7 The Nonexistence of the God of the Bible

Proof. Assume God exists with the three traditional attributes. Then:

1. God knows about all evil (by omniscience).

2. God is able to prevent all evil (by omnipotence).

3. God wants to prevent all evil (by omnibenevolence).

If a being knows about something bad, can prevent it, and wants to prevent it, that being will prevent it. Therefore, God prevents all evil.

But evil exists.⁵²

This is a contradiction. Therefore, our assumption is false: no God with all three traditional attributes exists. ◻

Proof. The Free Will Defense claims: God permits evil \(E\) because preventing \(E\) would require eliminating free will \(F\), and \(F\) is a sufficiently great good to justify permitting \(E\).

If free will does not exist, then God is not preserving \(F\) by permitting \(E\), since there is no \(F\) to preserve. Therefore, God permits \(E\) for no compensating benefit, which contradicts omnibenevolence. ◻

Proof. Consider the following instances of suffering:

Example 1: A fawn is trapped in a forest fire, started by lightning. It lies in terrible agony for days before dying. No human knows of it; no moral lesson is learned; no greater good comes from it.⁵⁵

Example 2: A five-year-old girl is raped, beaten, and strangled by her mother’s boyfriend. She suffers horribly and dies.⁵⁶

Example 3: The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed approximately 230,000 people, including tens of thousands of children, many of whom drowned slowly in terror.⁵⁷

For each of these evils, we can ask: what greater good required this specific suffering? What evil equally bad or worse would have occurred had God prevented it?

No plausible answer exists. An omnipotent God could have:

• Caused the lightning to strike elsewhere

• Intervened to save the child (as he allegedly does in response to prayer)

• Designed tectonic plates that don’t cause tsunamis

The hypothesis that such evils are gratuitous—that they serve no purpose—is far more probable than the hypothesis that each instance of intense suffering throughout history serves some unknown divine purpose.⁵⁸

Therefore, gratuitous evil almost certainly exists, which is incompatible with the existence of the traditional God. ◻

Proof.

1. If a perfectly loving God exists, all persons capable of a relationship with God who do not resist such a relationship would believe in God. (A loving parent does not hide from children who seek them.)⁶⁰

2. There exist persons who are capable of a relationship with God, who do not resist such a relationship, yet who do not believe in God. (These are “nonresistant nonbelievers.”)

3. Therefore, a perfectly loving God does not exist.

The second premise is established by countless examples: sincere seekers who investigate the evidence honestly and conclude that God does not exist; people raised in non-theistic cultures who never had a meaningful opportunity to believe; thoughtful agnostics who would believe if given sufficient evidence but find none.⁶¹ ◻

Proof. Consider the following facts:

1. Christianity claims Jesus is God incarnate; Islam claims this is blasphemy.

2. Judaism claims the Messiah has not yet come; Christianity claims he has.

3. Hinduism affirms many gods; Islam affirms exactly one.

4. Buddhism (in many forms) denies the existence of a creator God entirely.

These cannot all be true. At most one religion has the correct account of God (if any does).

If an omnipotent, truthful God wanted to reveal himself, he could have done so unambiguously to all people, leaving no room for conflicting interpretations. The fact that he did not—that sincere, intelligent believers reach contradictory conclusions—is strong evidence that no such revelation has occurred.⁶⁴

Moreover, the geographical distribution of religious belief correlates strongly with birthplace: people generally adopt the religion of their culture. If God were revealing truth, we would expect the evidence to be compelling regardless of cultural starting point.⁶⁵ ◻

Proof. Consider the evidence that rational inquiry reveals:

Evolution by natural selection: The evidence that humans and all life evolved through Darwinian processes is overwhelming and beyond reasonable dispute.⁶⁷ This directly contradicts the Genesis account of special creation, in which humans are created distinctly in God’s image, separate from animals.⁶⁸

The age of the universe and Earth: Cosmological evidence establishes the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old; geological and radiometric evidence establishes Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old.⁶⁹ This contradicts Biblical chronology, which places creation at roughly 6,000 to 10,000 years ago according to the genealogies in Genesis.⁷⁰

Internal contradictions in Scripture: The Bible contains numerous internal contradictions that undermine its claim to be the inerrant word of an omniscient God.⁷¹

Failed prophecies and historical errors: The Bible contains prophecies that demonstrably did not come true and historical claims contradicted by archaeology.⁷²

These are but a few examples among many. Any person who honestly examines this evidence—who follows the rational faculties that God supposedly bestowed upon humanity—will reasonably conclude that the Bible is a human document containing errors, not the inspired word of an omniscient deity. ◻

Proof. Suppose the Biblical God exists and has the following properties:

1. God created the universe with all its features, including the evidence described above.

2. God gave humans rational faculties and the capacity for scientific inquiry.

3. God condemns to eternal conscious torment all who fail to believe in him.⁷³

This combination is deeply unjust for three independent reasons:

First, punishing belief is itself unjust. Belief is not a voluntary act—one cannot simply choose to believe something one finds unpersuasive.⁷⁴ A person who has examined the evidence and found it wanting cannot simply will themselves to believe. Punishing the inevitable outcome of rational inquiry is punishing rationality itself.

Second, the punishment is grotesquely disproportionate to the “offense.” Even if disbelief were somehow culpable, eternal conscious torment for finite doubt is infinitely disproportionate.⁷⁵ We do not consider it just to torture someone forever for making an intellectual error.

Third, and most damningly: God himself created the very universe that makes disbelief rational. If God designed the cosmos to appear billions of years old, crafted the fossil record to show evolutionary transitions, and allowed the Bible to contain contradictions and failed prophecies, then God set a trap for rational minds. To punish people for falling into a trap of God’s own design is monstrous injustice.⁷⁶ ◻

Proof. This follows directly from the preceding theorem. The Biblical God is characterized as perfectly just (Deuteronomy 32:4, Psalm 89:14). But punishing rational disbelief—disbelief that God’s own creation makes rational—is unjust. Therefore, a being who is both (a) the creator of this evidence-rich universe and (b) perfectly just would not punish disbelief. Since the Biblical God is supposed to be both, yet is also supposed to punish disbelief, the concept is incoherent. No such being exists.⁷⁷ ◻

Proof. The Bible attributes to God the following actions (among others):

Genocide: God commands the Israelites to exterminate the Amalekites entirely: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” (1 Samuel 15:3).⁷⁹

Mass killing of children: God kills all firstborn sons of Egypt, including children of slaves who had no power over Pharaoh’s decisions (Exodus 12:29).⁸⁰

Commanding child sacrifice: God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac (Genesis 22:2). Even though God relents, the willingness to command child sacrifice reveals moral character.⁸¹

Eternal torture: God condemns people to eternal conscious torment in hell for finite sins (Matthew 25:46, Revelation 20:10).⁸²

Collective punishment: God punishes all humanity for Adam’s sin (Romans 5:12).⁸³

Any being who performs these actions—commanding genocide, killing children, demanding infinite punishment for finite sins—would be considered a moral monster if human. We do not suspend our moral judgment merely because the perpetrator is powerful.⁸⁴ ◻

Proof. If the Bible accurately describes God’s commands and actions, then God commanded genocide and eternal torture, which contradicts omnibenevolence. If the Bible does not accurately describe God, then it is not a reliable divine revelation. The only escape is to claim that our moral intuitions—which condemn genocide and infinite punishment—are completely wrong. But if our moral intuitions are completely unreliable, we have no basis for calling God “good” in the first place.⁸⁵ ◻

Proof. The universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old and contains at least \(2 \times 10^{11}\) galaxies, each containing roughly \(10^{11}\) stars.⁸⁷

If God created the universe for the purpose of having a relationship with humans on Earth:

• Why create 200 billion galaxies when one would suffice?

• Why wait 13.8 billion years before creating humans?

• Why create a universe in which Earth is a pale blue dot in an insignificant corner of a vast cosmos?

• Why make the universe appear exactly as it would if it arose through blind natural processes?

The structure of the universe is precisely what we would expect if it were not designed with humans in mind. It is not what we would expect from a God who considers humanity the crown of creation.⁸⁸ ◻

Proof. Let \(G\) be the hypothesis that the Biblical God exists. Let \(E_1, \ldots, E_5\) be the five phenomena listed above. For each \(E_i\):

\[P(E_i | G) \ll P(E_i | \neg G) \tag{7.1}\]

That is, each phenomenon is much more probable given atheism than given theism.⁸⁹

By Bayes’ theorem, each phenomenon lowers the probability of \(G\). The cumulative effect of all five is to render \(G\) exceedingly improbable.⁹⁰

More precisely, if these phenomena are even partially independent:

\[P(G | E_1 \cap E_2 \cap E_3 \cap E_4 \cap E_5) \approx 0 \tag{7.2}\] ◻