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The question, "God believes in you, so why do you not believe in him?" can be infuriating to a free thinker at first glance or, to the more mellow skeptic, at least a little frustrating. It looks like the poser of the question is dodging the whole issue; it can make one want to shout back, "Who the heck are you to claim to know anything at all about gods, let alone what any 'god' believes?" which, really, is the question atheists and agnostics have been asking from the beginning. "He believes in you, so you should believe in him," is a wholly redundant refutation.

The question's assumption - that "god believes in" us, falls apart when looked at squarely. It is a dodgy insertion of rhetoric into a philosophical conversation, and it's just so irritating because anyone who can see through it also sees the asker sniggering behind his hand as he plays proudly to a mindless mob of an audience. The hypothetical asker, and his audience, don't realize that this is a mere trick, rather than a valid question. They think it's clever, of course, and it is, for rhetoric - but that's where the cleverness ends.

The assumption is an attempt at dodging the burden of proof, a burden that rests upon the person espousing that one or more deties actually exist. The burden of proof rests upon the believer, rather than the skeptic, for an important reason: in every case of rational belief-adoption (religion is no exception), it's the person making the extraordinary claim who needs to back up her statement with evidence.

It is not the duty of the unconvinced to "disprove" an already-unlikely proposition. Likelihood is determined by evidence, and evidence must be presented by the believer; and, unfortunately for believers in the Abrahamic god, the Biblical argument is insufficient to reasonably support belief in the proposition that the god described therein is more than fictional.

Worse, the assumption, when stated, not only dodges the speaker's duty dishonestly, it does so while attempting to place feelings of guilt upon the disbeliever. "Look at all that God has given you," the speaker implies, "And yet, you remain heartless enough to deny His generocity, His grace, His amazingwonderfulnessofawesome, " etcetera, etcetera. The speaker implies that the non-believer should feel guilty for thinking with a free, rational mind; that the non-believer is presumed to be selfish, wrong, or unworthy.

Selfishness, of course, can not be derived from rational thinking. The question completely dodged by the apologist is still that of whether or not god actually exists. It's circular to assume that he does exist while trying to show that he does exist (and thus deserves believing in). The non-religious don't believe that god is real; this means they have no reason to feel guilty, or bad about themselves, because the god they "should" regard with thanks isn't real, and thus can't be hurt or angered by non-belief.

Thinking rationally is brave, not cowardly. It is impressive; it shows intelligence; it is something to admire. It also happens to lead to atheistic and agnostic convictions. Presenting the "God believes in you, so you should believe in him," proposition is not only embarassingly irrational, it's personally affronting to any non-believer confronted by it.

Learn more about this author, Currie Jean.
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