To explain why things happen to us personally
This takes the previous reason and focuses it down to our individual lives only.
The argument against God for this one, crosses over some of the ground I have covered in the preceding chapters, hence I’ve left it for later.
Once again, because all the known Gods are both silent and invisible, theists can only point to their ancient texts as proof that God has explained why things happen in the world they way they do, and what we can do to influence them.
I’ve already shown how inconsistent, factually inaccurate and downright ridiculous some of the ancient theist theories are. I’ve also argued that these texts fail to provide the explanations (the “why”) for these theories.
The same is true for these ancient text theories on a personal level.
Why do I have cancer?
Why did I lose all my savings in an investment scam?
Why was I born in Sudan and have all my family killed?
Are there any answers in the texts? I’d wager there’d be some hard line fundamentalist who’d recite some verse in the Bible condemning someone to suffer, if they commit this sin or that. But most often the answer you’ll receive is “God works in mysterious ways”, or “only God knows”, or variations on the principle that humans are too dumb to understand, so God won’t tell us.
If something bad happens to you, it is for a reason God doesn’t want you to know. If it is something good then it’s a miracle because God loves you.
No theist can logically explain why a loving and compassionate God punishes good people, or allows his good followers to suffer or be killed. Most won’t even try.
If you’re following God so you can understand why things happen to you, or in the hope that bad things won’t happen to you, reality is going to hit you in the face eventually. God doesn’t work that way.
The undisputable evidence is that following any God won’t prevent bad things from happening to you, nor will it explain why they happened. The religions don’t even try and make this promise to you.
So this one is a lay down win for the argument God isn’t necessary. His/her own religious leaders don’t even pretend God will come up with the goods on this one.
