# 25 things which make it hard for me to believe in God **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 28, 2009, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785 "2009-02-28T12:45:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 17
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/321 "2015-07-03T19:05:36Z")
> [@Arch\_Trout](#): > > I’m unclear _exactly_how we fell, not quite sure why that should make me an atheist though. > > What I could do is ask the two ministers I know what they think and get two different answers. > Not sure if that’ll help because I don’t see the fall as being a key piece of dogma so I’m at liberty to agree with one of them or ignore them both. > > As I’ve said before, there are a great number of denominations for a reason. Is the following an allegory, or a metaphor? > [@Would this T-shirt be offensive? (Christian Dopers' opinions especially needed)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-this-t-shirt-be-offensive-christian-dopers-opinions-especially-needed/263260/72): > > I’m an atheist and find it offensive. > > I find anyone overtly declaring their religion offensive. > It also seems a bit racist. > > But…if it offends other christians then I say go for it. ---
**Author:** ![Arch\_Trout](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9f8e36/32.png) [@Arch\_Trout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arch_Trout)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/322 "2015-07-03T19:41:28Z")
> [@razncain](#): > > So in a nutshell, it sounds like you’re treating it all pretty much as non-historical persons along with non-historical events, with it falling in the realm of literature and mythology, but making the exception for Jesus. Why? What did it for you and convinced you the resurrection was an actual historical event? > > And although it’s possible there may have been some kind of a historical Jesus, what is your take on his exorcisms, and other supernatural stories? Are those the parts that helped convince you he was resurrected? Or, other than the resurrection, perhaps this too is just more metaphor and allegory. If so, just trying to understand how a liberal Christian still clings to this aspect. It’ll be difficult to find any scholars of note that don’t think there was a historical Jesus. I suspect the exorcisms are a confusion of language and translation but I broadly take the miracles as miracles. If you believe in God then it’s not really much of a stretch to assume that miracles are within his remit. Christians believe because of faith, that faith comes from God and is bolstered by things like prayer. It’s a terrible answer for an atheist as they start with an entirely different world view and so can’t understand that faith isn’t built on evidence alone. That’s the gap. I find this quote by Karl Barth interesting: “The Resurrection is the revelation: the disclosing of Jesus as the Christ, the appearing of God, and the apprehending of God in Jesus. The Resurrection is the emergence of the necessity of giving glory to God: the reckoning with what is unknown and unobservable in Jesus, the recognition of Him as Paradox, Victor and Primal History. In the Resurrection the new world of the Holy Spirit touches the old world of the flesh, but touches it as a tangent touches a circle, that is, without touching it.” ---
**Author:** ![Arch\_Trout](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9f8e36/32.png) [@Arch\_Trout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arch_Trout)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/323 "2015-07-03T19:55:38Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Is the following an allegory, or a metaphor? Somebody else? Isn’t it normal to find people ramming religion down others throats offensive? When evangelicals get all evangelical does it not make you slighlty uneasy? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/324 "2015-07-03T20:07:39Z")
> [@Arch\_Trout](#): > > Somebody else? > > Isn’t it normal to find people ramming religion down others throats offensive? > When evangelicals get all evangelical does it not make you slighlty uneasy? You just keep on spinning-I’m getting off your merry-go-round. ---
**Author:** ![Razncain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9d8465/32.png) [@Razncain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Razncain)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/325 "2015-07-03T20:54:52Z")
> [@Arch\_Trout](#): > > It’ll be difficult to find any scholars of note that don’t think there was a historical Jesus. They said the same thing about many of the major biblical characters at one time. Moses until the last century or so, his historicity was all but certain by the general consensus of scholars. A few centuries before that Noah’s historicity was certain, even appearing in early editions of Britannica. So I’m not that impressed with many scholars, especially if they hold a divinity degree. > [@Arch\_Trout](#): > > I suspect the exorcisms are a confusion of language and translation but I broadly take the miracles as miracles. If you believe in God then it’s not really much of a stretch to assume that miracles are within his remit. Do you know of any credible scholar that thinks every single translation today got it wrong and that the confusion is over the language and translations when it comes to how many times Jesus performed an exorcism? You know this how? If you want to give that much latitude, why don’t just throw in that they probably got the resurrection wrong too? > [@Arch\_Trout](#): > > I find this quote by Karl Barth interesting… I found Joseph Campbell’s take on the resurrection of Jesus more credible, when he said he thought the whole thing was a clown act, and this is from somebody that generally had positive things to say for the power of myth. ---
**Author:** ![Arch\_Trout](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9f8e36/32.png) [@Arch\_Trout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arch_Trout)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/326 "2015-07-03T21:07:39Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > You just keep on spinning-I’m getting off your merry-go-round. Quite right, I only post when I’m on a particular shift anyway so it’ll be the usual silence pretty shortly anyway. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/327 "2015-07-03T21:56:48Z")
> [@Arch\_Trout](#): > > I find this quote by Karl Barth interesting: > “The Resurrection is the revelation: the disclosing of Jesus as the Christ, the appearing of God, and the apprehending of God in Jesus. The Resurrection is the emergence of the necessity of giving glory to God: the reckoning with what is unknown and unobservable in Jesus, the recognition of Him as Paradox, Victor and Primal History. In the Resurrection the new world of the Holy Spirit touches the old world of the flesh, but touches it as a tangent touches a circle, that is, without touching it.” Sorry, this is really pure gibberish. I don’t know the heck who Karl Barth is, though the name sounds familiar… Ok, looked it up, of course he’s a theologian, it’s typical. I’m an telecommunication engineer, so I can tell with confidence that the information content of this cite is close to zero. Care to elaborate? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/328 "2015-07-04T03:00:54Z")
The variation on “The Fall” that Ursula K. LeGuin presents in the novel “The Farthest Shore” (third book in the original Earthsea trilogy) is a pleasant (and somewhat Jewish) approach. She suggests that only humans can commit wrongful acts, because we’re the only ones who can comprehend right and wrong. Sharks kill because they must, but humans sometimes kill, even while fully knowing we should not. The “fall” comes along with the knowledge of good and evil, because we know…and do it anyway. (One interesting problem with this is that dogs, at very least, and perhaps some other animals, also know “right and wrong.” Dogs can steal, lie, and act in anger…and can sometimes show, by their shame and contrition afterward, that they know what they did was wrong.) (The “knowledge” metaphor is also scary: what if you raised a child in total isolation from moral values? In perfect innocence, the result would be a perfect monster. This is why Christianity posits that sin is innate, but is that the best explanation/model?) ---
**Author:** ![jegathi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df705f/32.png) [@jegathi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jegathi)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/329 "2016-01-27T16:11:29Z")
> [@Weston](#): > > I think it would be nice if I could believe in God but the following things make it really hard. For the purposes of this threda ‘God’ is typically christian. that means he’s omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, and that heaven and hell are real places and you need faith AND good works to get into heaven. I know a lot ofg Christians don’t belive in this God but a lot MORE Christians do, so that’s why we’re going to go with this definition. > > Also, we’re going to discuss the basics of the Christian story. That is, the idea that God sent Jesus to redeem our sins and that Jesu was cricified, rose after 3 days and all of that. > Here’s 25 things that make it hard for me to belkieve in this: [ul] > > [li] Why did God sacrifice Himself to Himself to change a rule He made Himself?[/li][li] Why, if _we_ are the warm, fuzzy centre of all creation, is the universe so incredibly massive? I mean, have you ever _seen_ a pictrre of the known universe? I saw one on astronomy picture of the day. Its unbelievable! There’s something like 40 _billion_ galaxies, each with about 100 _billion_ stars. And that’s only the stuff we know about! It seems so _arrogant_ to bvelieve that of all that, there’s oinly one species on one planet in one solar system in one galaxy that actually matters. [/li][li] Why did God take so long to tell us about himself? Richard Dawkins thinks our species is 250,000 years old. God only came along 3000 years ago(ish). What was he doing the other 247,000 years why we were killing eachother over caves and stuff? And why, if the message of God was so important, did it take about 1500 years for the Chinese to hear about it? Doesnt it make more sense that the Christian God was the product of a messianic middle east cult and there was nothing “divine” about it?[/li][li] The trinity doesnt make any sense., I mean none AT ALL. Words mean things and this whole\*“God exists in three Persons and one substance”\* thing just makes no sense. There is literally no logic to that senence. [/li][li] Terminally ill kids.[/li][li] No miracles nowadays. God never had a problem meddling in peoples lives before. Why has he suddenly got quiet at just the same time our species has figured out hoiw to record and analyse things?[/li][li] If Heaven is perfect happiness, and Hell is the opposite, how can a mother be happy in heaven if her son is sent to hell? If we’re changed THAT MUCH bny going into heaven mightn’t we as well be dead?[/li][li] The concept of eternal punishmnt is unjust. Even Hitler doesn’t deserve _eternal_ punishment. [/li][li] The ‘one size fits all’ concept of hell as a punishment is very unjust. Why should a law abiding atheist and Hitler get the same punishment? Remember, the majority of Christians should (if they follow their doctrine properly) believe that faith is _essentia;l_ to be saved.[/li][li] Why does god require we worship him? He’s supposed to love us, right? Well, I love my cat but I don’t demand he worships me even though I am (I like to think) a superior being. [/li][li] The concept of heaven is one of eternal worship of GOd. Wouldn’t that get _boring_ after the first hundred billion trillion years? Its all very well saying that heaven _by definition_ ius always blissful but you have no way of saying _why that may be_, given wha the Bible actually says about it. Your just saying “God will fix it when you get there”.[/li][li] The Bible contradicts itself all over the place. I trust i don’t need to cite this.[/li][li] The Bible contains nothing that couldnt have been written by a man or woman living in 1st century palestine. [/li][li] God doesn’t answer prayers. No matter what subjective experiences you may have had, studies have been done which prove this. [/li][li] The gospels were written 70-100 years after Jesus died. Thats plenty of time for hearsay and conjecture to creep into the story _even if_ the basics were true.[/li][li] The creation myth has been debunked. If genesis is untrue, God had much less reason to send down Jesus because there was no such thing as original sin.[/li][li] There are LOADS of logical problems with the Christian idea that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. If God is omniscient that means he must know everythng, including everything man knows. That means he must know lust and envy. If God knows lust and envy, He must have _feelings_ of lust and envy. THat means he’s not perfect. The idea of a perfect God is self defeating.[/li][li] Another logical problem with the idea of a perfect God is that, because a perfect being knows absolutely everything, God can’t have free will. God knows his choices in advance.[/li][li] There is as much hard empirical evidence for the existence of God as there is for the ecistence of the flying spagetti monster. Seriously. If God does exist then there is absolutely no difference between our universe and a universe where he doesn’t exist. [/li][li] There are still people in the world who haven’t heard of Jesus. If Jesus’s message is so important, why has God let this happen?[/li][li] Christians say the universe is finely tuned to support life and that is evidence that God exists and created the universe for us. But our planet is the only one we know that supports life and even earth is a very dangerous place with its earthquakes and volcanos and tsunamis and hurricanes and tornadoes and ice ages dangerous diseases. Why would God create such an inhospitable planet for us?[/li][li] If God created everything, that means he also created smallpox, which has killed more people in the 20th century than all the 20th century dicatorships combined and multiplied by a hundred. [/li][li] If God gives us free will to suffer that means that God must want us to suffer. THat means God approves of suffering generally. [/li][li] Why won’t God heal amputees? I mean, when Christians talk about God saving or curing someone, there’s always a natural explanation. Why doesn’t God ever do anything which cant be easily explained in natural ways?[/li][li] Terminally ill kids. That one bears repeating.[/li][/ul] > > That’s about all I can come up with. I’m sure smart people who’ve studied this could come up with loads more. I dont want to offend anyone. This post is the product of an existential crisis. I really do want these questions answered so I can have a chance to believe. I am also an atheist but have also read the bible from beginning to end and can tell you that the great majority of what you said is based on misconceptions that Catholics and other religions teach and are not based on what the bible says which is what “christian” religions should be basing their teachings on, if you are too lazy to read the whole bible talk to a Jehovah’s Witness about all this and you’ll get the most biblicaly curate answers. I know this because I have studied the believes of all major christian religions and non christian as well and found the Jehovah’s witnesses to be the most close to the real bible teachings. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/330 "2016-01-27T16:23:24Z")
> [@jegathi](#): > > if you are too lazy to read the whole bible talk to a Jehovah’s Witness Thanks, but I’d rather read the whole Bible. In fact, I’d rather read the whole Library of Congress. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/331 "2016-01-27T16:28:52Z")
I’d rather read Twilight fan fiction. ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/332 "2016-01-27T16:45:14Z")
I’d rather not read at all but just watch the movie and then take a nap. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/333 "2016-01-27T16:50:02Z")
> [@jegathi](#): > > …not based on what the bible says which is what “christian” religions should be basing their teachings on… There’s no objective reason why this should be the case. It’s a choice, and nothing more. ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/334 "2016-01-27T16:52:27Z")
> [@jegathi](#): > > I am also an atheist but have also read the bible from beginning to end and can tell you that the great majority of what you said is based on misconceptions that Catholics and other religions teach and are not based on what the bible says which is what “christian” religions should be basing their teachings on, if you are too lazy to read the whole bible talk to a Jehovah’s Witness about all this and you’ll get the most biblicaly curate answers. I know this because I have studied the believes of all major christian religions and non christian as well and found the Jehovah’s witnesses to be the most close to the real bible teachings. You think that little doomsday cult, that keeps changing its ‘accurate’ teachings around (and around and around) is the closest to ‘real’ bible teachings? The one that can’t even bother to discuss Luke 21 with its followers, since it specifically says to beware of cults like the JW and not to follow them? Yeah - you need to restudy or provide some cite to back that claim up. ---
**Author:** ![OffByOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/45deac/32.png) [@OffByOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OffByOne)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785/335 "2016-01-27T19:55:00Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > The evidence is all around you! Look with your eyes! It’s also in your heart! GOD loves you and your miserable, wretched soul. Don’t take my word for it, it’s in the BIBLE. HE wants you to believe! You just have to open your mind up to HIM and HE will answer all your questions. Besides, GOD is so wonderful!! > > Is any of this unimpeachable logic getting through to you, yet, sinner? Or are you just being stereotypically atheist and closed-minded, refusing to see the light? 😉 Yes, the BIBLE is the TRUTH ™! If you don’t believe me, just look in the BIBLE! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-things-which-make-it-hard-for-me-to-believe-in-god/487785.md?page=16)