Introduction

We turn to religion to answer life’s deepest questions: Humans turn to religion to answer life’s deepest questions: Who are we? Why do we exist? How did existence arise? Could a God exist? Life then becomes a search for truth, a journey where you arrive at your own answers. However, most of us inherit a truth before we ever begin searching for one. Religion becomes something accepted rather than examined, and many people never undertake their own journey to answer those questions for themselves. 

Truth-seeking should begin openly, not with conclusions: Firstly, do you agree that we ought to search for the truth with the perspective of a non-believer? It would be irrational to first believe in a deity then look for evidence because you would be prone to bias. We must follow any and all evidence to its conclusion, rather than starting with the conclusion (Jesus is God) and cherry-picking data that is in support while ignoring what isn’t. If you can demonstrate that a deity exists only then is it time to believe.

If you disagree, do you know what the beliefs of all the major sects of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism are and what they believe? Most people have not seriously studied even one other religion’s texts, let alone all major religions or what it means to experience life from another worldview. A genuine truth-seeker should follow evidence, reason, and moral intuition wherever they lead, rather than assuming the conclusion beforehand. The Christian expects the Muslim to seriously investigate Christianity and the Muslim expects the Christian to seriously investigate Islam, it would be hypocritical to expect others to deeply examine your religion while refusing to give the same openness and consideration to theirs, and that applies to all religions.

I ask that you read this with a pure heart, as a non-believer would, genuinely considering my questions and leaving all possibilities open. If you are not open to all possibilities and to the possibility of your religion being wrong, how is it fair to expect other people to do the same for your religion? 

You cannot use a religion’s assumptions to prove itself: Secondly, do you agree that it would be irrational for someone seeking truth without any bias to explain away contradictions in a religion through appeals to divine mystery, higher authority, or human limitation? If a person does not yet believe in a particular God, then they cannot reasonably use that God’s supposed nature or intentions to resolve problems within the religion itself. An impartial truth-seeker would not defer to claims such as “we are incapable of understanding God’s ways,” because the existence of that deity has not yet been established in the first place.

If you disagree, how would you feel if I quoted your opposition’s religion, whether it be say Hinduism or Islam’s texts, and told you that this book is the real word of God, and I rationalized whatever issues may be present in the doctrine using the religious book or human limitation, saying you just can’t understand Allah? You would disagree because you have not found sufficient evidence to believe that their God exists or that book to be the true word of God in the first place. Likewise, the Bible cannot simply be assumed to be the word of God during an impartial search for truth; that is precisely what must first be demonstrated. Otherwise, any contradiction or moral concern can be dismissed through appeals to divine mystery or human limitation, which results in circular reasoning. One cannot use God’s existence to justify problems within a religion when that existence is the very thing still under examination. 

Christian doctrine: God is calling out to everyone. If you heard of his message, you are responsible for having the free will to reject God. If you reject God, you choose hell, separation from God. It’s not torture – because you freely chose to live apart from God, you also chose separation from the source of Goodness. God doesn’t desire for you to go there, but you bear responsibility for your actions. It’s your fault if you researched Christianity and found the evidence insufficient. This only means you didn’t research Christianity enough, because if you had looked into it deeply enough, you’d know it’s the right one. 

Because of the verses below it seems reasonable to conclude that anyone who hears the message of Jesus Christ yet refuses to accept him as Lord and Savior and ask for forgiveness of his sins chooses eternal conscious torment — separation from God. Christianity places moral responsibility on the individual for rejecting the source of Goodness itself while living their earthly life. For this reason, inclusive interpretations — such as the idea that God judges individuals merely according to the “light available to them” — become difficult to reconcile with the exclusivist language found throughout the Bible. If salvation can be attained without acceptance of Christ then verses like John 14:6 and Mark 16:16 lose much of their meaning and urgency. The doctrine then becomes inconsistent: either explicit acceptance of Christ is necessary for salvation, or it is not. The large majority of Christians believe that salvation comes uniquely through Jesus Christ. Because of this, we will continue examining Christianity from a primarily exclusivist perspective: the view that explicit acceptance of Christ is necessary for salvation.

• John 14:6: Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” 
• Mark 16:16: Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
• Matthew 7:13-14: Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Arguments

So, as stated in the introduction, you cannot use a disputed conclusion (the Christian God exists) to justify itself during investigation. A religion that can explain away every contradiction through divine mystery becomes immune to criticism by definition, because then every other religion would have that privilege. If a God truly existed and intended to be known, his existence should be evident through the very human capacities we naturally possess — reason and morality — rather than requiring us to first presume his existence in order to reconcile ideas that appear irrational or morally contradictory. If a religion only makes sense once a person dismisses their own logic or morality by appealing to divine mystery or human limitation then belief is no longer being grounded in reason, but in presupposition. An impartial truth-seeker cannot assume a God exists in order to explain away the very contradictions that call that God into question. My argument is that for me to accept that the Christian God exists I would have to first do away with my reason and morality, because the Christian God is completely contradictory. A true God should not fundamentally contradict reason or morality. 

Firstly, would you agree that no religion has a privileged evidential claim sufficient enough to convince others? There is no practitioner that is able to go up to another practitioner and give them evidence that would convince them their God is true and exists. Each practitioner is capable of believing with equal passion, have their own personal reasons for why they believe, and even have direct experience in the form of visions in meditation, dreams, a voice heard back, synchronicities, or the like. If imperfect beings can be completely and equally convinced that their religion is true and there is no demonstrable proof that they can provide, how could a Just and Loving God orchestrate such a system that would lead nonresistant nonbelievers so easily astray, which rewards you for factors that are completely out of your hands? 

If there exists sincere non-believers that are nonresistant and would believe had they been provided with sufficient evidence, and God did not provide them that evidence, then he would be at fault. For what reason would a personal and loving God hide their existence from people who would love and worship them otherwise had they known he existed? You can’t explain this away with divine mystery – one cannot assume a God exists in order to explain away the very contradictions that call that God into question. According to our human capacities, reason and morality, a personal and loving God would always provide the sincere nonresistant non-believer with the sufficient evidence they would need to believe, because he wants to have a relationship with everyone that is open to him. Most rational people wouldn’t just believe in a deity because of witness testimony that according to man-made stories occurred thousands of years ago, prone to human error. Who is to say it isn’t just an entirely made up story (because we have no confirmation of any of the statements), or even if he existed, if Paul and others didn’t just write mythologized things about him following his death, or whether anyone actually even saw Jesus arise, which could instead be a story they made up, a dream, or a vision from psychedelic drugs as people from that time often partook?

Direct experience, information through our own senses, is the most trustworthy source of information, whereas second hand information, from other people, is much less trustworthy, especially information passed down over thousands of years. There are many people who claim to have direct experience of their truth, and no one has the right to say mine is more real than yours, because we are imperfect beings. No one is justified to say to another my God will sentence you to eternal suffering if you don’t believe in what I believe. 

Some may say that God values freely chosen relationships, not coercion, and that if God revealed himself belief would become unavoidable. That is false because Satan knows God exists and still chooses to rebel — knowledge does not destroy free will. A loving God could reveal his existence clearly without forcing love. Also, throughout the Bible, God revealed himself directly to countless individuals who still chose to reject him, showing that clear knowledge of God does not eliminate free will. Why is it fair for some to receive overwhelming revelation while sincere nonresistant non-believers today do not receive sufficient evidence, if any? 

I ask you this question: Are we, limited and finite beings, qualified to make decisions that would result in infinite punishment? We are not due to our imperfect nature and understanding. We are never making free decisions because we are largely influenced by other factors. Geographic location largely determines birth religion and factors like Indoctrination, culture, and social ostracism make it so that a large majority of believers remain in their birth religion – these explain away the large majority of religious belief more than an impartial search for truth does. The large majority of Christians in Christian countries remain Christian, and the large majority of Muslims in Muslim countries remain Muslim. 

• Indoctrination: We are indoctrinated with a prepackaged truth, not given the opportunity to freely consider life’s deepest questions and pass it down to our children. 
• Social ostracism: If you leave your religion, you will be ostracized.
• Culture: Together with our genetics and upbringing creates our identity, giving us a certain lens to look out into the world and see other people as abnormal, the notion that we are right. But everyone is justified to believe what they believe, because had you been in their shoes, you would probably grow up to be similar. No one has the capacity to completely understand everyone’s point of view because we are all carrying different colored lenses, I don’t have everyone’s context to understand their stories. Therefore, everyone’s beliefs are justified. Unless one can demonstrably prove a certain religion to be true they don’t have the right to ask someone to throw away their entire identity to take up blind faith in a God they can’t prove to exist.

 

Imagine you were a Hindu monk, living a life according to your teachings. You live a life dedicated to your spiritual pursuit with minimal possessions and aspiring to live in the present, satisfied with what you have, letting go of the attachments that come with our body such as the never-ending desire for more and lack of peace in the moment. Christians came to your city and told you about Jesus, but you ignored them because there is no evidence for their truth except words in a book, whereas you had encountered your truth through your own direct experience by way of meditation. They have not even presented proof of the Christian God and dare say that if you don’t completely reject everything you are, take Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, their God will torture you forever, even though you are trying your best to be as kind to everyone as you could be. What did the Christian do to deserve being born in the correct religion, whereas you would have to go against your entire life and culture, face social ostracism, figure out what the correct religion is, and only then would you be saved? Why would someone throw their direct experience away in favor of someone’s blind faith? Is there any evidence of the Christian God that you could give a Hindu monk that could stand up to their direct experience? 

We are also influenced by other factors such as poor information, bias, culture (identity), neurobiology, psychology and more. How could limited mortal beings with imperfect understanding have the power to make an eternal decision based on that imperfect information and imperfect understanding? To put humans in that situation is cruel. 

Both the Bible and the Quran both state that their God is self-evident: 

• Romans 1:19-20:  “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
• Qur’an 41:53:  “We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth…”

However, if either was self-evident, why hasn’t one of them woken up from their illusion? One could be reasonably justified to state that the existence of a Creator is self-evident, because isn’t it odd that there is existence at all? Wouldn’t it have been easier for there to have been nothing? If you woke up from unconscious sleep in your birth as a baby, then wouldn’t it be logical to assume you will do the same after you fall into slumber (death) again, since you did it before? However, both the Bible and Qu’ran state that the existence of their God is self-evident, which is not so. It is fair to believe that a God exists, but if you also add that your God will eternally torture me for non-belief, then you have the much larger burden of proof of proving he exists in the first place – he cannot be assumed into existence because no reasonable and loving human would choose to eternally torture another human for finite wrongdoing. 

The fact that sincere, intelligent people across contradictory religions all report certainty and spiritual experiences weakens the claim that the Christian God is self-evident. 

Even if by some miracle we mortal beings were qualified to make such a decision, does finite wrongdoing justify eternal suffering? 

Imagine an existence where you are suffering every single day of your life, there is no end to the fire. What did you do that was so bad that warranted this kind of punishment? The worst things I have done would probably be physical or non-physical arguments with others, do you think that is deserving of eternal suffering? If someone you loved were to kill you, would you say an eye for an eye? Would you want them to be eternally tortured? Would you want the worst human in existence to be eternally tortured? I’m not loving enough to love even the person who hurts myself or my loved ones. An omnibenevolent being would love all, even those who hurt them. Yet I can say such a punishment would be unfair, but an omnibenevolent being cannot? Are you or I better than God? We cannot explain this incoherence using human limitation or God’s mystery. Any problems must have a solution using our human capacities, otherwise non-believers would just be out of luck. God’s love isn’t just so much greater than any love you could have, but it is unconditional love. Unconditional love is loving in spite of imperfections, unwavering, and selfless affection focused on another’s happiness and well-being without strings attached, expectations, or limitations, regardless of their actions, flaws, or circumstances. Why would a God, a being who is perfect, all loving, want to torture you forever? Doesn’t he have anything better to do? 

Some people may say that the gravity of an offense is determined by the nature of the being offended. If you kick a rock, it is nothing; if you kick a dog, it is a crime; if you commit treason against a nation, it is a life-altering offense. Since God is infinitely good, rejection of that being is not a finite mistake but a rejection of the very source of goodness itself, you cannot judge the proportion of the punishment while ignoring the infinite scale of the one being rejected.

However, this argument quickly falls apart. If God is infinitely good, then his mercy, understanding, patience, and compassion should also be infinite. An infinitely wise being would fully understand the limitations of finite humans: our ignorance, psychology, culture, trauma, biology, and confusion. No perfectly loving and understanding creator would make it possible to be entirely convinced of your nonexistence, but in another religion or creator, then also choose to sentence you to eternal suffering because of that finite nature and understanding. Secondly, finite creatures with finite understanding cannot commit infinite crimes. Eternal punishment ceases to look like perfect justice and instead resembles disproportionate vengeance. The morally greater a being is, the less vindictive and retaliatory they become — so why would the greatest conceivable being demand endless suffering from finite creatures he knowingly created? Such a creator would have infinite mercy and understand that it is an unjust proposition to expect imperfect humans to be able to reliably judge the truth or face eternal suffering. 

Secondly, if God is both all powerful and all loving, why did he orchestrate a system where separation from him was entirely void of love, and closer to vengeance and infinite retribution? 

If God loves you (affection and care for your well-being and happiness) and has infinite power to do anything he desires then ‘separation from Goodness’ could be annihilation. Just like he created you without your permission, he can also annihilate you without your permission. Eternal suffering is completely against unconditional love, and if you are also all powerful then you can come up with infinitely many solutions. If he doesn’t, then he doesn’t love you, forget unconditionally. 

The Christian doctrine states that those who have heard of Jesus Christ and his message, and refuse to take him up as their Lord and Savior, willingly chose separation from God in an eternal hell. Eternal hell would mean that God has finite patience but an infinite capacity for violence and retribution. Are there some humans that cannot be redeemed at all in the eyes of God, like those that have not found the evidence sufficient to believe but otherwise would have?

It renders God’s love meaningless because no definition of love could include allowing infinite torture. 

Would you agree that God created you, and he is all powerful, all loving, and all knowing?

If God created you, and is also all knowing and all powerful, then he would know your future before you were even created – he had foreknowledge of whether you would choose or reject Jesus Christ here on earth. 

Yes, foreknowledge is not causation. Even though God knew what you would choose, God did not cause you to choose the actions you chose, we have free will and willingly chose to accept or reject Jesus Christ. 

But this brings forward the question: Why would an all loving God create beings already knowing they are destined to suffer eternally? 

A parent is accountable for the child’s actions if the child is given choices beyond their capacity. If you gave your child a blowtorch you are accountable if they end up burning themselves or someone else. Likewise, God would be accountable for creating creatures already knowing what choices they would make: giving limited, ignorant, and time-bound creatures responsibility for eternal decisions (with regard to a hell of eternal conscious torment) is far worse than handing a toddler a blowtorch, since the blowtorch doesn't burn for eternity the way that hell supposedly does. 

If I was a genius robotic engineer and created an artificial machine fully knowing that it would destroy the world, and could have refrained from creating it, then I would be responsible if it proceeds to destroy the world. I had foreknowledge of what would happen and still intentionally created it despite being able to refrain from doing so. Likewise, an all loving, all powerful and all knowing God would be responsible for creating beings that he knows will choose eternal conscious torment, which is completely contradictory to the claim that he is all loving. 

Would you choose to play this game that God orchestrated, now knowing everything that you know about its rules? 

God created your soul without asking you if you want to exist, then forces you to participate in an entirely random luck of the draw spin wheel that gives you no choice of time, location, religion, and family, wherein if you don’t make the right choices in a finite life, you earn yourself infinite suffering for all of eternity?

If you happen to be unlucky and not spin Christianity, you would be looking out into the world with the lens of another worldview, completely convinced that your religion and identity is right just as the Christian believes himself to be right, because we are limited and imperfect mortal beings? 

And if you happen to lose, you don’t even get the right to ask this God to annihilate you into nothingness the same way he created your soul without permission, but this loving God instead sentences you to eternal suffering? Eternal hell is beyond disproportionate and cannot be an earned punishment, no matter what a finite being does. 

If you say this game is at all just or loving, you would be incredibly dishonest. Nobody would accept this proposition, as no one has a privileged evidential claim – just like the Muslim cannot convince you that Allah exists, you cannot convince the Muslim that Jesus exists. Each religion can provide you with evidence that would be reasonable to you, both believers capable of believing in their religion with equal passion, even receiving direct experience from their practice in the form of visions in meditation, dreams, a voice heard back, synchronicities, or the like.

You might say that I have no right to judge God based on my own human reason or moral intuition – that our moral intuition is fallen and limited, so apparent contradictions between divine justice and human fairness are not decisive objections against God’s existence. However, If human moral intuition is unable to judge whether eternal punishment is unjust, then humans are also too fallen and unreliable to judge that Christianity itself is true, that God is good, or that the Bible is morally trustworthy. You cannot appeal to human reason and moral intuition when arguing for Christianity then dismiss those same faculties the moment contradictions arise. If we need our reason and moral intuition to figure out which is the true God then the true God naturally cannot contradict those faculties. 

Do you believe it would be justified to require individuals to compensate for historical injustices they did not personally commit?

That would be very irrational. If most people agree that individuals are not morally responsible for the actions of their ancestors, then it becomes difficult to justify taking from people today in order to compensate for wrongs committed by previous generations.

A person may belong to a socially “advantaged” group while having no inherited wealth, privilege, or connection to past injustices. If their achievements came through their own effort, why would it be just to hold them accountable for actions they never committed?

The same issue appears in the doctrine of original sin. If human beings are born without choosing their condition, why should they bear moral responsibility for the actions of Adam and Eve? Punishing descendants for the actions of others seems inconsistent with the principle that each individual is morally responsible only for their own choices.

Why would a human being, who is born a part of nature, capable of doing both good and bad, be required to ask for forgiveness of their sins to a God who has not proven himself to exist? We appear no different than animals, like the Lion who eats the Zebra. Does the Lion also ask God for forgiveness after he utilizes his natural-given nature? Why then ought humans ask for forgiveness when they utilize their nature of reason, morality, and free will? 

Secondly, because Adam and Eve did not not have knowledge of good and evil before eating of the fruit, by any reasonable metric they should be blameless when they ate the fruit. For all they knew, the serpent was God’s creation, just like them, a friend, and not knowing of good or evil, they do not know that it is bad to disobey God and do as the serpent tells them. 

Let me ask you this: How can any person of conscience enjoy Heaven knowing that others are in Hell? 

It would be morally untenable unless believers have their memories of non-believers wiped, including family and friends, in which case would you still be the same human being, completely void of all of the people and experiences that made you who you are?

Introduction

We turn to religion to answer life’s deepest questions: Humans turn to religion to answer life’s deepest questions: Who are we? Why do we exist? How did existence arise? Could a God exist? Life then becomes a search for truth, a journey where you arrive at your own answers. However, most of us inherit a truth before we ever begin searching for one. Religion becomes something accepted rather than examined, and many people never undertake their own journey to answer those questions for themselves. 

Truth-seeking should begin openly, not with conclusions: Firstly, do you agree that we ought to search for the truth with the perspective of a non-believer? It would be irrational to first believe in a deity then look for evidence because you would be prone to bias. We must follow any and all evidence to its conclusion, rather than starting with the conclusion (Jesus is God) and cherry-picking data that is in support while ignoring what isn’t. If you can demonstrate that a deity exists only then is it time to believe.

If you disagree, do you know what the beliefs of all the major sects of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism are and what they believe? Most people have not seriously studied even one other religion’s texts, let alone all major religions or what it means to experience life from another worldview. A genuine truth-seeker should follow evidence, reason, and moral intuition wherever they lead, rather than assuming the conclusion beforehand. The Christian expects the Muslim to seriously investigate Christianity and the Muslim expects the Christian to seriously investigate Islam, it would be hypocritical to expect others to deeply examine your religion while refusing to give the same openness and consideration to theirs, and that applies to all religions.

I ask that you read this with a pure heart, as a non-believer would, genuinely considering my questions and leaving all possibilities open. If you are not open to all possibilities and to the possibility of your religion being wrong, how is it fair to expect other people to do the same for your religion? 

You cannot use a religion’s assumptions to prove itself: Secondly, do you agree that it would be irrational for someone seeking truth without any bias to explain away contradictions in a religion through appeals to divine mystery, higher authority, or human limitation? If a person does not yet believe in a particular God, then they cannot reasonably use that God’s supposed nature or intentions to resolve problems within the religion itself. An impartial truth-seeker would not defer to claims such as “we are incapable of understanding God’s ways,” because the existence of that deity has not yet been established in the first place.

If you disagree, how would you feel if I quoted your opposition’s religion, whether it be say Hinduism or Islam’s texts, and told you that this book is the real word of God, and I rationalized whatever issues may be present in the doctrine using the religious book or human limitation, saying you just can’t understand Allah? You would disagree because you have not found sufficient evidence to believe that their God exists or that book to be the true word of God in the first place. Likewise, the Bible cannot simply be assumed to be the word of God during an impartial search for truth; that is precisely what must first be demonstrated. Otherwise, any contradiction or moral concern can be dismissed through appeals to divine mystery or human limitation, which results in circular reasoning. One cannot use God’s existence to justify problems within a religion when that existence is the very thing still under examination. 

Christian doctrine: God is calling out to everyone. If you heard of his message, you are responsible for having the free will to reject God. If you reject God, you choose hell, separation from God. It’s not torture – because you freely chose to live apart from God, you also chose separation from the source of Goodness. God doesn’t desire for you to go there, but you bear responsibility for your actions. It’s your fault if you researched Christianity and found the evidence insufficient. This only means you didn’t research Christianity enough, because if you had looked into it deeply enough, you’d know it’s the right one. 

Because of the verses below it seems reasonable to conclude that anyone who hears the message of Jesus Christ yet refuses to accept him as Lord and Savior and ask for forgiveness of his sins chooses eternal conscious torment — separation from God. Christianity places moral responsibility on the individual for rejecting the source of Goodness itself while living their earthly life. For this reason, inclusive interpretations — such as the idea that God judges individuals merely according to the “light available to them” — become difficult to reconcile with the exclusivist language found throughout the Bible. If salvation can be attained without acceptance of Christ then verses like John 14:6 and Mark 16:16 lose much of their meaning and urgency. The doctrine then becomes inconsistent: either explicit acceptance of Christ is necessary for salvation, or it is not. The large majority of Christians believe that salvation comes uniquely through Jesus Christ. Because of this, we will continue examining Christianity from a primarily exclusivist perspective: the view that explicit acceptance of Christ is necessary for salvation.

• John 14:6: Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” 
• Mark 16:16: Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
• Matthew 7:13-14: Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Arguments

So, as stated in the introduction, you cannot use a disputed conclusion (the Christian God exists) to justify itself during investigation. A religion that can explain away every contradiction through divine mystery becomes immune to criticism by definition, because then every other religion would have that privilege. If a God truly existed and intended to be known, his existence should be evident through the very human capacities we naturally possess — reason and morality — rather than requiring us to first presume his existence in order to reconcile ideas that appear irrational or morally contradictory. If a religion only makes sense once a person dismisses their own logic or morality by appealing to divine mystery or human limitation then belief is no longer being grounded in reason, but in presupposition. An impartial truth-seeker cannot assume a God exists in order to explain away the very contradictions that call that God into question. My argument is that for me to accept that the Christian God exists I would have to first do away with my reason and morality, because the Christian God is completely contradictory. A true God should not fundamentally contradict reason or morality. 

Firstly, would you agree that no religion has a privileged evidential claim sufficient enough to convince others? There is no practitioner that is able to go up to another practitioner and give them evidence that would convince them their God is true and exists. Each practitioner is capable of believing with equal passion, have their own personal reasons for why they believe, and even have direct experience in the form of visions in meditation, dreams, a voice heard back, synchronicities, or the like. If imperfect beings can be completely and equally convinced that their religion is true and there is no demonstrable proof that they can provide, how could a Just and Loving God orchestrate such a system that would lead nonresistant nonbelievers so easily astray, which rewards you for factors that are completely out of your hands? 

If there exists sincere non-believers that are nonresistant and would believe had they been provided with sufficient evidence, and God did not provide them that evidence, then he would be at fault. For what reason would a personal and loving God hide their existence from people who would love and worship them otherwise had they known he existed? You can’t explain this away with divine mystery – one cannot assume a God exists in order to explain away the very contradictions that call that God into question. According to our human capacities, reason and morality, a personal and loving God would always provide the sincere nonresistant non-believer with the sufficient evidence they would need to believe, because he wants to have a relationship with everyone that is open to him. Most rational people wouldn’t just believe in a deity because of witness testimony that according to man-made stories occurred thousands of years ago, prone to human error. Who is to say it isn’t just an entirely made up story (because we have no confirmation of any of the statements), or even if he existed, if Paul and others didn’t just write mythologized things about him following his death, or whether anyone actually even saw Jesus arise, which could instead be a story they made up, a dream, or a vision from psychedelic drugs as people from that time often partook?

Direct experience, information through our own senses, is the most trustworthy source of information, whereas second hand information, from other people, is much less trustworthy, especially information passed down over thousands of years. There are many people who claim to have direct experience of their truth, and no one has the right to say mine is more real than yours, because we are imperfect beings. No one is justified to say to another my God will sentence you to eternal suffering if you don’t believe in what I believe. 

Some may say that God values freely chosen relationships, not coercion, and that if God revealed himself belief would become unavoidable. That is false because Satan knows God exists and still chooses to rebel — knowledge does not destroy free will. A loving God could reveal his existence clearly without forcing love. Also, throughout the Bible, God revealed himself directly to countless individuals who still chose to reject him, showing that clear knowledge of God does not eliminate free will. Why is it fair for some to receive overwhelming revelation while sincere nonresistant non-believers today do not receive sufficient evidence, if any? 

I ask you this question: Are we, limited and finite beings, qualified to make decisions that would result in infinite punishment? We are not due to our imperfect nature and understanding. We are never making free decisions because we are largely influenced by other factors. Geographic location largely determines birth religion and factors like Indoctrination, culture, and social ostracism make it so that a large majority of believers remain in their birth religion – these explain away the large majority of religious belief more than an impartial search for truth does. The large majority of Christians in Christian countries remain Christian, and the large majority of Muslims in Muslim countries remain Muslim. 

• Indoctrination: We are indoctrinated with a prepackaged truth, not given the opportunity to freely consider life’s deepest questions and pass it down to our children. 
• Social ostracism: If you leave your religion, you will be ostracized.
• Culture: Together with our genetics and upbringing creates our identity, giving us a certain lens to look out into the world and see other people as abnormal, the notion that we are right. But everyone is justified to believe what they believe, because had you been in their shoes, you would probably grow up to be similar. No one has the capacity to completely understand everyone’s point of view because we are all carrying different colored lenses, I don’t have everyone’s context to understand their stories. Therefore, everyone’s beliefs are justified. Unless one can demonstrably prove a certain religion to be true they don’t have the right to ask someone to throw away their entire identity to take up blind faith in a God they can’t prove to exist.

 

Imagine you were a Hindu monk, living a life according to your teachings. You live a life dedicated to your spiritual pursuit with minimal possessions and aspiring to live in the present, satisfied with what you have, letting go of the attachments that come with our body such as the never-ending desire for more and lack of peace in the moment. Christians came to your city and told you about Jesus, but you ignored them because there is no evidence for their truth except words in a book, whereas you had encountered your truth through your own direct experience by way of meditation. They have not even presented proof of the Christian God and dare say that if you don’t completely reject everything you are, take Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, their God will torture you forever, even though you are trying your best to be as kind to everyone as you could be. What did the Christian do to deserve being born in the correct religion, whereas you would have to go against your entire life and culture, face social ostracism, figure out what the correct religion is, and only then would you be saved? Why would someone throw their direct experience away in favor of someone’s blind faith? Is there any evidence of the Christian God that you could give a Hindu monk that could stand up to their direct experience? 

We are also influenced by other factors such as poor information, bias, culture (identity), neurobiology, psychology and more. How could limited mortal beings with imperfect understanding have the power to make an eternal decision based on that imperfect information and imperfect understanding? To put humans in that situation is cruel. 

Both the Bible and the Quran both state that their God is self-evident: 

• Romans 1:19-20:  “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
• Qur’an 41:53:  “We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth…”

However, if either was self-evident, why hasn’t one of them woken up from their illusion? One could be reasonably justified to state that the existence of a Creator is self-evident, because isn’t it odd that there is existence at all? Wouldn’t it have been easier for there to have been nothing? If you woke up from unconscious sleep in your birth as a baby, then wouldn’t it be logical to assume you will do the same after you fall into slumber (death) again, since you did it before? However, both the Bible and Qu’ran state that the existence of their God is self-evident, which is not so. It is fair to believe that a God exists, but if you also add that your God will eternally torture me for non-belief, then you have the much larger burden of proof of proving he exists in the first place – he cannot be assumed into existence because no reasonable and loving human would choose to eternally torture another human for finite wrongdoing. 

The fact that sincere, intelligent people across contradictory religions all report certainty and spiritual experiences weakens the claim that the Christian God is self-evident. 

Even if by some miracle we mortal beings were qualified to make such a decision, does finite wrongdoing justify eternal suffering? 

Imagine an existence where you are suffering every single day of your life, there is no end to the fire. What did you do that was so bad that warranted this kind of punishment? The worst things I have done would probably be physical or non-physical arguments with others, do you think that is deserving of eternal suffering? If someone you loved were to kill you, would you say an eye for an eye? Would you want them to be eternally tortured? Would you want the worst human in existence to be eternally tortured? I’m not loving enough to love even the person who hurts myself or my loved ones. An omnibenevolent being would love all, even those who hurt them. Yet I can say such a punishment would be unfair, but an omnibenevolent being cannot? Are you or I better than God? We cannot explain this incoherence using human limitation or God’s mystery. Any problems must have a solution using our human capacities, otherwise non-believers would just be out of luck. God’s love isn’t just so much greater than any love you could have, but it is unconditional love. Unconditional love is loving in spite of imperfections, unwavering, and selfless affection focused on another’s happiness and well-being without strings attached, expectations, or limitations, regardless of their actions, flaws, or circumstances. Why would a God, a being who is perfect, all loving, want to torture you forever? Doesn’t he have anything better to do? 

Some people may say that the gravity of an offense is determined by the nature of the being offended. If you kick a rock, it is nothing; if you kick a dog, it is a crime; if you commit treason against a nation, it is a life-altering offense. Since God is infinitely good, rejection of that being is not a finite mistake but a rejection of the very source of goodness itself, you cannot judge the proportion of the punishment while ignoring the infinite scale of the one being rejected.

However, this argument quickly falls apart. If God is infinitely good, then his mercy, understanding, patience, and compassion should also be infinite. An infinitely wise being would fully understand the limitations of finite humans: our ignorance, psychology, culture, trauma, biology, and confusion. No perfectly loving and understanding creator would make it possible to be entirely convinced of your nonexistence, but in another religion or creator, then also choose to sentence you to eternal suffering because of that finite nature and understanding. Secondly, finite creatures with finite understanding cannot commit infinite crimes. Eternal punishment ceases to look like perfect justice and instead resembles disproportionate vengeance. The morally greater a being is, the less vindictive and retaliatory they become — so why would the greatest conceivable being demand endless suffering from finite creatures he knowingly created? Such a creator would have infinite mercy and understand that it is an unjust proposition to expect imperfect humans to be able to reliably judge the truth or face eternal suffering. 

Secondly, if God is both all powerful and all loving, why did he orchestrate a system where separation from him was entirely void of love, and closer to vengeance and infinite retribution? 

If God loves you (affection and care for your well-being and happiness) and has infinite power to do anything he desires then ‘separation from Goodness’ could be annihilation. Just like he created you without your permission, he can also annihilate you without your permission. Eternal suffering is completely against unconditional love, and if you are also all powerful then you can come up with infinitely many solutions. If he doesn’t, then he doesn’t love you, forget unconditionally. 

The Christian doctrine states that those who have heard of Jesus Christ and his message, and refuse to take him up as their Lord and Savior, willingly chose separation from God in an eternal hell. Eternal hell would mean that God has finite patience but an infinite capacity for violence and retribution. Are there some humans that cannot be redeemed at all in the eyes of God, like those that have not found the evidence sufficient to believe but otherwise would have?

It renders God’s love meaningless because no definition of love could include allowing infinite torture. 

Would you agree that God created you, and he is all powerful, all loving, and all knowing?

If God created you, and is also all knowing and all powerful, then he would know your future before you were even created – he had foreknowledge of whether you would choose or reject Jesus Christ here on earth. 

Yes, foreknowledge is not causation. Even though God knew what you would choose, God did not cause you to choose the actions you chose, we have free will and willingly chose to accept or reject Jesus Christ. 

But this brings forward the question: Why would an all loving God create beings already knowing they are destined to suffer eternally? 

A parent is accountable for the child’s actions if the child is given choices beyond their capacity. If you gave your child a blowtorch you are accountable if they end up burning themselves or someone else. Likewise, God would be accountable for creating creatures already knowing what choices they would make: giving limited, ignorant, and time-bound creatures responsibility for eternal decisions (with regard to a hell of eternal conscious torment) is far worse than handing a toddler a blowtorch, since the blowtorch doesn't burn for eternity the way that hell supposedly does. 

If I was a genius robotic engineer and created an artificial machine fully knowing that it would destroy the world, and could have refrained from creating it, then I would be responsible if it proceeds to destroy the world. I had foreknowledge of what would happen and still intentionally created it despite being able to refrain from doing so. Likewise, an all loving, all powerful and all knowing God would be responsible for creating beings that he knows will choose eternal conscious torment, which is completely contradictory to the claim that he is all loving. 

Would you choose to play this game that God orchestrated, now knowing everything that you know about its rules? 

God created your soul without asking you if you want to exist, then forces you to participate in an entirely random luck of the draw spin wheel that gives you no choice of time, location, religion, and family, wherein if you don’t make the right choices in a finite life, you earn yourself infinite suffering for all of eternity?

If you happen to be unlucky and not spin Christianity, you would be looking out into the world with the lens of another worldview, completely convinced that your religion and identity is right just as the Christian believes himself to be right, because we are limited and imperfect mortal beings? 

And if you happen to lose, you don’t even get the right to ask this God to annihilate you into nothingness the same way he created your soul without permission, but this loving God instead sentences you to eternal suffering? Eternal hell is beyond disproportionate and cannot be an earned punishment, no matter what a finite being does. 

If you say this game is at all just or loving, you would be incredibly dishonest. Nobody would accept this proposition, as no one has a privileged evidential claim – just like the Muslim cannot convince you that Allah exists, you cannot convince the Muslim that Jesus exists. Each religion can provide you with evidence that would be reasonable to you, both believers capable of believing in their religion with equal passion, even receiving direct experience from their practice in the form of visions in meditation, dreams, a voice heard back, synchronicities, or the like.

You might say that I have no right to judge God based on my own human reason or moral intuition – that our moral intuition is fallen and limited, so apparent contradictions between divine justice and human fairness are not decisive objections against God’s existence. However, If human moral intuition is unable to judge whether eternal punishment is unjust, then humans are also too fallen and unreliable to judge that Christianity itself is true, that God is good, or that the Bible is morally trustworthy. You cannot appeal to human reason and moral intuition when arguing for Christianity then dismiss those same faculties the moment contradictions arise. If we need our reason and moral intuition to figure out which is the true God then the true God naturally cannot contradict those faculties. 

Do you believe it would be justified to require individuals to compensate for historical injustices they did not personally commit?

That would be very irrational. If most people agree that individuals are not morally responsible for the actions of their ancestors, then it becomes difficult to justify taking from people today in order to compensate for wrongs committed by previous generations.

A person may belong to a socially “advantaged” group while having no inherited wealth, privilege, or connection to past injustices. If their achievements came through their own effort, why would it be just to hold them accountable for actions they never committed?

The same issue appears in the doctrine of original sin. If human beings are born without choosing their condition, why should they bear moral responsibility for the actions of Adam and Eve? Punishing descendants for the actions of others seems inconsistent with the principle that each individual is morally responsible only for their own choices.

Why would a human being, who is born a part of nature, capable of doing both good and bad, be required to ask for forgiveness of their sins to a God who has not proven himself to exist? We appear no different than animals, like the Lion who eats the Zebra. Does the Lion also ask God for forgiveness after he utilizes his natural-given nature? Why then ought humans ask for forgiveness when they utilize their nature of reason, morality, and free will? 

Secondly, because Adam and Eve did not not have knowledge of good and evil before eating of the fruit, by any reasonable metric they should be blameless when they ate the fruit. For all they knew, the serpent was God’s creation, just like them, a friend, and not knowing of good or evil, they do not know that it is bad to disobey God and do as the serpent tells them. 

Let me ask you this: How can any person of conscience enjoy Heaven knowing that others are in Hell? 

It would be morally untenable unless believers have their memories of non-believers wiped, including family and friends, in which case would you still be the same human being, completely void of all of the people and experiences that made you who you are?

Hey yall I have an insane natural resistance to psychedelics -- I don't take any medication. I've previously taken over 20+ tabs (150ug) at once in my mouth and I didn't experience much of what is generally experienced, I was still just me and able to function, the visuals were amazing though, it was very electrical as if I am looking at a VR game, but nothing mystical.

My reason for doing psychedelics however is to have mystical experiences, I want to find out for sure whether there is something more -- at this point in my research, I am entirely confident of it. We are not just bodies that will return to nothing following our death. If you arose from nothing before, why would anyone be certain they can't do it again? There is so much conclusive evidence of telepathy and that consciousness extends beyond death such as remote viewing, NDEs, the telepathy tapes, etc. We are just one piece of God, consciousness, seeing the infinite realities from infinite perspectives.

So I will be doing over 40+ gels in my next trip. Will be my second time doing gels, my first time was 10 gels (tolerance fully reset, 2 weeks) and it was mostly an experience of seeing the carpets moving, wall moving, etc -- nothing crazy. I left them in my mouth for about 15 minutes then swallowed them. Now I am wondering what would be the easiest way to take 40+ gels. I don't want them to taste bad in my mouth or cause any issues.

I've never swallowed LSD, whats the easiest way to go about doing it? I.e, do I swallow five at a time? I usually trip 2-3 hours after a meal. Would this be enough or should I extend the time? How much additional time would you estimate it would take before it starts hitting like dissolved LSD?

Yes, I've tried mushrooms, its not just with LSD. Yes, I am confident these are legit, my friends tried them.

Introduction

You should read this with the perspective of a non-believer: This will be a thorough breakdown of how Christianity and similar ideologies (Abrahamic religions) cannot exist. I only ask that you read this with a pure heart, with the perspective of a non-believer, genuinely considering my questions and leaving all possibilities open. If you are not open to all possibilities and to the possibility of your religion being wrong, how is it fair to expect other people to do the same for your religion? 

Religion exists to try to explain life's most important questions: The most important questions to life are who are you, why and how do you exist, could a God exist. Isn’t it odd that there is existence at all? Wouldn’t it have been easier for there to have been nothing? What happens after your death? If you woke up from unconscious sleep in your birth as a baby, then who is to say you won’t wake up again after you fall into slumber in death again, since you did it before? There are the questions that religion rose to answer, because most of us cannot be satisfied without an answer.

The only honest and rational way to answer these questions can only be arrived at after impartially reviewing all the religions: You don’t believe in a deity then look for evidence. We must follow the evidence to its conclusion – considering all of the religions equally and seeing if any of them are able to provide us with reasonable evidence or direct experience that can point us to the truth. This becomes a search for the truth, eliminating cultural bias that would make us favor one religion more than the other. Instead, most believers of religion start backwards – we begin with the conclusion (Jesus is God and the Bible is word of God) then search for evidence that is in support of the conclusion while completely ignoring any data that isn’t (cherry-picking). This isn’t logical, but we do that when we teach our children, who accept whatever they are told as truth uncritically, that this one religion is real before they have the mental capacity to doubt or consider alternatives. If you can demonstrate that a deity exists only then is it time to believe.  

You cannot defer to God’s mystery, human limitation, or a higher authority: The Bible states that God’s existence is self-evident in Romans 1:19-20, and if non-believers don’t see it, they are without excuse. This means it ought to be obvious. If I grow up being taught that Jesus is God, and If I run into an issue that I can’t explain with my human capacities, then I cannot defer to human limitation because a non-believer or someone of another religion wouldn’t. I cannot say, “my thoughts are not your thoughts nor my ways your ways.” As a non-believer, they have not found sufficient evidence to believe the Christian God exists in the first place, so it is illogical to defer to his qualities to explain the things that do not make sense. If a deity exists it should be possible to find sufficient evidence through our human capacities. 

Religion becomes truth itself, not to be questioned, rather than a search for truth: If we are trying to figure out which book is true, then we cannot use this book (The Bible) to prove the book. A reasonable non-believer needs unbiased evidence that demonstrably proves it to be true. If you arrive at the conclusion that the Bible is the word of God not through a legitimate impartial search for the truth but by it being the truth itself (often blind faith), then it is very easy to make circular arguments. If I run into an issue, it is my fault when a problem arises, because there can be no problem, it is the infallible word of God. This wouldn’t work with a non-believer, because they have not found sufficient evidence for God’s existence, so as of now, The Bible is not the word of God. Scripture is not authoritative to someone who does not already accept it. As people searching for the truth and the truth only, it is but only a text that must first prove itself to be the real word of God. 

Arguments from Self-Evidence

Romans 1:19-20:  “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

Qur’an 41:53:  “We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth…”

Indoctrination, culture, and social ostracism explain religious belief more than an impartial search for truth does: The Christian’s God existence is not any more self-evident than any other religion. If both the Christian and Muslim say their God is self-evident, why hasn’t one of them woken up from their illusion? We are fed and feed a prepackaged answer to our kids, not given an opportunity to consider life’s most important questions. If you leave your religion, you will be ostracized – potentially lose your family and friends. Culture creates our identity, our genetics and upbringing, which gives us a certain lens to look out into the world and see other people as abnormal, the notion that we are right. But everyone is justified to believe what they believe, because had you been in their shoes, you would probably grow up to be similar. No one has the capacity to completely understand everyone’s point of view because we are all carrying different colored lenses, I don’t have everyone’s context to understand their stories. Everyone’s beliefs are justified. Unless one can demonstrably prove a certain religion to be true, then no one has any right to ask someone to throw away their entire identity to take up blind faith in a story without any demonstrable evidence. The most rational action is to stick to the religion you were born in because it’s not worth the costs of leaving unless you have legitimate evidence to go to another religion. If that evidence was there, people wouldn’t be arguing over which one is right. 

Geography determines belief: Imagine you were a Hindu monk in India. You sat in meditation many hours a day in order to approach the answer that your teachers claimed is the way to have direct experience of the truth, which according to them, is that we are not the body itself, but consciousness, awareness, an observer, or even a soul, that is here to have a human experience, and forget that it is God – that God merely separated himself into infinite pieces to experience the infinite realities which contain all possibilities from all points of views, through all eyes. You live a life dedicated to this spiritual pursuit with minimal possessions, aspiring to live in the present and being happy with what you have, letting go of the attachments that come with our body such as the never-ending desire for more and lack of peace in the moment. What if Christians came to your city to preach the Bible? You would ignore them because there is no evidence for their truth except words in a book, whereas you had encountered the truth through your own direct experience by way of meditation. They have not even presented proof of the Christian God and dare say that if you don’t completely reject everything you are, their God will torture you forever, even though you are trying your best to be as kind to everyone as you could be. What did the Christian do to deserve being born in the correct religion, whereas you would have to go against your indoctrination, destroy your entire life and culture, face social ostracism, figure out what the correct religion is, and only then would you be saved? 

No one has a privileged evidential claim: If each practitioner believes with equal passion, have their own personal reasons for why they believe, each religion capable of providing the practitioner with direct experience in the form of visions in meditation, dreams, a voice heard back, synchronicities, or the like, each believing that they couldn’t possibly be wrong, then isn’t it impossible for an outside observer to determine which of them is correct? If a Christian baby was swapped with a Muslim baby at birth, they would probably remain Muslim, shaped by their indoctrination and culture, as very few ever leave their birth religion. Not only is there no benefit to doing so because of social ostracism, but there is no demonstrable proof for any other religion, besides direct experience. You don’t just believe in a deity because of witness testimony. Any proof of God based on argument alone necessarily falls short. You cannot theorize God into existence or show using math. The closest you can get is a theory, you still have to demonstrate it, or directly experience it for yourself. There are many people who claim to have direct experience of their truth, and no one has the right to say mine is more real than yours. Direct experience, information through our own senses, is the most trustworthy source of information, whereas second hand information, from other people, is much less trustworthy, especially information passed down over thousands of years. And unfortunately, the vast majority of believers do not have direct experience, but blind faith. Why would someone throw their direct experience away in favor of someone’s blind faith? Is there any evidence of the Christian God that you could give a Hindu monk that could stand up to their direct experience? 

Determine if you came to your answer through an impartial search: Do you know the beliefs of all the major sects of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto are and what they believe? Most people have not read one other religion’s text, forget all, and forget living as another person. If one accepts their culture’s teachings as the truth without any impartial research, then had they been swapped with a baby of another religion, they may not have truly considered Christianity as a possibility just as they haven’t considered the other possibilities in their current position. 

Philosophical arguments hold no merit: The fine-tuning argument (the universe appears precisely set up to allow life, slightly different parameters and we would not exist), classical design (existence is so beautiful and complex which suggests there must be a designer) fail because there is no reason why our existence couldn’t be finely tuned by nature, a probabilistic occurrence. Given that there are many galaxies that themselves contain many galaxies, the odds of our Earth appearing are not impossible. We are nowhere close to understanding how large the universe is, and our physics laws are still incomplete. Cosmological arguments (Why does the universe exist at all) fail because they only tell us we don’t know why or how we exist. Just because we don’t know, doesn’t give us permission to conclude that it must be the Christian God – what about all the other potential Gods or reasons? Energy is only transformed, not created or destroyed, so one could argue that the universe has always existed, transforming between different states. 

Arguments from Omnibenevolence, Omnipotence, & Omniscience

Christian doctrine states that God is calling out to everyone. If you heard of his message, you are responsible for having the free will to reject God. If you reject God, you choose hell, separation from God. It’s not torture – because you freely chose to live apart from God, you also chose separation from the source of Goodness. God doesn’t desire for you to go there, but you bear responsibility for your actions. It’s your fault if you researched Christianity and found the evidence insufficient. This only means you didn’t research Christianity enough, because if you had looked into it deeply enough, you’d know it’s the right one. 

It is immoral for God to not provide sufficient evidence to believers who would believe had the evidence been sufficient: If someone found the evidence insufficient for belief (it would be no more than blind faith) then how can they be held responsible? If God is genuinely sought out by an individual who wants to make a connection, then he has a duty to respond, as he says he is a personal and loving God who wants a relationship with everyone – especially more so because our eternal salvation or damnation hinges on this belief. A truly omnibenevolent (all good) God who doesn’t respond has no right to put him in hell. In the case that someone never heard of Jesus, like tribes separated from society, there is no one answer, but various ones. How can the Bible be the infallible word of God when Christians aren’t even united in what they believe? 

Infinite punishment for finite actions is disproportionate: Imagine an existence where you are suffering every single day of your life, there is no end to the fire. What did you do that was so bad that warranted this kind of punishment? The worst things I have done would probably be physical or non-physical arguments with others, do you think that is deserving of eternal suffering? Are there some humans that cannot be redeemed at all in the eyes of God, like those that have not found the evidence scientifically sufficient to believe but otherwise would have? If someone you loved were to suddenly kill you, would you say an eye for an eye? Would you want them to be eternally tortured? Would you want the worst human in existence to be eternally tortured? I’m not loving enough to love even the person who hurts myself or my loved ones. An omnibenevolent being would love all, even those who hurt them. Yet I can say such a punishment would be unfair, but an omnibenevolent being cannot? Are you or I better than God? We cannot explain this incoherence using human limitation or God’s mystery. Any problems must have a solution using our human capacities, otherwise non-believers would just be out of luck. God’s love isn’t just so much greater than any love you could have, but it is unconditional love. Unconditional love is loving in spite of imperfections, unwavering, and selfless affection focused on another’s happiness and well-being without strings attached, expectations, or limitations, regardless of their actions, flaws, or circumstances. Why would a God, a being who is perfect, all loving, want to torture you forever? Doesn’t he have anything better to do? 

An omnibenevolent/omnipotent would not resort to eternal suffering: If God loves you (affection and care for your well-being and happiness) and has infinite power to do anything he desires then ‘separation from Goodness’ could be annihilation. Just like he created you without your permission, he can also annihilate you without your permission. Eternal suffering is completely against unconditional love, and if you are also all powerful then you can come up with infinitely many solutions. If he doesn’t, then he doesn’t love you, forget unconditionally. 

It is immoral for an omnibenevolent/omniscient God to create souls he knows would suffer eternally: Why create souls who are destined to suffer forever? God did not cause me or you to choose the actions we chose, we have free will. Foreknowledge is not causation. But, if before making you, he knew your eternal fate, then it might as well have been causation. You had no part to play in choosing whether you want to participate in this game. Imagine that God had a two sided dice, one side instantiates a universe where your soul goes to hell and a universe where your soul goes to heaven. If God, before rolling the dice, knows that it will lead to you going to hell, why would he roll the dice in the first place? If he still proceeds to roll it, then you could say he caused it to happen. This effect, a human soul in hell, would not have happened if he had not chosen to roll the dice. No one else is responsible but him. The result is already written in stone. Why would an omnibenevolent God create beings knowing they are destined to suffer eternally?

It is immoral for an omnibenevolent/omniscient God to create souls that suffer greatly in this life knowing they would be annihilated: Those that believe in annihilationism might instead ask, "Why did God create some people even though he knew they wouldn’t choose him and would be annihilated?” and would respond that isn’t it better that they got an opportunity to live, that God doesn’t owe us anything? However, why would an omnibenevolent God create a being that he knows will suffer greatly in this life with nothing good (imagine the worst suffering, like someone locked up somewhere from birth and tortured) and that he knows has nothing in store for them like eternal salvation, because he knows they will be annihilated (they are so tortured and hurt that they don’t even think about God). What does God get out of that besides torturing a poor soul for a lifespan then annihilating her or him? It's okay since the majority of the souls had a positive experience, so we can brush those aside as acceptable losses, necessary evils, collateral? That person that suffered matters more than the people who had good experiences, because not only did God create them knowing they would suffer, suffering holds a much greater weight than happiness. It is better for many people to have a neutral experience (non-existence), than for one to suffer greatly so those people can have a joyous time. Because those people wouldn't have known otherwise, they had no mechanism by which they can regret not being born. But the one that suffered, they would regret it everyday, and they came into existence without being asked if they would like to participate.   

If you wouldn’t accept this proposition before you participated, then it isn’t fair: Someone might say annihilation wouldn’t be the loving solution, because the soul, moral life and judgement hold weight, the soul isn’t disposable just because God created it. So it is a loving God that forcibly created your soul without asking you if you want to exist, force you to participate in an entirely random luck of the draw game that gives you no choice of time, location, or family, wherein if you don’t make the right choices in a finite and random life, you have just earned yourself infinite torture for all of eternity? And you don’t even get the right to ask to return to the state before your existence, but are forced to exist forever in what amounts to eternal suffering? I don’t think anyone would choose to accept this proposition. Not only is it entirely lacking in love, it is tremendously unfair, because no one has a privileged evidential claim, each religion can provide you with evidence that is reasonable to them, each group of people believing with equal passion, even direct experience.

Introduction

You should read this with the perspective of a non-believer: This will be a thorough breakdown of how Christianity and similar ideologies (Abrahamic religions) cannot exist. I only ask that you read this with a pure heart, with the perspective of a non-believer, genuinely considering my questions and leaving all possibilities open. If you are not open to all possibilities and to the possibility of your religion being wrong, how is it fair to expect other people to do the same for your religion? 

Religion exists to try to explain life's most important questions: The most important questions to life are who are you, why and how do you exist, could a God exist. Isn’t it odd that there is existence at all? Wouldn’t it have been easier for there to have been nothing? What happens after your death? If you woke up from unconscious sleep in your birth as a baby, then who is to say you won’t wake up again after you fall into slumber in death again, since you did it before? There are the questions that religion rose to answer, because most of us cannot be satisfied without an answer.

The only honest and rational way to answer these questions can only be arrived at after impartially reviewing all the religions: You don’t believe in a deity then look for evidence. We must follow the evidence to its conclusion – considering all of the religions equally and seeing if any of them are able to provide us with reasonable evidence or direct experience that can point us to the truth. This becomes a search for the truth, eliminating cultural bias that would make us favor one religion more than the other. Instead, most believers of religion start backwards – we begin with the conclusion (Jesus is God and the Bible is word of God) then search for evidence that is in support of the conclusion while completely ignoring any data that isn’t (cherry-picking). This isn’t logical, but we do that when we teach our children, who accept whatever they are told as truth uncritically, that this one religion is real before they have the mental capacity to doubt or consider alternatives. If you can demonstrate that a deity exists only then is it time to believe.  

You cannot defer to God’s mystery, human limitation, or a higher authority: The Bible states that God’s existence is self-evident in Romans 1:19-20, and if non-believers don’t see it, they are without excuse. This means it ought to be obvious. If I grow up being taught that Jesus is God, and If I run into an issue that I can’t explain with my human capacities, then I cannot defer to human limitation because a non-believer or someone of another religion wouldn’t. I cannot say, “my thoughts are not your thoughts nor my ways your ways.” As a non-believer, they have not found sufficient evidence to believe the Christian God exists in the first place, so it is illogical to defer to his qualities to explain the things that do not make sense. If a deity exists it should be possible to find sufficient evidence through our human capacities. 

Religion becomes truth itself, not to be questioned, rather than a search for truth: If we are trying to figure out which book is true, then we cannot use this book (The Bible) to prove the book. A reasonable non-believer needs unbiased evidence that demonstrably proves it to be true. If you arrive at the conclusion that the Bible is the word of God not through a legitimate impartial search for the truth but by it being the truth itself (often blind faith), then it is very easy to make circular arguments. If I run into an issue, it is my fault when a problem arises, because there can be no problem, it is the infallible word of God. This wouldn’t work with a non-believer, because they have not found sufficient evidence for God’s existence, so as of now, The Bible is not the word of God. Scripture is not authoritative to someone who does not already accept it. As people searching for the truth and the truth only, it is but only a text that must first prove itself to be the real word of God. 

Arguments from Self-Evidence

Romans 1:19-20:  “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

Qur’an 41:53:  “We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth…”

Indoctrination, culture, and social ostracism explain religious belief more than an impartial search for truth does: The Christian’s God existence is not any more self-evident than any other religion. If both the Christian and Muslim say their God is self-evident, why hasn’t one of them woken up from their illusion? We are fed and feed a prepackaged answer to our kids, not given an opportunity to consider life’s most important questions. If you leave your religion, you will be ostracized – potentially lose your family and friends. Culture creates our identity, our genetics and upbringing, which gives us a certain lens to look out into the world and see other people as abnormal, the notion that we are right. But everyone is justified to believe what they believe, because had you been in their shoes, you would probably grow up to be similar. No one has the capacity to completely understand everyone’s point of view because we are all carrying different colored lenses, I don’t have everyone’s context to understand their stories. Everyone’s beliefs are justified. Unless one can demonstrably prove a certain religion to be true, then no one has any right to ask someone to throw away their entire identity to take up blind faith in a story without any demonstrable evidence. The most rational action is to stick to the religion you were born in because it’s not worth the costs of leaving unless you have legitimate evidence to go to another religion. If that evidence was there, people wouldn’t be arguing over which one is right. 

Geography determines belief: Imagine you were a Hindu monk in India. You sat in meditation many hours a day in order to approach the answer that your teachers claimed is the way to have direct experience of the truth, which according to them, is that we are not the body itself, but consciousness, awareness, an observer, or even a soul, that is here to have a human experience, and forget that it is God – that God merely separated himself into infinite pieces to experience the infinite realities which contain all possibilities from all points of views, through all eyes. You live a life dedicated to this spiritual pursuit with minimal possessions, aspiring to live in the present and being happy with what you have, letting go of the attachments that come with our body such as the never-ending desire for more and lack of peace in the moment. What if Christians came to your city to preach the Bible? You would ignore them because there is no evidence for their truth except words in a book, whereas you had encountered the truth through your own direct experience by way of meditation. They have not even presented proof of the Christian God and dare say that if you don’t completely reject everything you are, their God will torture you forever, even though you are trying your best to be as kind to everyone as you could be. What did the Christian do to deserve being born in the correct religion, whereas you would have to go against your indoctrination, destroy your entire life and culture, face social ostracism, figure out what the correct religion is, and only then would you be saved? 

No one has a privileged evidential claim: If each practitioner believes with equal passion, have their own personal reasons for why they believe, each religion capable of providing the practitioner with direct experience in the form of visions in meditation, dreams, a voice heard back, synchronicities, or the like, each believing that they couldn’t possibly be wrong, then isn’t it impossible for an outside observer to determine which of them is correct? If a Christian baby was swapped with a Muslim baby at birth, they would probably remain Muslim, shaped by their indoctrination and culture, as very few ever leave their birth religion. Not only is there no benefit to doing so because of social ostracism, but there is no demonstrable proof for any other religion, besides direct experience. You don’t just believe in a deity because of witness testimony. Any proof of God based on argument alone necessarily falls short. You cannot theorize God into existence or show using math. The closest you can get is a theory, you still have to demonstrate it, or directly experience it for yourself. There are many people who claim to have direct experience of their truth, and no one has the right to say mine is more real than yours. Direct experience, information through our own senses, is the most trustworthy source of information, whereas second hand information, from other people, is much less trustworthy, especially information passed down over thousands of years. And unfortunately, the vast majority of believers do not have direct experience, but blind faith. Why would someone throw their direct experience away in favor of someone’s blind faith? Is there any evidence of the Christian God that you could give a Hindu monk that could stand up to their direct experience? 

Determine if you came to your answer through an impartial search: Do you know the beliefs of all the major sects of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto are and what they believe? Most people have not read one other religion’s text, forget all, and forget living as another person. If one accepts their culture’s teachings as the truth without any impartial research, then had they been swapped with a baby of another religion, they may not have truly considered Christianity as a possibility just as they haven’t considered the other possibilities in their current position. 

Philosophical arguments hold no merit: The fine-tuning argument (the universe appears precisely set up to allow life, slightly different parameters and we would not exist), classical design (existence is so beautiful and complex which suggests there must be a designer) fail because there is no reason why our existence couldn’t be finely tuned by nature, a probabilistic occurrence. Given that there are many galaxies that themselves contain many galaxies, the odds of our Earth appearing are not impossible. We are nowhere close to understanding how large the universe is, and our physics laws are still incomplete. Cosmological arguments (Why does the universe exist at all) fail because they only tell us we don’t know why or how we exist. Just because we don’t know, doesn’t give us permission to conclude that it must be the Christian God – what about all the other potential Gods or reasons? Energy is only transformed, not created or destroyed, so one could argue that the universe has always existed, transforming between different states. 

Arguments from Omnibenevolence, Omnipotence, & Omniscience

Christian doctrine states that God is calling out to everyone. If you heard of his message, you are responsible for having the free will to reject God. If you reject God, you choose hell, separation from God. It’s not torture – because you freely chose to live apart from God, you also chose separation from the source of Goodness. God doesn’t desire for you to go there, but you bear responsibility for your actions. It’s your fault if you researched Christianity and found the evidence insufficient. This only means you didn’t research Christianity enough, because if you had looked into it deeply enough, you’d know it’s the right one. 

It is immoral for God to not provide sufficient evidence to believers who would believe had the evidence been sufficient: If someone found the evidence insufficient for belief (it would be no more than blind faith) then how can they be held responsible? If God is genuinely sought out by an individual who wants to make a connection, then he has a duty to respond, as he says he is a personal and loving God who wants a relationship with everyone – especially more so because our eternal salvation or damnation hinges on this belief. A truly omnibenevolent (all good) God who doesn’t respond has no right to put him in hell. In the case that someone never heard of Jesus, like tribes separated from society, there is no one answer, but various ones. How can the Bible be the infallible word of God when Christians aren’t even united in what they believe? 

Infinite punishment for finite actions is disproportionate: Imagine an existence where you are suffering every single day of your life, there is no end to the fire. What did you do that was so bad that warranted this kind of punishment? The worst things I have done would probably be physical or non-physical arguments with others, do you think that is deserving of eternal suffering? Are there some humans that cannot be redeemed at all in the eyes of God, like those that have not found the evidence scientifically sufficient to believe but otherwise would have? If someone you loved were to suddenly kill you, would you say an eye for an eye? Would you want them to be eternally tortured? Would you want the worst human in existence to be eternally tortured? I’m not loving enough to love even the person who hurts myself or my loved ones. An omnibenevolent being would love all, even those who hurt them. Yet I can say such a punishment would be unfair, but an omnibenevolent being cannot? Are you or I better than God? We cannot explain this incoherence using human limitation or God’s mystery. Any problems must have a solution using our human capacities, otherwise non-believers would just be out of luck. God’s love isn’t just so much greater than any love you could have, but it is unconditional love. Unconditional love is loving in spite of imperfections, unwavering, and selfless affection focused on another’s happiness and well-being without strings attached, expectations, or limitations, regardless of their actions, flaws, or circumstances. Why would a God, a being who is perfect, all loving, want to torture you forever? Doesn’t he have anything better to do? 

An omnibenevolent/omnipotent would not resort to eternal suffering: If God loves you (affection and care for your well-being and happiness) and has infinite power to do anything he desires then ‘separation from Goodness’ could be annihilation. Just like he created you without your permission, he can also annihilate you without your permission. Eternal suffering is completely against unconditional love, and if you are also all powerful then you can come up with infinitely many solutions. If he doesn’t, then he doesn’t love you, forget unconditionally. 

It is immoral for an omnibenevolent/omniscient God to create souls he knows would suffer eternally: Why create souls who are destined to suffer forever? God did not cause me or you to choose the actions we chose, we have free will. Foreknowledge is not causation. But, if before making you, he knew your eternal fate, then it might as well have been causation. You had no part to play in choosing whether you want to participate in this game. Imagine that God had a two sided dice, one side instantiates a universe where your soul goes to hell and a universe where your soul goes to heaven. If God, before rolling the dice, knows that it will lead to you going to hell, why would he roll the dice in the first place? If he still proceeds to roll it, then you could say he caused it to happen. This effect, a human soul in hell, would not have happened if he had not chosen to roll the dice. No one else is responsible but him. The result is already written in stone. Why would an omnibenevolent God create beings knowing they are destined to suffer eternally?

It is immoral for an omnibenevolent/omniscient God to create souls that suffer greatly in this life knowing they would be annihilated: Those that believe in annihilationism might instead ask, "Why did God create some people even though he knew they wouldn’t choose him and would be annihilated?” and would respond that isn’t it better that they got an opportunity to live, that God doesn’t owe us anything? However, why would an omnibenevolent God create a being that he knows will suffer greatly in this life with nothing good (imagine the worst suffering, like someone locked up somewhere from birth and tortured) and that he knows has nothing in store for them like eternal salvation, because he knows they will be annihilated (they are so tortured and hurt that they don’t even think about God). What does God get out of that besides torturing a poor soul for a lifespan then annihilating her or him? It's okay since the majority of the souls had a positive experience, so we can brush those aside as acceptable losses, necessary evils, collateral? That person that suffered matters more than the people who had good experiences, because not only did God create them knowing they would suffer, suffering holds a much greater weight than happiness. It is better for many people to have a neutral experience (non-existence), than for one to suffer greatly so those people can have a joyous time. Because those people wouldn't have known otherwise, they had no mechanism by which they can regret not being born. But the one that suffered, they would regret it everyday, and they came into existence without being asked if they would like to participate.   

If you wouldn’t accept this proposition before you participated, then it isn’t fair: Someone might say annihilation wouldn’t be the loving solution, because the soul, moral life and judgement hold weight, the soul isn’t disposable just because God created it. So it is a loving God that forcibly created your soul without asking you if you want to exist, force you to participate in an entirely random luck of the draw game that gives you no choice of time, location, or family, wherein if you don’t make the right choices in a finite and random life, you have just earned yourself infinite torture for all of eternity? And you don’t even get the right to ask to return to the state before your existence, but are forced to exist forever in what amounts to eternal suffering? I don’t think anyone would choose to accept this proposition. Not only is it entirely lacking in love, it is tremendously unfair, because no one has a privileged evidential claim, each religion can provide you with evidence that is reasonable to them, each group of people believing with equal passion, even direct experience.