Yahweh) Early in your life you believed in me but you
later denied my existence as you grew older and no longer followed my book. In
fact, you spent much of your life getting people to question their beliefs
about me, what say you?
Non-believer) It’s true, I once believed in you very much,
but I had questions about you that my peers weren't asking. So I asked these
questions to men who had dedicated their lives to you and none of them had good
answers and often their answers were very different to the same question -
which was also odd since many of them claimed they could communicate with you!
It’s as though your biggest fans didn't actually know you and just liked the
idea that someone as powerful as yourself was on their side.
So after thinking about these questions further, I could no
longer believe in you.
Morally I couldn't follow/worship a deity that would give instructions for slavery (Leviticus 25:44-46) and genocide (Deuteronomy 13:13-16). In the book you had written for you, it says you are perfectly moral. So when I looked at the evidence, the most rational conclusion, was that you didn’t exist and was merely a delusion just as all the thousands of other gods humans have believed in.
And for crying out loud God, the 3rd verse in your book says you
created light before you created my planet's' host star along with all the other
stars in the cosmos. Light only exists because of the existence of stars. If
the creator of the universe wrote a book, it wouldn't get something as simple as
that wrong.
Now if you are going to throw me into your hell for not following
a deity that endorsed slavery and genocide, and who asks people to follow him
on nothing but faith, than you would be the one deserving of hell.
Faith is the most unreliable way of determining what
is true, and if there were an evil being trying to gain followers, it would use
FAITH along with FEAR to achieve it!
Why would you set up a world in which those who followed the
evidence would come to the conclusion that you don’t exist? It’s as if you
wanted to reward the gullible and punish those who dared to think critically
about their beliefs.
Yes, for much of my life I did try to get people to question
their beliefs, but not just their belief in you - but their belief in all gods.
I did this because beliefs matter and actions are strongly tied to beliefs. We
had people of other religions killing others for simply not believing as they
did, and their holy books supported these actions. Your book supported these actions
as well (Deuteronomy 13:7-9), but
thankfully people stopped taking that part of your book so seriously!
Other than attempting to destroy these people, what other
options did I have but to try and get people to think critically about their
beliefs?
To require people to accept you based on faith was extremely
idiotic and cruel; because those who rely on faith can’t demonstrate that they
are correct and there were many people of other faiths unwilling to
give theirs up. In fact, those that could demonstrate that they were correct,
were completely ignored and often killed because it went against the faith of
others!
So you ask me why I didn't continue to follow you, it’s
because I wanted to do the right thing and wasn't going to follow a dangerous
belief just because I thought it would keep me from being tortured for
eternity. What would it say about me if I was willing to sacrifice my morality
and integrity just because something more powerful than myself threatened to
torture me if I didn't follow it?
