Lately I haven’t been responding to comments like this, for a few reasons: 1) I have already heard all of these arguments many times and I find them wholly unconvincing. 2) I don’t think anything I can say will change your mind, either.

I’ll bite, this time, though. Maybe someone reading through the comments will find it useful.

Nowhere did I assume that religion and God are the same thing. I lack both adherence to religion and a belief in God. I do think that some people are eager to make a distinction where one doesn’t exist, though. Having a “personal relationship” with Jesus doesn’t mean it’s not a religious belief. The only way to learn about who Jesus supposedly was, is through a document that is the product of many centuries of religious activity.

1. I think this is quite a stretch. Anyone can take their favorite mythology and by looking at it in juuust the right light, make it line up with today’s science. It’s odd because sometimes you see alignment with science as a good thing, something that validates the Bible eg. the claim that the creation story can be seen as aligning with modern cosmology in some ways; but then at other times, saying that today’s science is woefully inadequate and the truth can only be explained with the Bible. But I think it is absurd to say that Genesis aligns with science. The Garden of Eden story includes a talking serpent, claims that women were created from the rib of a man, and according to the genealogies it all happened less than 10,000 years ago. This kind of stuff is the definition of mythology.
2. I am sorry but it looks like you are desperate to find ways that the Bible aligns with reality, and you’re ignoring all the ways it conflicts with it. This is the same kind of behavior as apologists for the Quran demonstrate. Any objective and scientific-minded person can read the Genesis account and recognize it as mythology. It bears so much resemblance to the creation stories common to other cultures, and guess what, they’ve all had people who believed them as whole-heartedly as you. I think you are starting from the position of “the Bible must be true, so what evidence supports that?” rather than “here is all the evidence we have, what seems to be the most likely explanation for it?”
3. Well, for one thing it sort of IS God’s fault what people claim about him, assuming we’re meant to trust the Bible as his inspired word to learn about him. If he wasn’t going to appear to us in person, or show us his presence directly, and instead relied people compiling stories about him, the least he could have done was fact-checked the stories. Anyway, you’re missing my point. I am saying that old scriptures, holy books, in general, are not inspiring to me personally. I care more about what’s here in the present day.
   Please keep in mind that I am only explaining in this article why *I* am not a fan of religion. I fully understand that other people are inspired by it, and that’s fine. It’s just not for me.
4. Lol, wow, you do? So if you say you experienced the true spirit of Jesus, I should believe you? Should I also believe those who directly experience the true spirit of gods A, B, C and spiritual realities X, Y, Z which have nothing to do with Christianity? Or is only your experience the true one?
5. Do you take your own advice on this one? Do you take it seriously when other people claim spiritual experiences that are contrary to yours? Would you believe me when I tell you I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and come into my heart countless times, and prayed for years to find some kind of connection with him, and experienced nothing? If you think something is wrong with my beliefs/intentions/brain, then you can understand why I might think something is wrong with yours.
6. You are correct that my personal experience does not determine what is true or false. Fortunately, this is not a list of “40 reasons religion is definitely false and nobody should believe in it.” It’s a list of 40 reason why I’m not convinced. And my own personal experience informs my beliefs, just like you.
7. Honestly I’m not sure how the tangents you go on here are relevant to this point. Darwin doesn’t come into it. Paul doesn’t come into it. The supposed promises of God to live inside of us are nice, but it never seemed to work out for me that way. All I’m telling you is my experience. You can claim that my intentions were wrong and my heart was in the wrong place, as many have felt the need to do in order to maintain their belief that God always responds. I can’t stop you from assuming bad things about me. But telling me I was insincere in my search is a slap in the face because you don’t know me or my history at all.
   I get the feeling you are not a biologist, if you think that any significant percentage of them are thinking “our understanding of cells is unsatisfying so God must have done it!”. Of course, life is extremely complex and we don’t understand everything about it yet. But we’ve learned a lot in the last century or two. Of course Darwin got some things wrong, but nobody is counting on him as the messiah of biology. He had some important ideas but they’ve been adapted and improved upon as we’ve gotten more data. That’s how science works. Saying that “this complexity can’t happen on its own, therefore an intelligent creator must have done it” is just a projection of our ideas of God which sprung up in the last several millennia and that’s a silly thing to project onto a universe that is billions of years old. Besides, the result of that argument is that your infinitely-complex God just sprung up out of nowhere too (unless God had a creator?). So why couldn’t life?
8. …What? Psychologists overuse empathy because they think they are smarter than Jesus? This makes no sense. Those commandments were good ones and if done properly they employ empathy. It’s not some kind of a contest which one is better. I’m just saying I can find my own way to the same conclusions without needing to be “commanded”. If I’m only following orders, is that real love anyway?
9. Ok, so your views fall outside of what most American Christians believe. If you believe in helping the poor, housing the homeless, supporting immigrants, rejecting corrupt politicians and capitalism and the like — then we’re on the same side. Why are you spending your time arguing with me? You should be upset at the “Christians” who use your God to do such perverse things. You should go and try to convince Christians that they’re not really following Jesus. That’s more important than whatever I think or say.

Just because I didn’t come to the same conclusions as you doesn’t mean I haven’t read the Bible. I did read it the whole thing. And that’s my point. Countless people read the Bible and feel “convicted by the Spirit” that their interpretation is the correct one. And then they start new denominations and splinter groups based on those strong convictions.

I think Revelation is a joke. But I do share some of your concerns about the ways technology has impacted life on our planet. It’s such a complicated topic and there are so many ways to look at it. From your perspective, it seems you think the availability of gaining more knowledge is what led to this disaster. Another person could say it is the concept of the dollar, for making our economic destruction so abstract and hiding it from our view. Another person could say it is the fundamental vice of greed. Others might argue that religions themselves are to blame — even your beloved Genesis and Revelation — for making the claims that God gave this planet and the creatures in it to Man, to use for his own purposes; and for convincing so many people that climate change doesn’t matter because Jesus is coming back soon anyway. Those ideas play a big role in making people apathetic about environmentalism in my opinion.

“And finally, you said somewhere that the universe is much bigger. What does the size of the universe have to do with the existence of God?”
I’ll ask you to re-read point 31. I’m saying that the idea of a personal God seemed more plausible when the Earth was seen as the biggest thing, the center of the universe. Of course God would care about that. We felt very self-important in those days. Now that we know we are just one tiny planet around one mediocre star of many billions of stars in one of trillions of galaxies that are billions of years old… you’re telling me God’s favorite people were some tribe in the Mideast 4,000 years ago and he got really upset if they didn’t cut off the tips of their penises?

Again, in the last paragraph you are arguing that God must exist to fulfill the truth that we know from science. But when science conflicts with what you want to believe about God you are all too happy to throw it out. So which is it? And why doesn’t the same logic — that something can’t come from nothing, energy and complexity can’t come from nothing — apply to your God? How is it any less magical thinking to just assume God was always there as some perfect personality beyond time and space?