Why The Biblical God Doesn’t Exist

If there is a god it’s not the multi-self-refuting Biblical god  - QualiaSoup

There are as many different versions of the Biblical god as there are Christians, Jews and Muslims. As a result it’s usually pointless to try to broadly address the vague conception of what the Biblical god is and I’ll only be addressing specific contradictory attributes described as belonging to some version of that god. Individual believers may or may not believe in a being with each of these conflicting traits and I certainly can not explain in this post in great detail what is wrong with each of these. With that said, let’s look at why exactly I say this god doesn’t exist beginning with the most obvious problem.

Hell and Omnibenevolence/All-merciful

No this isn’t about me “not wanting to submit to god’s judgment” but rather the obvious contradiction with implying that a being is both infinitely merciful or compassionate and participating in infinite torture. Such traits are every bit as logically impossible as speaking of a being that is invisible but pink as infinite goodness is incompatible with infinite torture.

Perfection and Worship

A perfect being wouldn’t need anything by definition, so a desire to be worshiped is incompatible with such an entity. Things only become more ludicrous when it is suggested that if this perfect being doesn’t get the worship it needs it will punish people.

Omniscience

Omniscience is impossible because no being could ever know it wasn’t being totally manipulated or wasn’t a part of a created world because a mind can’t be absolutely sure of the type of world it inhabits. If you acknowledge that in theory one could create a video game character who knows everything about the world it inhabits but can’t know the ultimate truth about the world outside of the game you recognize the inherit limit of knowledge for minds.

Imperfect Bible, Perfect God and Searching for God

The moment you admit that the Bible is not perfect either through being influenced by the particular biases of those men who wrote it or by imperfect copying of the Bible over time, you admit that an allegedly perfect being chose to convey what is literally the most important message ever by imperfect means. This is incompatible with a perfect being because it would imply an imperfect choice. Moreover if you think the Bible is intentionally imperfect because god wants people to search it out, you admit that this perfect being wants you to play an impossible game of hide and seek in which all but one answer may result in infinite torture. If it is only the search for a god that counts then the Bible is completely wrong about who gets into heaven and why as there would be no rules that encompass all those who just seek for god, or even those who simply seek truth, as many people follow religions and belief systems that teach things quite contrary to the Bible. These are incompatible with a just god or a divine moral standard that encompasses actions.

Perfection Creates Imperfection

A perfect being created humans perfect initially and the end result is imperfection. If done intentionally it was done with malice, if not is was done by mistake. This simply can not fit with a perfect being, if that perfection entails goodness, even if you don’t take into account the end result of such imperfection, the need for hell.

Emotions and Omniscience

The existence of emotions like anger would be impossible for a being who already knew everything. Emotion is a response to a change in affairs but if god knows everything there would never be anything that it didn’t already know. Furthermore, in passages like Genesis 22:12 the Biblical god displays surprise saying “Now I know” after testing Abraham, something which in itself would have been pointless to begin with. Such surprise or reassessment is not possible from a being that is omniscient.

A Timeless God and Free Will

Any god claimed to exist outside of all time can not possibly have created anything. In order to make any decisions to create the universe some form of time must have existed. Furthermore, even if a god could exist outside of time there couldn’t be any free will as god would be not just the cause of all actions but the author of all actions.

Divine Free Will and Omniscience

A being that knows everything including the future, and always has, would be incapable of making any free choices by definition. This would, if you also believe that this god gave humans free will, make it lesser in one way than humans.

A Non-Spatial Omnipresent God

Both of these traits can not exist in the same being as either this being exists in some spatial dimension or it is not omnipresent in any spatial dimension. The definition of presence in use here refers to something that exists in space and obviously a non-spatial being can not have such a quality.

A Changeless Disembodied Mind

There’s enough problem with granting that a disembodied mind can exist, considering we have literally no reason to think this makes any more sense than a being that has vision but no eyes, but because minds are entirely dependent on change this is simply an impossible being. Furthermore without change there could be no intentional creation of anything.

Heaven, Hell, Free Will and Omnibenevolence

If both heaven and hell exist and those in heaven are aware of those suffering in hell, it would be no heaven at all as it would be an unbearable mental torture. If free will is ended in heaven for eternity to prevent you from knowing about those in hell, it’s both deceitful and restricting in a way in which it’s claimed could not be done by god on earth. Furthermore if your free will isn’t ended in heaven for the remainder of eternity but no one sins, then god could have created a world in which there was no sin or wrongdoing and the entire idea of creating a life that could possibly send some to hell becomes pointless and irreconcilably cruel with a just god.

Omnipotence and Immortality

As I first heard from Theramin Trees, if gods can kill themselves they can’t be intrinsically immortal and if they can’t kill themselves they are not omnipotent. To say that a god can’t kill itself because it conflicts with its own nature is to eliminate the meaning of omnipotence, as a human can also do anything that doesn’t conflict with its own nature.

And one just for the Christians…

Jesus is God and God is Omniscient

In Mark 13:32 Jesus says of the end times “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the father.” If god is omniscient and Jesus by his own admission is not omniscient, then Jesus is not god. This one should be fairly obvious.

This isn’t even a complete list as all of this says nothing of the obvious hypocrisy and contradictions that surround many of the specific acts of the god of the Bible. Such a being is not perfect as it’s not consistent in any meaningful way. Obviously these problems don’t only apply to the Biblical god as any being described as having these traits can not exist. However many, if not most, of these are central characteristics of the god of the Bible I am not timid at all about saying the Biblical god does not exist as the characteristics it’s described as having collapse upon themselves in numerous ways.

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*Last Edited 9/20/12