The third thing about religion that stops me wanting to follow them is Gods. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a single god or many gods I see very little reason to worship some superior entity.

I’ve been curious about Christianity and other religious groups so I did the obvious thing and started reading the Bible. The book of Genesis is where all the Judeo-Christian stuff starts so it was a logical source for of information on what God did that made him great enough to worship.

At school I was told that the Christian God was all powerful, all loving and all knowing. Genesis makes Him seem horrible and undeserving of any respect. God Wouldn’t allow Adam to know shame; Created a snake to deceive Eve; Didn’t respect Cain and his offerings of fruit even though he worked hard; God made the ground infertile to Cain; Kills everything after Genesis 6; Caused everything to fear Noah and his family; Said that if you kill you will be killed; Split a family up and spread it across the world; Told a woman to return to beatings; Made a covenant with Abraham that demanded circumcise everyone; used fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah; and caused incest. All that was in the first half of Genesis. The only good thing that God did for everyone was create the world, it seems this all loving god just picks one person at a time to feel his blessing and everyone else is damned.

The world is full of suffering and always has been. All the Judeo-Christian God does is cause more pain.

Look at older gods like the Greek or Norse ones and you’ll see constant war and tragedy. There’s no entity so pure and great and loving that it deserves to be worshipped. Everything I’ve seen and read suggests that we worship gods because of their absolute power but with great power comes great responsibility and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I’ve done a lot of logical thinking about religion recently and joining the club for the human element makes sense. A sense of belonging with someone to trust and a sense of purpose are brilliant, Jesus was even a good story teller that spread some useful messages. The gods or God or whatever don’t seem deserving of their supporters.

So my effort to understand religion has ended without any real epiphany but with the disappointment that it’s people that are the real life of any religious party. I will clarify that I’m not trying to offend anyone but largely because of gods religion is not for me.