Why I Don’t Believe in the God of the Christian Faith

Since I was about five years old, my parents have done their best to teach me about Christianity, and to convince me of God’s existence. I bought it too, mostly because I was too young to understand the finer details of religion. But with age they say, comes wisdom, and I became wiser about religion. Time spent listening to Atheistic/Non-Religious friends began to make me reconsider my stance on religion. I began to see the contradictions, the logical fallacies, and the science behind it all. I will now present my arguments for why God does not exist. I’d like to start with the benevolence argument. God claims to be supremely benevolent in the bible. Described as “Omnibenevolent”, he is the kindest, most good-hearted being. His love for everyone is never-ending, and he wishes only the best for humanity, for ALL humanity. Yet, here we live on an earth rife with people who barely make it through the week on the little money that they make. Children are starving all over the world. Believers may argue that this is because people don’t show the same love for the Lord that he shows for them; this contradicts the assertion that he is supremely benevolent unto all of humanity, and by way of deconstructing this attribute of the Lord, I came upon an important first step in my renouncement of the God of the Christian faith, or Yahweh. Another deal breaker for me is his supposed ability to know everything, or Omniscience, and more specifically for the sake of this argument, his insight into the futures of us all, and the confliction that arises with his concept of free-will. He knows everything that will happen, yet the bible asserts that God gave us all free-will. I have much difficulty seeing how we could be considered to have free-will yet he already knows what we will do. It is quite the paradox, I think. Personally, I believe that no one dictates what we will do in life; we choose our own destiny (such an overused quote, forgive me). The Bible, and Christians around the world, maintain that we have free-will, but it is with this Bible verse that we come upon a contradiction to this: "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). That hardly seems like he is granting the person he is speaking to free-will. I could never understand this contradiction, which pushed me further to the edge of belief. Possibly the single most important factor in my lost faith is the unlikeliness of the Bible, other-wise known as “His Word”. How do we know that the Bible wasn’t created by someone wishing to manipulate the minds of the people reading it? Admittedly, If people were to follow the bible, the world would be a much better place, but was it really written by God via the authors? I don’t believe that. I think it was created by someone who saw a huge opportunity