as children and accept the stories of Jesus and lessons on scripture as facts, as all young children accept lessons from authority. But, of course, they are not facts, they are merely tall tales backed up by strong belief. It is vital to understand the distinction here. Every single bible story and every claim made about God and the afterlife fails every criterion required to be counted as fact.

Fact: information that is observed to be true. This entails that a fact has been contrasted with objective reality based on different forms of evidence.

Regardless of how convinced a believer may be, how certain they are of their ‘truth’, or how many times God has spoken to their heart or answered their prayers, they are not talking about facts, they are referring to faith, which is by definition a belief without evidence. If you need faith in something, it cannot be a fact. I do not believe in dogs or tables because I know they exist. I can prove it. If called upon to demonstrate this, I can refer to evidence that everyone can experience without prior acceptance of a belief. By contrast, it is impossible to prove God.

At this point I should say that it is also impossible to disprove God, but whilst science continues to find explanations for more and more of our universe, there has never been any evidence found for God. The late Christopher Hitchens put it well in two statements that approach the problem from opposite directions:

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”

&

“What is asserted without evidence, may be discounted without evidence”

More and more, it seems, believers try to use science to ‘prove’ God. This is a foolish course and always fails. In doing so they usually demonstrate a poor grasp of science or refer to scientific ideas that have long since been overturned (this occurs particularly when arguing against evolution), or they deliberately misrepresent facts in order to support their position. This only works when they are ‘preaching to the choir’. It will not convince non-believers because they are usually better informed or, at the very least, are inclined to do a little research. Only believers accept the word of others without checking.

Trying to use science is a non-starter. Believers should stick to what they know. If someone tells me that cosmology proves the universe could not have happened by chance, I can counter the argument with ease. If they say that, regardless of my evidence, or their lack of it, they ‘know’ in their heart that God loves them, I have a much harder time. But that still leaves them with a problem.

The world moves on. It is no longer the medieval period, when the church had the power to punish, even kill, those who did not believe. Returning to the Hitchens statement about extraordinary claims, it is reasonable, given our modern understanding of the universe and our place within it, to say that God’s existence is an extraordinary claim. As such, the burden of proof lies with believers. In earlier centuries this would not have been the case, but today we require more than mere words from a preacher to inform our world view. We either require direct evidence or, at the very least, demonstrable proof that technology works. I do not need to know the principles of aerodynamics before getting on a plane but I do know that planes work because they do so all the time.

We have grown up as a species and become sceptics. Most of us would never simply take someone’s word for anything. Even believers live by this principle, with the sole exception of their religious faith. In that field alone they are happily prepared to abandon critical thinking, indeed any form of free thought, in favour of blind obedience. Some of us refuse to be so gullible.

To return to my point, as to why I am not a Christian, I would broaden the scope to say why I do not follow any religion whatsoever.

The core of it is my inability to accept the word of other men for something so important. I will not be told by modern preachers that they know what happens after we die or that they know the mind of God. Anyone who makes such a claim is either sadly deluded or a liar.

I will not base my whole world view on stories in books written in the bronze age, undoubtedly taken from much earlier oral myths by men who knew less about the world and the universe than a modern eight-year-old.

Neither will I accept that an angel came to earth repeatedly between 1609 and 1632, to recite a new and final testament to a semi-literate Arab trader in a desert town, or that a convicted con-man was visited by an angel in March 1830 and given golden tablets to translate, bizarrely, into the English of 1611. No more will I accept Norse or Greek mythology or that of the Aztecs or Incas.

Whilst I am not a scientist, I use scientific thinking to form my world view. I check information and I require either direct evidence or the assurance of the repeatable successes of science and technology. The universe is what it is by virtue of clearly understood principals. There is always more to discover but the overriding ethos remains the same; to question and seek knowledge. This is the very opposite of the religious view, which claims that all we need to do is accept God and all will be revealed.

Our primitive ancestors made up spirits to explain the mysteries of their world. These spirits evolved, in the minds of men, to become gods. In the twenty-first century we no longer require the notion of a creator to explain what we see, or interventionist gods to tell us how to live.

I am a humanist; I understand that, in the absence of God, it is up to us to solve our problems, be they personal, or philanthropic. We can neither ask for God’s help, nor blame him for the troubles we see around us.

I do not fear death. To me it is simply the end of life. The matter which is my body will decay into its constituents and the energy that keeps me going will dissipate. I will no longer think or experience because I will have nothing with which to do so. I will simply cease to be. Because there is nothing more, there is no reason for me to either fear death or welcome it. This then is the final reason why I do not feel the need to seek mystical magical answers.

I want to make it clear that my philosophy, or world view, is in no way meaningless, depressing or fatalistic. I enjoy life and I find wonder in things I do not understand. Which is why I love to learn. Freedom from the constraints of religion, where one’s way of life and even thoughts are proscribed, is a freedom to really truly life.

And finally, two quotes to summarize the Christian perspective and to demonstrate how it differs from mine.

“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Proverbs 3. Verse 5 to 6. King James bible

“Everyone who by faith slays reason, the world’s biggest monster, renders God a real service, a better service than the religions of all races and all the drudgery of meritorious monks can render. Do not consult that Quackdoctor reason, believe in Christ”.

Rev Martin Luther. The Father of Prostestantism

In other words, it’s easy to be a good Christian, just give up thinking.

PDC

May 2020