Why I do not believe in God? To explain that, I think I will have to explain my general view on religion, faith and science. It is not easy for me, as my english is far from perfect, but I will try my best. It will be a long explanation and may be not easy to understand in the beginning and may seem as I strayed too far from the subject. Also, this view in no way pretends to be the only truthful view and may of course contain some errors. But anyway, here it is.


World is a very complex thing, there is no doubt about that. People do not fully understand it, they do not understand everything that happens around them. There are millions of things that humans still have not discovered or have been unable to explain. But that does not mean yet that those things do not exist. It is the lack of knowledge that prevents humans from fully understanding them. I think an example should be given here. Long ago people did not know about the gravity force the Earth has. Neither did they knew that Earth is in fact not flat as they imagined, but has a shape of a sphere. Even the idea of Earth being a sphere was impossible to comprehend for them, as they could not understand how they do not fall down from it in that case. So they searched for an end of the earth. It is the discovery of a gravity force, round-the-world voyages and maybe some other discoveries that led humans to understanding that Earth is in fact like a sphere. The gravity force pulls all objects to the center of our planet, to it's core, and this whole 'Earth-is-round' thing suddenly started to make sense. But we still are not sure as of the origin of that force, we do not have full knowledge of what is at the core. As we do not know about a lot of other things. Life and death, an idea of some greater power are just some of those. I think that to understand those we yet have to come to some knowledge, that is out of our reach at this moment. But that doesn't mean yet that we will never find it out.

However, humans do not like to not understand what is happening around them. They have fear for the unknown. And they try to fill those gaps of knowledge they possess, if not with knowledge itself then with something else. They want to find reason for everything. For some that fear is too much to bear, so religion emerges to fill those gaps. Religion tries to explain many of those things like greater power that created us (like God), what comes after death (afterlife) and a lot of other stuff. Religion gives faith that is like an image of our world, but simplified for better understanding and with explanations to certain things and events. So, a human, who starts to have faith, starts to be more confident as he has less fear for what surrounds him and what awaits him. One of the greatest fears humans usually have is a fear of their death. The reason for that is that humans do not know what will happen when they will die. So that's why theme of an afterlife or reincarnation is so popular in religions. A more confident human acts more freely and feels much better, and as he notices that, he thinks that it is God (or something else) that helps him and that further strenghtens his faith. It may be similar to how a human feels himself much more confident in a more familiar surrounding (like his hometown) and among people he knows, then in a big city that he visits for the first time and among unknown people. But in case with faith it is just on a much greater scale. So, it is possible to say that faith may actually be beneficial to it's bearer.

Different religions had been most likely created for different reasons. Some were created possibly because the faith first emerged in one human's mind and that human found out that he draws strength from it. So he decided to share it with others so that others could become stronger and also to further strengthen his own belief from their faith. But as religion is a powerful tool for controlling the masses, it was often used by some with more selfish intent or even was created specifically for that reason. Of course faith could not form itself out of nothing (unless the religion was artificially created for pure human control), so every faith may have some amount of truth behind it.

But no good comes without it's bad side, and faith has it's flaws too. As it is like an imagined world with some boundaries, those boundaries can be crashed to pieces, if faith's bearer stumbles on something that totally contradicts his beliefs. That may lead to him losing his faith and with it his confidence and power. I also think that a human with faith subconsciously tries to avoid those dangers as his mind somehow understands that a loss of faith will weaken it. So a human with faith is often blind to contradictions and is often agressive to those who may present the danger to his faith. The extend of it may be different from religion to religion, depending on what faith the human has. Also that would explain why humans usually try to be closer to those who have same faith (to strengthen their faith) and in some religion's cases try to convert those around them or even wage war against "unbelievers". Science and new discoveries may also present a danger to faith as new knowledge may contradict some of old beliefs. That would explain, for example, why church was often against science and tried to ban it and prevent new discoveries. So, the boundaries of faith, while helping it's bearer, may also prevent him from getting real knowledge about his surroundings.

So, coming back to original question... I do not believe in God, because I don't have faith in it. I was once a christian, but I guess my boundaries of the faith were trashed by too many contradictions to it that I encountered. It just stopped making sense to me. And I am glad about it, as I understand that I may live without this faith and I will better have my mind open for new knowledge. It may well be that there is some kind of greater power, but humans currently don't have a real knowledge about it if it actually exists. I am quite sure that there will be time when humans will get more real knowledge on it and they will come closer to understanding those currently unexplainable things. I think that humans have not yet discovered some knowledge that would allow us to comprehend those more complex things (like the knowledge about gravity force for understanding the possibility of Earth having a sphere shape). And at least my lack of faith will do less harm to other people, then if I will have it.