The most compelling piece of evidence I would be able to produce against any "higher being", is the lack of any evidence to support the claim that there is a higher power. In fact, this is the cornerstone of “faith”; the ideal that to be a true believer…you must trust what you’ve been told without any reasonable reason to do so. Doing this guarantees you an eternal home in the sky, where you are given an everlasting body and reunited with loved ones. To not do so means that you will spend eternity burning in a world of sorrow, a place we refer to as Hell. My initial problem with this concept is the complete disassociation with our virtue here on Earth. A believer in Christianity is free to commit horrendous crimes, so long as he/she atones properly to God, and carries out the trivial punishment that a clergyman deems necessary (usually a set number of prayers.) In fact, if you’re a member of the Baptist church, you can skip this step entirely, because you’ve been forgiven simply for being a member of the correct and proper church. The reverse side of this principle is absolutely enraging. If you’re a good and moral person, who doesn’t believe in the correct higher power, you’re doomed to an eternity in Hell…regardless of your righteousness on Earth.
If you’re a religious person you must seriously ponder this concept, not only because it is unjust, but because you must ask the one true God for your forgiveness. Given the amount of religions that have existed throughout the course of humanity, it is a statistic certainty that almost anyone who lived will be damned. Although this is a humbling and relevant point, it is not the one which I wish to address.
I wish to challenge that God is just and loving, on the basis of his hidden and secretive nature. If you can be convicted to an eternity of fire and suffering, for not believing in the one true deity- why would that deity remain completely hidden through the course of modern history? Why was there no intervention during the Holocaust? Why hasn’t God stopped the AIDS crisis in Africa? Why hasn’t there been any sign of God, at all, other than lore that was passed down through generations of scribes, and eventually placed in Iron Age texts? It would be so incredibly easy, if God simply announced his presence, no sane person on this planet would have the audacity to not believe it. If this higher power has the ability to create life, hear millions of simultaneous prayers, and to construct a universe that is perfectly suited to our sustainability- any announcement of his existence wouldn’t seem like much of a chore.
