, where I briefly explained some of the reasons why I don't believe in god. That post, which was long over due at the time, needs an update. With each passing year I get much better at understanding the arguments for and against the existence of god, and since that post came out I've created several new arguments of my own. Rather than write it in essay form, which I did in the original post, I'll instead outline the main reasons and arguments briefly, one by one. So here we go.

I'm an atheist because....

In order to even consider the possibility that a god exists, we first need a coherent concept of god. The traditional notion of god in classical theism is that of a timeless, changeless, immaterial mind, who also must be infinitely good, infinitely wise, and can do anything logically possible. There are some variations on this concept, but almost all traditional or classical theistic gods have these basic characteristics. The problem is that a timeless, changeless being by definition cannot

anything; it's necessarily causally impotent and nonfunctional. Change requires time, and time requires change. This is logically certain. And to

something. Doing requires a change, regardless of whether that change is mental or physical. A being that cannot do anything cannot be omnipotent. As a result, the traditional notion of god is self contradictory. The theist's only resort here is special pleading. That's why I like to get all theists to agree beforehand that god is not beyond logic. That is, god cannot

the logically impossible. Once a theist agrees with this, they've cut themselves off from special pleading as an option. Some theists think god is atemporal

creating the universe. But it isn't logically possible to exist timelessly and then suddenly jolt yourself into time out of your own will, because your will was timeless and frozen. It couldn't change into the state to want to change.

Given the necessary rules of logic the traditional attributes of god are incoherent:

P1. It is logically impossible to do something without doing something. P2. It is logically impossible to do something without change (even if everything is immaterial). P3. It is logically impossible for change to exist without time.C. As such, a timeless, changeless being cannot do anything.

The failure of theists to come up with a coherent description of god is enough by itself to warrant atheism, but there's many more reasons to think no gods exist.

Since god is considered the creator and sustainer of the universe, it's helpful to point out that the universe doesn't need a creator or sustainer because it's eternal

is true. Special and General Relativity both entail that every moment of the universethe past, present, and futureall physically exist in an eternal block universe, a 4 dimensional spacetime manifold. An eternal universe

by definition be created, since it didn't begin to exist in the regular understanding of begin to exist (which assumes

is true).

(If at this point you're thinking that the big bang proves our universe has a finite past, and therefore cannot be eternal, let me remind you again that eternalism means that the past, present, and futureall physically exist in an eternal block universe, and therefore the universe can have a finite number of moments since the big bang and be eternal because all moments of time never begin to exist, nor cease to exist. Eternalism is also different from the Steady State theory of the universe. Those who don't understand this do not understand special and general relativity properly.)

Now it would be foolish of me to make such grand claims without providing any evidence why eternalism is true. That would be making a faith claim, like the religious do. Well I've written several arguments for why eternalism is true, perhaps more than any other blogger online.

Therefore, all the theological "first cause" arguments fail because they all assume an antiquated concept of causality that has been falsified by modern science.

For more clarification and a deeper explanation of what I mean by this and what I don't mean, read Causality Doesn't Exist In The Way We Typically Think It Does: A Further Explanation

Now of course it is always possible that there was spacetime prior to the big bang. If there's an infinite amount of spacetime prior to our universe's big bang, then the question of how do you get something from nothing is moot. And if there is a finite amount of spacetime prior to our universe's big bang, the same principle applies to the absolute origin.

So the first cause arguments not only get causality wrong, they get the big bang wrong as well. As a result, all first-cause arguments from apologists ranging from Aquinas to William Lane Craig fail for this reason.

I've created an infograph describing this with some visual representations in a new post Why Almost Everyone Gets The Big Bang Wrong: Infograph

The 5% of the universe that makes up ordinary matter are made of fermions and bosons.Bosons make up force fields. An example would be the Higgs field, which gives particles matter. Fermions make up the objects of matter that you and I are made of.

There are basically only three kinds of matter particles and three forces that you and I are made up of. Protons and neutrons, which make up the nucleus of atoms, and orbiting electrons, are the three matter particles. Then there are the three forces in the Standard Model: the strong and the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism. The strong force binds the nucleus of atoms together (and the quarks that make up protons and neutrons), the weak force allows interaction with neutrinos and are carried by W and Z bosons, and electromagnetism binds electrons with the nucleus.

Then there's gravity, for which we use the General Theory of Relativity to describe. Gravity is a very weak force and is very simple: everything pulls on everything else. It could be said that gravity isn't really a force per se, but is rather the curvature of spacetime. Regardless, it's just easier to describe it as a force. There are two other generations of fermions but they decay rather quickly and aren't particularly relevant for describing the stuff that you and I are made of and interact with.

So that makes up everything you experience in your everyday lives, without exception. When we combine all this knowledge into a single theory, we get what is called Core Theory. It was developed and named by Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek. And there's an equation that describes Core Theory:

So we can argue:

Pr(CT N) > (CT T)

Or more simply:

Pr(CT & N) > (CT & T)

Since most religions include a some notion of dualism where humans have a soul (even Thomistic hylomorphic dualism still posits an immaterial "intellect" having causal effect on the physical body), from modern science have very good reasons to think no souls of any kind exist. The burden of proof would be on any person who believes a soul or intellect that has a causal effect on the body. The theist, for example, denying this would have to show how a soul can effect the body without violating the law of the conservation of energy and momentum.

For a full description of the argument, see The Argument From Core Theory

6) Libertarian free will is incoherentLibertarian free will requires at least 3 things:(1) We are in control of our will;(2) Our mind is causally effective;(3) In the same situation we could have done otherwise. But logically that's impossible, because:

In order for our thoughts to be truly free in the libertarian sense, they'd have to be uncaused, and something uncaused will have no necessary connection to anything that came before it. It would have to be just a coincidence that they had any connection to reality. Furthermore, you cannot by definition have control over something uncaused. So libertarian free will would require your thoughts to be metaphysically random and spontaneous eruptions with no causal connection to reality. Thus only determinism can actually make sense of having thoughts that reliably correspond to reality.

(The Kalam Cosmological Argument's first premise "Anything that begins to exist has a cause" also entails determinism, which negates free will.)

For the full logical argument see here:Logical Argument Against Free Will

In addition to this, there's plenty of neuroscientific evidence against free will.

Another way to put it more succinctly is this: Why does god timelessly and eternally exist with desire X rather than desire Y, when neither desire X or Y are logically necessary or logically impossible?The Mnchhausen trilemma, along with this dilemma, show that brute facts not only make sense, they're unavoidable even if we posit god's existence. Thus we could argue more formally:

But no theist can argue successfully that it is logically necessary for god to have willed our particular universe. Since it's not logically necessary for god to have eternally willed our universe rather than another one, or no universe, the principle of sufficient reason requires that god's eternal will be explained by something contingent (which will lead to either an infinite regress of contingent explanations) or something else that is logically necessary. And since the logically necessary option is not available to the Thomist, the only two realistic options are an infinite regress of contingent explanations, or a brute fact. See the logical flow chart below for a better understanding.

For the full logical argument see here:Why Brute Facts Are Unavoidable

All this and I haven't even gotten to the problem of evil yet. Now the version of the argument from evil I find most inspiring is an argument from natural evil.

When you look at the full picture of evolution and you consider the 3.5 billion years during which this unfolding drama played out, when there were millions and millions of species that evolved only to be snuffed out and pushed into evolutionary dead ends, and during which time there was at least 5 mass extinctions in which some 70-95 percent of all the living species on earth at that time went extinct, I'm being asked by theists to believe that this was all part of a divine creator's plan who was sitting back and taking pleasure in watching millions of species (whose evolution he allegedly guided) get wiped out one after the other, and then starting all over again, and then wiped them out again and repeated this process over and over, until finally getting around to evolving human beings which I'm told was the whole purpose of this cruel and clumsy process.

I created an evolutionary argument against god a few years ago, where I analyze the logical possibilities between the suffering required by evolution with the popular belief now among scientifically inclined theists that god used evolution to create human beings. We can argue:

Furthermore, since animals are usually unaware of the deeper questions of why they're suffering, they have no ability to grow morally from any of it. They lack the intellect to grow but still have the capacity to suffer.C.S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain, "So far as we know beasts are incapable either of sin or virtue: therefore they can neither deserve pain nor be improved by it." Suffering also afflicts humans in ways that make little sense to soul building. It afflicts babies, the righteous and unrighteous, those spiritually fulfilled and unfulfilled alike.

If omnibenevolence is compatible with millions of years of beingssuffering that couldn't be improved by it, then what isn't compatible? What logical argument shows exactly what an omnibenevolent being can and cannot do? Is a billion years of suffering compatible? What about a trillion? Without a logical doctrine it makes the term "omnibenevolence" meaningless and unintelligible.

And any creator god does not merely allow suffering suffering is built into the design. God is unavoidably directly responsible for all natural suffering in the universe:

In other words you can't claim that god is the creator and designer of the physical universe, including the laws that govern it which is what every theist insists and not also accept that natural evil is a direct byproduct of those laws. Natural evil cannot therefore be due to demons tinkering with god's plan. Demons would be the ones who actually created and designed the universe if that were the case.

So the suffering and haphazardness of the evolutionary process gives us good reason to believe there can be no omnibenevolence and therefore no traditional notion of god (which many theists say is the only kind of god that can exist). Furthermore, the fact that libertarian free will is incoherent prevents the theist from using the "free will defense" as an argument against moral evil. Take that away, and they've got nothing.

This doesn't disprove god per se, but it shows that none of the concepts of god in any existing religion can even meet the standards of greatest conceivable being, and therefore none can be god.

But the Euthyphro dilemma is actually not the end of the conversation, because there is technically a third option.The theist can claim its a false dilemma and that god commands something because god is good. They can say god is the standard of moral values: goodness and god are the same. But theres a problem with this. This third option only opens up a further dilemma. If the claims is that god is the source of the good, I can ask, "Is god good because of the properties that he has, or are the properties that god has good because he has them?" Basically, if god is good because hes loving and kind, then those properties are good independently of god, and thus goodness and morality would have to exist independently of god. But if the properties god has are good because god has them, then god has to be good logically prior to any properties he has, and that makes gods goodness unintelligible. How can god be good prior to being loving or kind, or having any good making properties?

So the Euthyphro dilemma really is just a starting point that terminates in a trilemma for the theist. The theist cannot attempt to ground morality in god without hitting this trilemma:

Evolution has embedded the predilection to notice patterns and to invoke agents when there aren't any, in a phenomena known as patternicity and agenticity, respectively. Our hominid ancestors lived in a world of danger, and they weren't yet the top of the food chain. If a noise was heard in the grass it was better to assume it might be a dangerous predator than just the wind. If they were wrong, they made a false positive, that is they incorrectly thought something was there that actually wasn't, and no harm was done. If, however, they assumed it was just the wind and it turned out it was a predator, they made a false negative, that is they incorrectly assumed there wasn't something there when there was, and they likely lost their life as a result of it. So evolution has made it so that false positives are much better to have than false negatives.

This means that we have a naturalistic, evolutionary basis for why we believe in gods. It isn't a mystery why most people and most cultures believe in gods. Science explains it. It's called the hyper active agency detection device. (For any claim that it's a just so story, read here.)

Those are the most common and the most sophisticated arguments for god that exist. Although there are many others, they all fail due to incorrect understandings of science, or they have internal contradictions and/or contradictions with other arguments.

13) All religions appear man made

If there was indeed an all-knowing creator who revealed himself, why would he do it in such a way that contained all the ignorance extant of that time? Why not include a few detailed verses about something like evolution, DNA or germs which no one knew about at that time? The excuses I've heard for this vary and are all laughable. Some theists say for example, that god wouldn't to give us too much evidence, because then we couldn't reject him. What?!? So god purposely makes his revelations ridiculous and unbelievable to test our faith? This is just an apologetic attempt to make the religion unfalsifiable by arguing that the less evidence we have and the less plausible it sounds, the more it's got to be true. It's not worth any intelligent person's consideration.

[Updated Jan 2018 to include new links, images, and logical arguments]

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Why I'm An Atheist - 13 Reasons & Arguments For Atheism