u/andy64392

What do you think of this reasoning? It was the main thing that started to pull me away from religion years ago.

An all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good deity would fully understand how human cognition works, how humans evaluate evidence, how scientific reasoning develops,
and what kinds of claims rational minds find believable.

But the core claims required for salvation in many forms of Christianity involve accepting events that appear INDISTINGUISHABLE from mythology or direct violations of established scientific understanding such as: two original humans created from dust and a rib, a virgin impregnated by a spirit, a global flood wiping out humanity after collecting 2 of every animal onto Noah’s Ark boat, dead people resurrecting, endless claims of miracles, divine intervention, talking animals, etc.

This creates a massive contradiction, because a tri-omni God would have known in advance that humans would develop fields of science, use logic, skepticism, and evidence-based methods for determining truth. He would also know these methods would directly conflict with ancient supernatural claims that lack sufficient supporting evidence and often contradict what we know about reality.

This leads to my core question - why would such a God design humans to rely on evidence, rationality, consistency, and scientific inquiry in every other area of life — and then condemn them for applying those same standards honestly to religions and their extraordinary claims?

The issue becomes even more malicious when you consider how belief actually works. Human beings cannot simply choose to believe something on command. Belief is not an act of pure will. A person becomes convinced or they do not. You can choose what arguments to examine or what community to participate in, but you cannot force genuine belief in something your mind finds unconvincing. For example, no matter how hard I try, I cannot simply decide to sincerely believe in Zeus, Krishna, or that I am secretly a millionaire. My brain does not have a switch that allows me to override its evaluation of evidence and reality.

Any God who designed the human brain and fully understood and would already know this ahead of time. Therefore, condemning people for disbelief makes little sense if disbelief is the natural outcome of the cognitive faculties that same God either intentionally designed or knew humans would develop.

This leads to my argument:

1. God does not exist, or
2. God is not tri-omni, or
3. salvation is not actually dependent on belief in unsupported supernatural claims.

Side note - how would this not be sabotage?

Even as an agnostic atheist of 6 years, I try to pay no mind to Christianity (the one I was raised in) the same way I do all the other religions. I literally NEVER think about Islam, Hinduism, or specific Gods like Krishna and Zeus or Muhammad. But I always ponder things late at night about free will, consciousness, the brain, morality if there was a God that exists vs not, the nature of science and evidence and arguments for and against the existence of a God. Is there life after death, what created the possibility for the possibilities of nothing to become something before the Big Bang even happened. All of these unanswerable questions to where anything beyond “we don’t fully understand” would be dishonest to admit.

I wish I could happily embrace the uncertainty and not being sure of things but it sometimes causes me stress because I don’t get any closer to answers and eventually it becomes unproductive to think about, especially when the stakes are so high in the claims of Christianity I grew up with if I turn out to have gone down the wrong path and die before I “see the light”. Because I surely don’t fear the wrath of Muhammad or Krishna if I’m wrong or can’t figure it out, maybe it’s just due to Christianity being a big part of my childhood it’s something that will always have bits and pieces linger with me?

I wish I could erase the entire thing from my brain and view religion and deity’s the same way I did as Superman and just dismiss it with almost zero thought like I did as a kid but it’s just so intertwined into the human experience and society and culture and philosophy debates I don’t know if it’s possible. I feel like I’m a slave to all the questions I don’t know out of fear I get it wrong in the end.

An all powerful, all knowing, all good deity would fully understand how human cognition works, how humans evaluate evidence, how scientific reasoning develops, and what kinds of claims rational minds find believable. Yet the core claims required for salvation in many forms of Christianity involve accepting events that appear indistinguishable from mythology or violations of established scientific understanding.

This God knew that humans would create fields of science to determine truth and evaluate evidence, knowing ahead of time they would conflict with things like a dead man being resurrected, two original people created from dust and rib, a virgin impregnated by “spirits”, Noah’s Ark and a global flood, etc.. and then send us to hell merely because we weren’t able to convince ourselves of extraordinary claims with zero supporting evidence, and even worse has things that completely contradict what we know in science. Why would a tri-omni God design humans to rely on evidence, logic, consistency, neuroscience, and scientific inquiry, and then condemn them for following those very faculties honestly in every part of their life?

AND THEN, knowing that even if we tried to believe it, we couldn’t, because a god who engineered the human brain would understand the human brain cannot simply “choose” to believe in something with bad/no evidence for such extraordinary claims. For example, if I wanted to believe in Krishna or Zeus, I cannot wishfully or “will” my way into believing it, because my brain cannot simply do that. Just like you can’t believe you’re 1000 pounds or a millionaire no matter how hard you try. Any god who created and understands neuroscience and rational minds would know this would happen. Any sort of blame shifted towards atheists “rejecting what they know is evidence” or “deep down you’ll find it” is a form of emotional gaslighting.

A loving God would want honest seekers to arrive at truth.
An all-powerful God could provide sufficient evidence. Yet sincere nonbelievers exist. Therefore either, a) God does not exist, b) God is not tri-Omni.

This doesn’t even touch on the moral opposition to a Biblical God even if there was tons of evidence it was real.