The “Spiritual Questions” blog that brought us one of the worst atheist arguments ever, also gives us a list of reasons people do not believe in God. Well, I don’t believe in God, so I was naturally interested to see if any of the reasons on his list match up with my own reasons for not believing in God. Well, they don’t. Here is what he wrote:

I was talking with some individuals not long ago and we were talking about why people choose to not believe in God. In my experience, I have found three common answers to that question:

1. Intellectual pride. I don’t want to believe in God. If I believe in Him, then this implies that I owe my existence to Him and that I am responsible to Someone.

2. Moral freedom. Aldus Huxley, author of Brave New Worldand other humanistic, atheistic books, has shared (observation by Feldhahn, The Veritas Conflict, 252). “It’s not as if I have all these great intellectual arguments for not believing in God or all these reasons why Christianity is wrong; I just want to have sex with my girlfriend.”

3. Personal hurt. God didn’t come through for me. He has let me down. Life has been a hoax. Where was God back when I was 13 or 6? Why didn’t God hold my family together? Why did He allow that idiot to do what he did to me? How could God not do something? I’ve served you faithfully and reached many for you and you can’t help me now?

Well, gee. I can honestly say that none of these three reasons are common among any of the atheists I know or myself.

But notice the following important point – all three reasons are either emotional or otherwise nonrational. None of them included any kind of intellectual statement concerning a belief about the actual state of reality. The first, pride, is generally considered a moral failing and this reason rejects God’s existence not because it is reasonable to do so but because the consequences of believing in one are unfavorable. The second, moral freedom, demonstrates again not a concern about what is true or not but rather what one wants to be able to get away with should one not have to answer to a higher deity. The third, personal hurt, of course, is the classic emotional rejection of God’s existence because of some tramatic event in which God obviously did not intervene in your favor.

With this presentation there is thus an implicit rejection that atheists can actually have intellectual and rational reasons for rejecting God’s existence. Perhaps he doesn’t believe that such reasons are even possible. But this was supposed to be why atheists reject God, not why this author rejects atheists’s reasons for that rejection. Perhaps it is true that some atheists have one or more of these nonrational reasons for rejecting God’s existence. That’s beside the point. The point is that many, if not most, atheists do not believe in God for perfectly rational reasons.

For example, I am simply not convinced by any of the evidence offered by believers for God’s existence. I am not saying that I know that no god exists or that I necessarily have reasons to believe that no god exists. I don’t find the evidence to be closely compelling enough to warrant my assent. That is all the reason that any atheist really needs.