God Does Not Exist

Talk to a skeptic and you're likely going to get a (small) variety of objections to the existence of God. They'll likely take on a number of forms and a host of variations, but I think this is the gist of it:

1. "If God existed, there wouldn't be no evil and suffering."

2. "We can't measure God."

3. "A just God would treat everyone fairly. Giving favor to some for 'believing in Jesus' and damning others simply because they don't believe or have never heard isn't fair."

4. "Who made God?"

Now, there has been a lot of time and effort spent on answering these types of objections. The field known as "Christian Apologetics" or, simply, "Apologetics" is devoted to this subject. They've done a decent job of it and I applaud it and I even engage in it myself. However, that's not where I'm going today.

What do these objections tell us about perceptions of God? The first one tells us that God is "omnibenevolent", that He thinks we are important and, if He exists, ought to be devoting time and effort to the care and well-being of human beings. He is (or should be), as we are, focused on us. The second tells us that God is like us. He is an entity with the same characteristics such as physicality and the like. The third tells us that, if God existed, He would be fair, equitable, answering to the human perception of evenhandedness and impartiality in His treatment of individuals. The last tells us, again, that if a God were to exist, He would be like us, a created being. After all, don't we claim in our Apologetics that "nothing produces nothing" and "everything must have a cause"? Thus, if God were to exist, He would have to have a cause.

Perhaps, if you were paying attention, you've seen a common thread -- "like us". Perhaps a more common thread would be "us". If God were to exist, He would be kind to us, have similar characteristics to us, have a perception of justice like us, and be caused like us. So let me say here and now, I don't believe in God. Well, I should be clearer. I don't believe in that God.

You see, in the biblical version that God doesn't exist. The biblical God is focused on Himself, not us. His glory is paramount, not our comfort. God says, "You thought that I was one like yourself" (Psa 50:21). Samuel told Saul that God "is not a man" (1 Sam 15:29). Indeed, the whole designation of "Holy" ("holy, holy, holy", lifting it to the highest sense) means "other" -- "not like you." Sure, there are points of commonality (or we'd never be able to recognize or comprehend anything about Him), but it is foolishness to think that God is like us, to use ourselves as the measure of God. No, the biblical version of God is not like us. We can't measure God because He is not physical. He doesn't conform to our sense of "justice" because He is not confined to "equitable". And that whole "everything must have a cause" thing only applies to effects, and God is no effect.

In the early days of the Church, the Christians were viewed by Roman emperors as atheists. These Christians didn't believe that the Roman emperor was God, so they didn't believe in God. In these latter days I have become an atheist. I don't believe in the God touted by atheists and misguided believers that can't be found in the pages of Scripture or in evident reason. I don't believe in a "hands off" God or a "milksop" God who has cut Himself off from intervening in the All Powerful Human Free Will or the oh-so-limited God who must conform to human understanding and values. That may make me an atheist in today's perspectives of "God", but so be it.