Why Theism is Irrational by Brad Joslin

Why Theism is Irrational.

An essay by Brad Joslin

Belief in the supernatural, in this case a God, is inherently irrational. Science though conceived to prove the divinity of our existence has turned out to be the antithesis of faith. Science is simply observation and understanding. Faith, especially faith in a creator, is by dictionary definition belief without or contrary to facts. Facts, however subjective are the foundation of science, and thus it is fluid and dynamic. Science is testable, and ultimately fixes its flaws through further observation. Theism has no observational data, is not fluidity, and is a vice on comprehension. There is no denying that there are many scientist and philosophers that subscribe to the God concept, however this is merely due to compartmentalization. Compartmentalization is where you sectionalize your thoughts into what is criticized and what is not. With theism, rational people can rationalize and critically look at everything, except when rationality and criticality are applied to their beliefs, they won’t allow it, and they do not accept that their beliefs can be critiqued. The world then sees the most intelligent people become the most ignorant by not allowing critical thought to dissect the concept of God.

How do we dissect the concept of God? Well, science as we defined before is about observation and understanding. Thus we can apply science to the God-concept. Taking the Christian God, we can see the list of promises and actions and traits for this God. We take this list as given to us by the Bible, Old and New Testament, and we can use this as our hypothesis to take through the scientific method. For now we will assume the Bible is not contradictory. “The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.” (Exodus 34:6). God, according to many parts in the Bible, is merciful. Mercy is compassion, love, something a mother shows its child. So, the hypothesis is that God is merciful, and now we must observe to see if our hypothesis is supported or not. We cannot truly test this hypothesis, making such an experiment not truly scientific at all, again voiding the God concept. However, we can at least try to observe what we can assume are in the powers of this God and judge whether or not he is merciful. God is omnipotent and omniscient as per biblical word therefore our assumption of his power is that it encompasses everything. Such an all powerful, merciful being would surely not allow occurrences such as rapes, and murders, or even intellectual mind-fucks if one wishes to null-en-void every form of stress. Such a God would eliminate hunger, prejudice, and pain. One would never have to worry about being chastised or punished for doing something wrong, increasing productivity and happiness for the human race. However this is not the case. People are wired with distrust and fear, something that would not be necessary under a benevolent ruler. These wirings tend to bridge sometimes or overrule certain aspects of the brain, creating sociopaths and psychopaths, these people violent and dangerous to human existence. Our hypothesis is unsupported.

God’s supposed traits are not solo under the knife; his actions told by us in the Bible can be picked apart as well. Semantics are not the point of this paragraph, as the point isn’t to argue what God can or cannot do, just that his actions should have physical evidence or at least evidential record of existing. We will take the global flood and Noah’s ark as our next hypothesis. “[Humans] sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water” (1 Peter 3:20). Noah and his family were the only ones saved by God during this merciless flood. There should be some sort of evidence that there was a period that the whole world was underwater, such as an even layer of sediment with many fossils of humans and animals. However, this is just not found. Science has not concluded that there ever was a global flood, and to even imagine one is ridiculous. For the entire globe to be immersed in water, it would have to cover the tallest mountain, Mt. Everest. Everest is 8850 metres (29,035 feet) above sea level (geography 1). The radius of the earth is 6,378.1 kilometres (Google 1). The volume of a sphere can be calculated as V = 4/3 π R3. First we take the volume of the earth, V1 = 4/3

π 6,378,000m3. V1
= 1.08623034 × 1021. Next we calculate the volume of the
earth with the floodwater, where R
would be 6,386,850 metres. V2 =

4/3 π 6,386,850m3. V2 = 1.09075832 × 1021. Now, we know what the volume of the world is pre-flood as well as post-flood. Assuming that nearly 90% of the difference is all water (in actuality, 100% of the difference should be water volume) we can show how absurd a global flood is. V2 V1 = 4.52797917 × 1018. The newly amassed volume of water on the earth is roughly 4,527,979,170,000,000,000 meters cubed! There is no possible way for such a volume of water to not affect the stability, properties, or surface of our planet. Taking for granted how much hydrogen and oxygen would need to be produced and coerced into forming water, the sheer mass of the water (one volumetric ounce of water is a weighted ounce) would effect it’s gravitational pull and push on the bodies of our solar system, most likely in a negative way.

Theism, especially Christian based theism is bankrupt. The God concept is merely pleading ignorance. Science observes and explains our world, and although not one person is one hundred per cent sure of how our existence came into being, the creator idea is a cop out, used by those who wish to live in a fantasy, to ease life’s hardships. Theism can be picked apart till its very corpse is no longer visible, but still followers will not let go. Theism is a crutch that is necessary to be rationally fought and one day destroyed.



Sources

Geography: Highest Mountains; http://geography.about.com/od/learnabouttheearth/a/extremes.htm

Radius of the earth, and all calculations done through Google.

Radius of the Earth

Volume of the Earth

Volume of the Earth (post flood)

Volume of floodwater