What I Believe.

I want to begin this blog by talking about exactly what I believe, so that in the future, hopefully, no one will misconstrue any of my points. As an empirical agnostic, I believe that humanity as a race cannot be sure if there is a god or not. We do not have the means to prove that one does or does not exist, and therefore we can neither assume that one exists, not that it doesn't.

I do believe that there could, possibly be a god, but I'm not sure about this. I am inclined to doubt it. I accept, though, that if there were a god of some nature, neither I, nor humanity, would necessarily know about it yet. This depends on exactly what the properties of this god are. And then there is the argument of how you would define a god, and what would just be considered a being of some sort. That's an argument, though, that I won't go into.

Despite my belief that a god could exist, do not think for a moment that I believe in any of the religions that there are. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, anything. I understand that Buddhism, at least some of its sects, do not recognize a god; however I don't know enough about it to pass judgment. As for other religions, though, I simply do not believe that they are true. The fact is that none of them have a shred of conclusive scientific evidence to support the existence of their god. I'll go into the other reasons why I don't believe that most major religions are true in the next post, but in the mean time, I'm out!

Sincerely,
The Ellipsis

As for why I think that we cannot prove that there is a god, well, it's pretty obvious. Not a single theist can come up with a scientific experiment that confirms, irrefutably, the existence of a god. Holy texts have stories in them which have been proven to be inaccurate, impossible, and which in some cases are just ridiculous. The only thing theists ever do to prove their point is to claim that everything they see is caused by "god". They cannot prove that he causes anything, so they simply say that he causes everything. Any protest against this is often countered with things like "You couldn't possibly understand His doing", or "That was man's fault, God allowed it to happen because it was for the better." My problem is: If there's a god, then sure, attribute all that you want to him. But these people seem to be saying that there is a god, because there is a god, because there has to be a god, etc.

Another problem here is the reliance upon holy texts to interpret the word of a god. Take the bible, for instance. How do we know that it's true? We are able to prove that parts of it like creation, parts of Jesus' life, etc. are false, and yet people still believe the rest of it is true? And how can they say that it's the word of god, when they have no evidence except that the person before them said it, and the person before him said it, and so on. But how do we know it originated from god? There's no historical evidence to suggest this. I mean, it says in the bible that the bible is the word of god, but I shouldn't even have to explain how stupid that is. If I say that this blog post is the word of god, then you won't believe it. I say it's the word of god. If this is true, then what it says must be true. And since it says it's the word of god, then it must be. That's what I like to call, a logical clusterf***, or a paradox.

This brings me to my next point on why I don't buy into religions. Faith, to me, seems to be a self-feeding reward cycle. Faith is supposedly a virtue, it is good to be faithful. So here's how that works. If you believe in Christianity, than you believe that faith is a good thing. So you think it's good to believe in it, and continue to do so, and so on and so forth. But they never account for the idea that it might not be true. It never occurs to them that their virtue might be a vice, because it is a virtue to view it as a virtue, and to view viewing it as a virtue to be a virtue. Grammatically, that could be confusing, but see if you can't get it, and see the logical ball of yarn that theists so love to spin.

My final point against religion (for now) is the matter of free will. Here's how it makes no sense. God supposedly controls everything, and yet he still doesn't stop us from doing bad things. This is supposedly to "test" us. But why does he need to test us if he already knows us, and can see into our soul? And why does he need to punish us to atone us for our sin? If he can do anything, then can't he just make our souls to be pure, or to be healed without putting us through adversity? Why would he punish us and test us, such mundane methods, when his is a god and can do the same thing better, faster, and easier. A god, as defined by most major religions, would not do that. Now if this god isn't all-powerful, all-knowing, or benevolent, then I could see him doing these things; but a god who is would have no reason to do them. In fact, an omnipotent and omniscient god who did that would be quite an asshole, in fact. Theists, I dare you to try to argue with this one.