Found on reddit

I thought this was an interesting story from someone who had lost their faith...

The reasons I left the faith are twofold, mostly.

Growing up, I was subject to the stereotypical "God is good and forgiving" line that is tantamount to modern day apologia.

I was taught Creationism, and some of the evidence was really convincing, to be honest. It made me question some of the evolutionary teachings I had heard in school, and I had to truly re-evaluate what I believed.

Then, at some point, it just clicked. It doesn't matter if you think God is real, it matters if you think God is worth following and supporting.

As I read through scripture, I was confronted with story after story that demonstrated, to me, the behaviour of an all-powerful kindergartener, not a loving deity.

I realized that in the case of the Garden, assuming it's true, we were set up to fail.

We were held accountable, as a species, for believing a lie. Humans, according to scripture, had never been subject to deception before. Literally, before the serpent, 100% of what Adam and Eve had heard was true. There was no reason to doubt the serpent, because skepticism comes with knowledge.

Then there was the fact that humans were punished, for "sinning."

I had two problems with that.

If they hadn't eaten from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil," then by definition they didn't know right from wrong. It's irreconcilable. And punishing someone for a crime they didn't understand isn't gracious.

If Eve, by eating the fruit, introduced Original Sin into the world, then there's a whole mess of other problems. For instance, that means that the serpent lying and tempting wasn't a sin. If the serpent lying and tempting wasn't a sin, then Lucifer rebelling against God in the first place wasn't a sin. If rebelling against God wasn't a sin, then questioning and doubting God wasn't a sin. And if questioning and doubting God wasn't a sin, then salvation is unnecessary.

Then there's the image of God as a father figure. I like to make an analogy in this case.

If you had a two year old kid, then there's a pretty good chance that they don't fully understand right and wrong yet. That's a pretty good comparison for Adam and Eve, being as they hadn't yet eaten from the tree of knowledge.

Now, as a responsible parent, you tell the kid not to touch the stove, which is on. You tell them that touching it will burn them, and it will hurt. You step out to make a call, and leave the stove on. This is a fair comparison for leaving the tree in the garden unattended.

Enter me. I'll be the serpent in this one. I go to your kid, and tell them that touching the stove won't actually hurt. You were mistaken. I say to touch the stove. You know what the kid does? They touch the stove. They are inclined to believe me.

Here's the part where humanity surpassed God in grace. You know what you do when your kid burns themselves? You bandage them. You kiss their boo-boo. You explain that there are people out there who you mustn't believe, and tell them to learn from the experience.

You know what you don't do? You don't kick them out. You don't cut off their college fund, or subject them to the horrors of working in the adult world. You don't curse them.

You yell at me. I'm the one responsible for your child's injuries, not the child.

If God were a parent worth having, he would have done the same. Instead, he did everything on the "don't" list, times a hundred.

That was hard for me to accept.

But there's more.

The Tower of Babel.

This was really one of the final straws for me.

In the passage, God says:

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

As a parent, you're preparing your child to succeed without you. It's the point. You want them to be self-sufficient. It's the measuring stick of a parent, how their child fares without them. That's not what happens here.

God is made insecure by humans capabilities. So he cheats. He breaks down their ability to communicate. Petty. It's tantamount to changing the answers on your kids homework because they no longer need your help with it.

That would make you a bad parent, so why is it "good" if the Almighty does it?

Then there's the salvation story.

According to this source, the number of people who have existed is 107,602,707,791. That's mind-boggling.

Now, I'm going to be very generous here. Let's assume that half of everyone went to heaven. That means, by default, that an equal half went to hell. That's over fifty billion souls, burning eternally.

And for what? Free will?

I ask you this: is free will worth it? I can only speak for myself, but if giving up my ability to make independent decisions meant that just one person would be spared that torment, I'd do it in a heart-beat.

And lets be honest here. God doesn't really want free will anyway. The Tower of Babel demonstrates that unequivocally. When we "choose" something that's displeasing, he intervenes and cheats.

That means that fifty billion people are burning for the illusion of choice, so that his "praises" are a little more convincing.

He created, and doomed, a sentient species just to get an ego boost. How could I justify following someone who seemed so needy and petty?

I can't.

Then there's the Egyptian story.

One man, the Pharaoh, speaks for an entire people. God, when he doesn't get what he wants, kills all the firstborn of a people who didn't make the decision.

Let that sink in for a moment.

You wouldn't support a guerrilla fighter who massacred children to get what they wanted, so how could you support a god that did the same thing?

Then there's the gap between the Fall and Jesus.

Being conservative here, going off Creationism, lets say it's roughly 4,000 years. That's four thousand years worth of people who were doomed to burn for the misfortune of being born outside of the Jewish people.

The Jews, by the way, are another evidence against a gracious God.

He chose one people, and favored them. He intervened in war and such, causing countless deaths against other people. He helped them take land, and encouraged them to kill the children of their enemies.

How gracious is that? It's like a child, playing army. He chooses one side, and stacks the deck against all others.

Not all-loving, that.

Then there's the shear inefficiency of spreading the Gospel via humans. What about people in Africa who died the day after Jesus was crucified?

What was their sin? Being born in the wrong place? Not having internet?

Assuming God is all-powerful, there's no excuse for taking 4,000 years to rectify the issue, nor is there an excuse for allowing such rectification to take so long, given that it's human souls on the line.

In short, there's no way I could ever respect God as an equal to humanity, much less revere him as our superior. Simply put, we're better than him.

And there's no way I could dedicate my life to someone or something so temperamental, selfish, needy, lazy, infanticidal, and generally unloving as the Christian God.

I'm sorry that the answer was so long, but it's not one that bears being short.