Religious People are Evidence Against God

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:06]Religious people have told me that I myself am evidence that God exists.

[00:00:13]But what if it's the other way around?

[00:00:16]What if believers are evidence that God does not exist?

[00:00:22]You see, the most major factor in holding on to religious belief is socialization.

[00:00:29]Most people who quit religion quiet quit over a period of time rather than being affected by a single event. It's not because of the uh characterizations of which they're sometimes accused like just wanting to sin or because of a traumatic event. Those are misconceptions.

[00:00:50]They drift away over time and eventually stop believing altogether. Those who continue to socialize within a religious setting, however, tend to retain their religious beliefs. In other words, religious belief needs constant maintenance and reinforcement.

[00:01:10]And that should be a big clue that it isn't true. You see, reality doesn't need constant maintenance and reinforcement for you to accept it is true. But suspension of disbelief does.

[00:01:27]Have you ever gotten lost in a particularly immersive piece of media, be it a book, movie, or video game, and then when you stopped reading, watching, or playing, you readjusted to the real world, and understood that you were engaging with a fantasy.

[00:01:45]That's sort of like what religion does.

[00:01:47]It attempts to keep you immersed in the fantasy. And when that immersion isn't maintained and reinforced through regular socialization and ritual, it diminishes and the suspension of disbelief thus erodess. When you starve the fantasy of engagement, the fantasy dies. The illusion evaporates and you are left with cold, harsh reality.

[00:02:17]I contend that the illusion of immersion is weaker than you may think. That many people are passively immersed just enough to identify with a religion and thus a religious group, but not truly believe in it at all times. And I suspect that accounts for the vast majority of so-called believers. Not all, but a majority. How could I possibly say that? Well, there's a couple of reasons. First, look at some of the reasons people give for their loss of faith. One of the reasons people give for no longer believing is too many Christians doing uncchristian things.

[00:03:00]Now, that sounds like a bad reason to disbelieve something, right? But those Christians doing uncchristian things are breaking immersion.

[00:03:11]That's just a small part of it, though.

[00:03:13]More examples from Pew surveys can be seen in other answers. 38% of people who left their childhood religion for no religion said they were unhappy about the religion's teachings about social and political issues. A third also said it had to do with scandals involving clergy or religious leaders. Nearly a third also said that they were unhappy about the way the religion treated women. A quarter also said that their religion was out of date. 14% also said that they were not satisfied with their congregation. All of those answers have to do with social issues. But doesn't it seem strange that people would stop having certain beliefs about the very nature of the universe because of social issues?

[00:04:02]Well, that might be more logical than it seems at first glance. It doesn't seem like a good reason, however, because it looks like an ad homonym fallacy. We don't reject the fact that 2 + 2 equals 4 just because Hitler also believed that 2 + 2 equals 4. Terrible people can believe in facts. Some of them can even be extremely intelligent people. Yet, just because they're also terrible people, it doesn't give us a good enough reason to disbelieve in the same facts that they do, does it? So why should it be any different for religion? Well, because religion manifests in behaviors and beliefs that are so inconsistent that they don't reflect the characteristics of factual information.

[00:04:54]Take any group of people with practical knowledge about their common area of expertise and there will also be a common denominator that results in verifiable ability as a result of that knowledge. Pilots, electricians, neurosurgeons, etc. all have verifiable practical abilities based on their knowledge and that knowledge will be consistent among them. There's a barrier to entry when it comes to being a pilot.

[00:05:26]You have to know certain things. You have to be able to prove that you know them through your actions that have realworld results. Given the same aircraft, other pilots are not going to disagree regarding the basics about how to fly it and they'll be able to know whether you can fly it based just by quizzing you about it. These vocational groups have consistent characteristics.

[00:05:53]By their titles alone, you can accurately infer certain things about them, what they know, what they're able to do based upon their knowledge.

[00:06:03]Believers have no such consistency. They can be crackheads sleeping in an alley or they can be professors at a prestigious university. They all claim to have certain insights regarding the creation of the universe and the creator who did it. How was this knowledge attained? They all claim to have a a relationship with the omnisient creator of the universe. But curiously, that creator imparts upon them no common and verifiable knowledge that is practically useful in any way. What is the consistency between the genius believer and the idiot believer? Well, there is none. Yet, for any other realm of knowledge, consistency focuses itself into sharp contrast that delineates the ignorant from the learned. There's a distinct difference between a group of rocket scientists with PhDs and a group of store clerks with GEDs. But we don't even need to take it that far. If a group of people merely read the instructions on how to operate a particular vacuum cleaner, they will have more consistent and verifiable knowledge than any alleged god has ever bestowed upon them. What's worse than the lack of consistent and verifiable practical knowledge is that religion can get in the way of real knowledge. That's because when you care more about narrative and agenda than the truth, you will stall and not be able to react well to reality. You will fail and you won't understand why you failed. And you may not even recognize the fact that you failed. And that is a double loss because at least failing usually imparts some knowledge about how to avoid the mistake in the future. But if you refuse to accept the failure or you don't even see it, then you'll never learn from it.

[00:08:09]And enough if enough people think that way, then it becomes society's failure.

[00:08:15]As such, a lot of our social ills travel through the conduits of religion and have historical origins in religion.

[00:08:23]It's the central driving force of our current wave of fascism. And that would be a terrible problem to solve if any of the world's religions were ultimately true. But they're not. So we can shed them. They aren't necessary because they are not unfortunate truths as some truths are. In fact, because religions get in the way of the truth, even if they can have utilitarian purposes at times, in the long run, they become terrible hindrances. as we're seeing now, as I've warned you about for years, if only people could let their religious beliefs go.

[00:09:06]All that is to say that I care deeply about the future of humanity, which is why I give so much thought to religion, probably a lot more than most people, including actual believers. And because I think about religion all the time, I came to realize why it's not so dumb to leave religion because of religious people. It's through their socialization and rituals that maintain the suspension of disbelief. And it's through their hypocrisy that hints at either the insincerity or transitory nature of their own alleged beliefs. What really surprised me as I learned more and more about believers is that many of them know absolutely nothing about their own holy texts except for perhaps the passages uh that they think allows them their bigotries.

[00:10:02]Why? That seems so absurd to me. I was never a believer yet I've read the Bible many times. I've studied its history.

[00:10:11]I've and I've even read parts of the earliest manuscripts translating individual words of important passages.

[00:10:19]If I became a believer, I'd learn Greek, Hebrew, and even Aramaic and Latin. I'd study as much as I could about the ancient near east. And not only the Bible itself, but as much of the surrounding history of each book of the Bible. I'd become an expert.

[00:10:41]It would occupy all of my time. This is about your eternal soul, a permanent consequence, the state in which you will exist forever.

[00:10:54]Yet believers seem more concerned about getting stuck in traffic or scrolling through Tik Tok. Why aren't you in a monastery? Why isn't your every thought and concern wrapped up in God and the afterlife, the eternal consequence of your very existence? How could you possibly tell a lie or masturbate or commit any sin whatsoever knowing that God is basically standing beside you as you do it? You wouldn't steal something with a cop standing next to you. So why would you sin if you think God is right there beside you and even in you knowing your very thoughts?

[00:11:41]Willingness to sin suggests that most believers have passive belief that can be temporarily suspended if a particular desire they have in a given situation outweighs their desire to maintain a suspension of disbelief.

[00:11:59]Once that desire is satiated, it will no longer outweigh their desire to maintain a suspension of disbelief, and they will return to their passive believing with some added guilt and remorse that is overcome well enough to repeat the behavior sometime in the future once their desire returns. And I strongly suspect that is where their projection comes from. when they make the argument that atheists disbelieve just because they want to sin. That's not true. An atheist disbelieves all the time, regardless of whether or not they're doing what a theist considers sin, whereas a theist compromises their suspension of disbelief when it's convenient for them.

[00:12:48]Apparently, it's convenient quite often because throughout most of their lives, they behave as if there's no God at all.

[00:12:55]This manifests not only in their disinterest in advanced theology and their willingness to sin, but also in their grief, showing immense sadness, distinct from the sadness of separation.

[00:13:10]When a loved one dies and supposedly goes on to eternal happiness, they behave as it's as if it's a struggle to suspend their disbelief, even if they refuse to admit it. And they refuse to admit a lot. Where their belief, or at least the excuse for their belief, becomes ironclad, is when it comes to defending a certain world view, usually conducive to authoritarianism. Because religion itself is based on authoritarianism, the obedience and worship of the ultimate authority figure. And that's why religion still needs to be resisted even if their beliefs may also seem secondary and transitory. They still remain an integral and uniting force in political movements. Bizarrely, even when those political movements are antithetical to some of the tenants of their religion. I guess if you want something bad enough, you can convince yourself that it does not contradict your alleged principles.

[00:14:15]When your desire is integral to who you are and thus cannot be temporarily satiated, like at a bar or a brothel, then you have to reconcile that contradictory innate desire with the principles of your religion. And some people figure out ways to do that. They bargain against logic, inflicting themselves with cognitive dissonance.

[00:14:42]That's not as difficult as you might think because fantasies are far more malleable than reality and they are after all believing in a fantasy. So when one tribe of the ancient near east wants to commit genocide against another, including against all their children, elderly, and even livestock, uh you get to pretend that an allloving god ordered that genocide because it's all a fantasy and thus not beholden to reality.

[00:15:17]That's how you can get something as ridiculous as a Republican Rambo Jesus.

[00:15:24]And that falls into what they refuse to admit, including how little many of them know about the religions they profess to believe in. Religions that deal with the consequences of their eternal souls.

[00:15:39]I've watched hundreds, if not thousands of videos of believers calling into the various shows of atheists who are biblical experts, historians or former clergy, people who don't even need uh biblical translations because they can read the earliest manuscripts in their original languages. And when the theist callers argue with them, these far more knowledgeable atheists have to teach them things they don't even know about their own Bible or about history or philosophy. And rarely do the callers express humility or acceptance after clearly being taught about something they should have already known. Most of the time, at least in the public forum, they double down with their prior misconceptions, if only to save face, failing to realize how transparent and pathetic that looks. People have too much pride. So, the difference in knowledge is not respected.

[00:16:46]You see that a lot on social media sometimes, and it's an odd combination of funny but sad. I saw an exchange on Twitter once. I wish I could find it for you, but it was from a while back and I couldn't locate it if the accounts or tweets associated with it still even exist.

[00:17:04]It was an argument in which one of the Twitter users accused the other of knowing nothing about the topic in question and that they should actually read a book about it. And the book they recommended was a book that was actually written by the person with whom they were arguing.

[00:17:27]It was hilarious.

[00:17:29]But that's how it is on the internet. I saw someone tell Andrew Cidle to read the Constitution because he didn't like what Andrew Cidle said about it. Andrew Cidle is a constitutional attorney. He devoted his life to it. Won court cases based on it. Yet some rando on the internet who can't name a single amendment beyond the first two tells them to read the Constitution.

[00:18:00]Here, everyone is reduced to usernames and avatars. So, you end up with basement dwellers telling rocket scientists how rockets work. even worse correcting them about how rockets work.

[00:18:16]So when people believe that they have insights into the creation of the universe and that they have a relationship with that creator, how do they often end up treating those who admit that they don't have such a relationship? Well, they treat them as if they are the ones who lack knowledge.

[00:18:36]They feel like experts even though in reality they have no practical verifiable knowledge. They can't walk into a lab or a lecture hall and provide any insight on astrophysics or quantum mechanics because of any alleged knowledge gained from the literal creator of the universe who would be intimately familiar with such topics.

[00:19:01]Why is that? Notice that the information people claim to achieve through prayer never has practical application.

[00:19:10]Astrophysics and quantum mechanics are never learned through communion with the one who would have the most knowledge about such fields. Nobody has ever even learned basic arithmetic from the almighty from their relationship with the most intelligent being in existence.

[00:19:28]Why is that? Why is it that so often the people who make grand claims about the creation of the universe know absolutely nothing about the universe? Why is it that people constantly claim to have communed with God, the most intelligent being in existence, yet never learn how to do anything that way? If God is all knowing and communicates with us, then he is a source of knowledge. Yet, what knowledge have we learned from this alleged God that we could not have learned on our own? Can you sit down in prayer and learn algebra from God? Of course not. But why not? Why does God only ever give us fortune cookie knowledge, but never practical realworld knowledge? God belief has no explanatory power.

[00:20:25]Even those Renaissance protoscientists like Isaac Newton and Capernicus that theists love to cite so often as being theists back when there was no other choice but to be a theist. Even they achieved their knowledge through practical study of the natural world rather than any sort of teaching from the most intelligent being in existence.

[00:20:48]In fact, they were not called scientists back then. They were called natural philosophers, not supernatural philosophers because they learned nothing from the supernatural as there is nothing supernatural from what to learn. And those geniuses were the extreme exception when it comes to believers. Most believers have no idea how the universe works despite supposedly personally knowing the universe creator himself. And I know it sounds like I'm being harsh, but I'm actually being incredibly generous. A lot of these people still think evolution is false without knowing any of the undeniable evidence for it. A lot of these people still think the Earth is 6,000 years old. Even the ones who accept the Big Bang theory mistakenly think it was the beginning of the universe and thus base their arguments on that. They're wrong about all these things and not just those things, but a million other things. And I'm expected to believe that they're right about God.

[00:21:57]That the one and only all- knowing deity never bestowed upon them a modicum of insight enough to understand how laughably wrong they are about God's supposed creation, things people have already known for centuries.

[00:22:14]A lot of these people think it's morally just to torture someone forever in the pits of hell because of some relatively minor infractions.

[00:22:25]These are absolutely morally broken people and I'm expected to believe that they have some sort of cognitive connection to the very creator of morality itself.

[00:22:40]When it comes to the people who are nuclear physicists, you're not going to find stupid people.

[00:22:46]You're not going to find ignorant people who so easily succumb to arguing within their field using their base emotions.

[00:22:54]Why? What weeded them out? A strict barrier for entry weeded them out. They had to meet certain standards that are consistent among them all. standards that actually shape the adherence into something recognizably cohesive other than the mere selfidentification that religion requires of you. You can't self-identify your way into nuclear physics.

[00:23:23]Not so with religion. That's why you can have Christians who are crackheads asleep in the alley and Christians who are professors at a university. But when was the last time you heard of a crackhead nuclear physicist asleep in an alley?

[00:23:42]Behavior in light of knowledge matters.

[00:23:46]And that leads me to believe that religious people have no real knowledge about any sort of God that actually exists in reality because they're too inconsistent as a group for them to have such a unifying common denominator that is rooted in anything that is true. And that is the complete opposite of what we see in any other subject besides religion. Let's say a highly advanced alien species many thousands of years ahead of human beings visits Earth and let's say they're friendly and want to share knowledge with us. How would you expect our knowledge to change? Well, there would be all kinds of sudden breakthroughs, right? In fact, there are people who currently believe technology improved so rapidly throughout the 20th century due to information gained from aliens. Well, that's what we'd expect from interacting with a merely more advanced species. But God would have to be infinitely more advanced than any alien species. And we supposedly communicate with this all- knowing entity all the time. Yet, what do we have to show for it? All of our advancements have still been gained through trial and error, not sudden revelation. When someone becomes a believer, there's no meaningful and consistent trait that they gain. You don't necessarily become good or smart or know how to do something that you didn't know how to do before. You become part of a club of millions of other people, all totally different. From idiots, liars, and hate-filled people to smart, honest, and loving people. Where is God in all of this? They all claim that God communicates with them. So why isn't there a common denominator between them like there is with pilots or plumbers, both of whom can actually demonstrate real knowledge? Where is the shared insight for believers? The only thing they have in common is that they believe the universe was intentionally created. But that tells us nothing. It's just bald assertion rooted in nothing but bad arguments that are based upon assumptions themselves.

[00:26:12]There are just as many versions of God as there are believers. In other words, there are billions of versions of God.

[00:26:21]That's not how reality works. That's not how the truth works. When it comes to the truth, there are not billions of versions. There is only one version.

[00:26:32]That's why there's such a thing as right and wrong. Failing to understand reality is what makes you wrong. ontological arguments, teological arguments, cosmological arguments, the universe began to exist, the universe is fine-tuned, etc. All garbage arguments that don't really convince anybody to be a believer. Most believers do not cite philosophical arguments as being the reason for their belief. Most of them claim to have had a personal experience with God. Most of them give credit to God when something good happens in their lives. This claim of personal attention from the Almighty is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of reality.

[00:27:26]Nearly 20,000 children die per day worldwide. Most of them under the age of 5 years old. Think of all the unimaginable pain and mourning that entails.

[00:27:42]7 million children and young people per year dead. That is rarely acknowledged by the believer getting high on the idea that God is helping them out in their own life.

[00:27:58]But when all that pain, suffering, and death is acknowledged, all the garbage arguments used to handwave it away, like free will and mankind's sin, go right out the window the moment you claim that God has blessed your life in any way. Why you and not them? Do you really think you're so much more worthy than they were? If so, then what of all the unworthy people who reach ripe old ages, the rapists, murderers, and generally terrible people, etc.? Why weren't they also snuffed out as children as so many children are?

[00:28:42]There's no consistency. Good people suffer, bad people suffer. A just cosmic judge is clearly not shaping or steering the world toward any sort of recognizably consistent good. So, not only do all the inconsistent things people say and claim, and even their lack of knowledge point toward there being no God of which anyone is aware, but also the things that happen to us point toward there being no powerful and knowing God that at least caringly interacts with us. That is something we absolutely need to accept so that we maturely handle the responsibilities of our own existence. And that means letting go of the bigotries taught to us by belief systems that are literally ancient. Technically, none of this definitively disproves the existence of a god. But yes, the believers themselves are evidence that we as a species are not communicating with any sort of powerful all- knowing God with a plan that cares for humanity and has a particular message that applies to us.

[00:30:00]That narrative is definitely untrue. We have more than enough information to deduce at least that. the patterns that should tell us otherwise. The statistics simply do not exist. It's just that a lot of people aren't ready to come to terms with that because it's scary and it means we're on our own. So, they do whatever they can to remain immersed in the fantasy, maintaining and reinforcing a belief that does not reflect reality in any way. And in order to do that, they don't even have to know much about it. They don't need to read the Bible or learn its history. In fact, it can be quite detrimental to their beliefs to do so. They just need to be around other people who share in the fantasy. And that's enough. Not feeling alone in the fantasy is a powerful motivator. That's why cults can seem so strange to outsiders but so right to the insiders.

[00:31:10]Religion has the added advantage of institutional norms. When you have entire buildings, beautiful architecture, music, art, jewelry, and entire genres of media all devoted to the fantasy. It can make even the real world seem less real than the fantasy itself.

[00:31:31]That's why some people can't even imagine disbelieving. Especially if they were born into the fantasy and it was imposed upon them by the most important people in their lives all throughout their childhoods. They'd have an easier time trying to break out of the matrix.

[00:31:48]But it's possible, more than possible.

[00:31:51]Most non-believers were former believers. It's important to plant seeds of doubt and to not expect any one seed to suddenly change a person. As I said, for most people, disbelief is a very gradual affair. The seed has to take root. It needs time to germinate. Now, some of you may ask, why not let them have their fantasies? Or if you're a believer, you may ask why it's any of my business what people believe. People should be free to believe, of course.

[00:32:28]But one of the main reasons we should want people to disbelieve is because, as I said, religion is currently the major driving force behind very harmful fascistic movements. And no, that does not mean all or even most religious people are fascists or far-right or anything like that. I don't think most pe religious people are driven by fascism, but most fascists are driven by religion or at least use religion as a tool.

[00:33:04]Is it possible for atheists to be fascists? Sure, of course. But it's not common. The single group among which Trump found the least amount of support were atheists.

[00:33:19]Trump found less support with atheists than even women, black people, LGBT people, and Hispanics, all of whom have been disenfranchised by the Trump administration. Atheists had it right all along. Our track record is very good. We saw through the from the beginning because we're used to being able to see through A lot of us felt lied to our whole lives, and that can cause you to not be as willing to trust others, which can be good or bad depending on the situation.

[00:33:59]When it comes to politics, it's usually a very good thing to not be trusting of others. Politics is ugly, conniving, and corrupt. And politicians need to prove that they are trustworthy. That means skepticism is necessary and should be the default position.

[00:34:21]And in the end, it goes far beyond the harm that can be done. In the end, even if religion is completely declawed and its harm has been minimized as much as it possibly can be, it is still false and falsehoods get in the way of the truth. So if you care about the truth, if you want people to believe in what is true, then you should care about people being misled by religion.

[00:34:55]Ignorance is a very simple matter. The remedy for it is to simply learn.

[00:35:03]Believing in a falsehood, however, is a much more difficult situation. It's beneath ignorance because not only do you have to learn the truth, but you also have to unlearn the falsehood.

[00:35:20]So if you're a believer, you have twice the work ahead of you of even an ignorant person because you've been wronged. You've been led astray.

[00:35:33]And I'm genuinely sorry that has happened to you.