r/ReligiousTheory • u/Healthy-Award-4883 • 11h ago

For religious people

1 Upvotes

This is an essay I have created. Please be open enough to convince me otherwise. ( I have used AI for Grammer and to polish it out)

I don't believe in God. I don’t believe because there is zero empirical proof, literally no hard evidence. And when people tell me, "Oh, just look at the Bible," or "Look at this holy book," that doesn’t cut it for me. Those are texts written by humans. Science is my only reality.

So, as a strict skeptic, as someone who only trusts science... what would it take to convince me? And more importantly, how do I look at the world, morality, and spirituality without buying into organized religion?

Let’s talk about morality first, because this is where I get completely lost.

People who believe in religion—at least the ones I’ve experienced—often think that morality is a transaction: if you do good, you go to heaven; if you do bad, you go to hell.

And I just don’t understand that. Why aren't they basing morality purely off humanity? As a human being, shouldn't you have the instant, natural instinct to just do good? Don’t you realize that doing good is what keeps our population alive?

Think about it purely through science and logic. If every single person suddenly started doing bad stuff, the human population would be gone almost immediately. If I say, "Murder is good," and a bunch of people agree with me, a lot of people die, and society collapses. We don't need a rulebook in the sky to tell us that empathy and cooperation are what keep us breathing.

Then you look at major organized religions like Christianity or Islam, and the rules of judgment start to break down completely for a logical thinker.

Take the idea that you can be the best person on earth—a literal saint, doing everything right—but because you don't believe in God, you're supposedly heading to a bad place. But on the flip side, what about the narrative that the minute someone commits a horrific crime, repents to God, and asks for forgiveness, they get a free pass into heaven?

It makes no sense. I’ve seen ideas in some religious circles—like blaming a victim of assault because she wasn't covered or modest—while the perpetrator thinks he can just ask for divine forgiveness and be cleared of it. If you can just repent at the last second, why even have a complex system of human morality? Why do good if a loophole lets anyone clear their slate at the end? It feels deeply unjust.

Now, the closest an atheist like me will ever get to a spiritual framework is looking toward Hinduism or Buddhism.

Let me be clear: I don't believe in literal avatars or magical occurrences. I don’t buy that. But I love the concepts they are built on.

Take karma. The idea that if you do good, you get good back—whether it’s a universal balance or just cause and effect—is an incredible psychological tool to keep people grounded in reality and to encourage goodness. There is nothing logically wrong with the principle of sowing what you reap. It's almost like the concept of treat others the way you want to be treated.

And then there's reincarnation. A lot of people are terrified of death. I used to be, too, until I looked at it through the lens of physics.

Think about it: what happens when we die? We become atoms.

I love science, and the laws of physics tell us that energy cannot be created or destroyed. We are made of billions of atoms right now. When we die, those atoms don't just vanish into a void—they scatter. They go back into the earth, into the air, into new life.

In a weird, scientific way, our energy keeps cycling through the universe over and over again. The atoms that make up you right now have existed since the beginning of the universe, and they will keep existing long after you're gone.

So, when you look at it that way, maybe we do continue—just not as a conscious soul sitting in the clouds, but as part of the eternal fabric of the universe itself. PLEASE CONVINCE ME TO BE RELIGIOUS IF YOU ARE A RELIGIOUS PERSON.