“Why are you an atheist?”

“Why don’t you believe in God?”

I have gotten these questions before. I actually have quite a lot of reasons that I am an atheist, but I’ve found that when someone just asks me point blank I freeze up because I can’t think of where to start. Because I’m not always sure of which reason would be the most effective for the asker to understand, because I don’t usually know their background or what their concept of “god” looks like. While considering this situation, I thought maybe instead of trying to jam my reasons for being an atheist into a single post why not have a series of posts where I can address each reason one by one? So, over the course of the next few months I will be writing and posting a series of essays on the various reasons why I am an atheist.

As a preview, here are some of the reasons I am looking forward to explaining:

• The conspicuous absence of God, and my repeated observations of God being “given the glory” for human actions and chance events.
•  The historically dubious origins of Christian doctrines, including early church disputes about the nature of Jesus himself.
• Moral philosophy and the “Divine Command” theory.
• The soul: how I became convinced that mind=brain and that the idea of the soul is superfluous.
• Sexism and injustice in the Bible (probably other holy books too, but I don’t know the other books well enough to comment on them.)
• The constant replacement of supernatural and religious explanations with understandable scientific ones.
• Evolution, the origins of life, and creationist lies I was told when I was young.

And this list may change during the series, as I think of other things. If any of these intrigues you, make a note in the comment section and I will try to get to that reason sooner rather than later.