A bizarre flaw taints the human species: Over the millennia, a handful of people have concocted imaginary, invisible gods — then multitudes have worshiped them as if they actually existed.
A few thinkers have perceived the falsity of faith. Michel de Montaigne, who created the essay, wrote: “Man is certainly stark mad. He cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen.”
Actually, it isn’t dozens of gods — it’s thousands, even millions. History records tens of thousands of various deities who have held sway. Aztecs sacrificed 20,000 victims yearly to a grotesque pantheon. Priests killed maidens, skinned them, and wore their skin in sacred dancing. India’s Thugs strangled an estimated 20,000 annually for the many-armed goddess Kali. Hinduism says there are 330 million gods, but can’t name them all.
There have been a few dissenters to this make-believe.
In Ancient Greece, Prodicus said: “The gods of popular belief do not exist.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to John Adams: “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”
Thomas Alva Edison told newspapers: “Religion is all bunk.”
Comedian George Carlin called religion “the greatest bullshit story ever told.”
Fortunately, we freethinkers can use solid logic to prove that the god of Christianity doesn’t exist. In philosophy, the proof is called “the problem of evil.” It goes like this:
The church says the creator made everything that exists, and he’s both all-loving and all-powerful. Well, why did he create the Covid-19 pandemic that has killed millions around the world? Or, if he saw that nature was creating the tragedy, why didn’t he save the victims? Does he simply not care if so many people die in agony? This same logic applies to breast cancer in women, leukemia in children, and all the other dread diseases that curse humankind. The supposed deity doesn’t prevent them.
More evidence: The 2004 Christmas tsunami in the Indian Ocean drowned more than 200,000 people, many of them children. Other natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, floods, droughts and wildfires take a terrible human toll. The Christian god supposedly created them — and doesn’t lift a finger to help.
One more proof: Why did the “god of infinite mercy” design predator animals so they cannot live unless they rip innocent creatures to pieces?
This clear reasoning began with Epicurus in Ancient Greece. For millennia, theologians have tried to find a way to answer it. (Their struggling is called theodicy.) No church explanation works, though. The only obvious answer is that the “god of infinite mercy” and infinite power doesn’t exist.
Logic seems to have little effect on people, however, who want to worship imaginary, invisible spirits.
