by Jack Roviere

Created on: February 15, 2009

While there are no doubt many reasons to believe in God and many reasons to not believe in God, they usually can be simplified into one: people take whatever belief (or nonbelief) position they do because, to them, it's most natural and convincing.

So, in elaborating on all the reasons not to believe in God, keep in mind that the principle reason is simply because all the reasons for believing in God are not convincing. That leaves nonbelief as the alternative.

Without faith and a sense of spiritual experience, it appears to many that God is essentially absent from the universe. It seems that equal proportions of nonbelievers and believers live good lives; equal proportions of nonbelievers and believers are affected by freak tragedies or graced with wonderful fortune. When a natural disaster strikes, for example, it doesn't appear that nonbelievers are disproportionately "punished" or that believers are particularly protected. All of these ideas can lead don't speak well for god beliefs - and certainly not for the god beliefs of many religions that propose and active and engaged, personal god.

In fact, what's interesting is that if one *does* look at the universe without placing a god at its forefront, the universe doesn't collapse. One can still come up with hypotheses that fit actual real-world phenomenon about the universe that do not require a god. While science isn't "against" religion in any sense, one key idea about the scientific method is that it doesn't *require* a deity. By being based on the empirical - that which can be experienced - hypotheses and theories tested rigorously through the scientific method actually lend themselves quite well nonbeliefs.

Is this saying that evolution means that God does not exist? Not necessarily. After all, evolution could be a mechanism that a god uses to achieve his goals. However, the question becomes - why should we suppose this rather than supposing that evolution is a mechanism of natural causes?

With the availability of working models of the universe and the world that don't require a god (because scientific theories that *accurately* and *consistently* model the way the world actually works do not seem to require a god, like the example of evolution), the onus is on theists to show why one should add God on top of these models. And once again, coming back to the central idea - for nonbelievers, all of the arguments have fallen flat and unconvincing. And it doesn't help, of course, that some theists may reject

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