Continuing with the case against God which I outlined here:

3) The “God” which people talk about has all the substantiality of an imaginary friend or a figure in a dream. “God” varies in important and significant ways from person to person, from culture to culture, and over time. This variation seems as arbitrary and unprogressive as the random swirlings of vision-blocking fog.

Consider:

A) Many (perhaps most) people are confused about known reality in numerous demonstrable ways. Surveys reveal that many Americans cannot name their elected officials, identify passages from the Bill of Rights, say when the U.S. Civil War was fought, or even find the United States on a world map. Works such as Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of World History by Richard Shenkman, Rumor Has It by Bob Tamarkin, Myth-Informed by Paul Dickson and Joseph C. Goulden, Ponzi Schemes, Invaders From Mars & More Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Joseph Bulgatz, and the “Urban Legend” books of Jan Harold Brunvand and Thomas J. Craughwell reveal just some of the things vast numbers of people believe to be true which aren’t. There He Goes Again: Ronald Reagan’s Reign of Error by Mark Green and Gail MacColl demonstrates in excruciating detail the frightening extent to which even a president can be out of touch with objective reality. Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things examines in detail many odd beliefs as well as the reasons behind their continued popularity despite all the logic and evidence against them. Other works such as How We Know What Isn’t So by Thomas Gilovich and Inevitable Illusions by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini detail how the human mind is naturally inclined to misinterpret, misunderstand, and misapply information. Given all this – given all the ways people seem to prefer ignorance and fantasy to truth even in those areas of life where the truth is easily discoverable – it is hardly surprising that people’s minds often seem to spin the wildest, most contradictory fantasies in those areas where little or no objective data exists to hold the tendency to fantasize in check. Theism is clearly one of those areas.

B) “God” has been conceived of and defined in innumerable ways – few if any of which seem preferable to the others, and none of which seem to be supported by a shred of evidence. As works such as God and Goddess by David Leeming & Jake Page, The Masks of God by Joseph Campbell, A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Gods by Anne S. Baumgartner, and A History of God by Karen Armstrong prove, people cannot and have never been able to agree on even such simple things as God’s number, nature, gender, powers, activities, appearance, or significance. Newsweek tells me that Hindus believe there are between 300,000 and 3 million local Gods in India alone.

C) The comforting idea that all cultures and religions share a common conception of “God” is false. “In the history of the world there have been, probably, tens of thousands of different religions. There is a well-intentioned pious belief that they are all fundamentally identical. In terms of an underlying psychological resonance, there may indeed be important similarities at the cores of many religions, but in the details of ritual and doctrine, and in the apologias considered to be authenticating, the diversity of organized religions is striking. Human religions are mutually exclusive on such fundamental issues as one god versus many; the origin of evil; reincarnation; idolatry; magic and witchcraft; the role of women; dietary proscriptions; rites of passage; ritual sacrifice; direct or mediated access to deities; slavery; intolerance of other religions; and the community of beings to whom special ethical considerations are due. We do no service to religion in general or to any doctrine in particular if we paper over these differences.” – Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain, p. 330-331.

D) Severe and fundamental disagreements exist even within the major religions which exist today. Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity have all split into sub-groups which disagree with each other about “God” in very significant ways. Often, these sub-groups have split into even smaller groups. Common reference sources assert that there are well over 1000 Christian sects in the United States. Mormon America by Richard N. and Joan K. Ostling indicates that there may be more than 200 varieties of Mormonism alone. According to Robert L. Johnston’s Religion and Society in Interaction, there are at least 27 brands of Baptist, 21 brands of Methodists, 12 brands of Lutherans, and 10 brands of Presbyterians. He labels the idea that all these groups basically believe the same essential things the “unanimity myth” and says that clear evidence from numerous sociological studies have conclusively demonstrated just how peculiar each sub-division of Christianity really is.

E) The conception of “God” changes over time within each religion not unlike the way a shadowy figure changes in a dream. Scholar Jaroslav Pelikan makes this crystal clear with regard to Christianity in his book, Jesus Through the Centuries. The Encyclopedia Britannica says that in the first few centuries of Christianity many “heresies” emerged, including Docetism, Marcionism, Montanism, Adoptionism, Sabellianism, Arianism, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, Donatism, Pelagianism, and Gnosticism. A.N. Wilson makes clear in his book, Jesus: A Life, that within a very few years of Jesus’s death, numerous sects of Christians existed, each with very different ideas about Jesus and God. PBS’s From Jesus to Christ detailed the very different views the Gospel writers themselves present of Jesus and God. As Mark Twain and others have noted, the conception of God presented in the New Testament is virtually impossible to reconcile with the God of Genesis and Joshua. The fact that the Bible’s God has changed over time from walking with Adam and Eve to appearing only to Moses to working through Jesus to 2000 years of silence is suggestively reminiscent of the way sea monsters disappeared as the oceans were explored. It is also very suggestive of the way we return to reality after dreaming.

Bottom line: “God” is a poorly defined and logically indefensible concept with no objective evidence to support any of the innumerable beliefs people have about Him/Her/Them/It. “God” – like any random series of three letters – can basically mean whatever theists want it to mean because – as a practical matter – “God” means nothing at all. Like “Never-Never Land,” “the fountain of youth,” “unicorn,” and “married bachelor,” it’s a term which describes nothing that exists outside the human imagination….

Go to Part 4