Another Easter has come and gone, and once again I am left wondering how Christianity was able to hold on to such influence through the Enlightenment and into the present day.

I never understood how it was controversial that I don't believe in God, or any higher power for that matter.

I figured that if I can't see something, and there is no logical way to explain its existence, then why would I believe in it? Why would anyone? In Sunday school, I never took anything my teachers said literally. I treated it like I was reading a book for English class, and I'm memorizing the plot of a fictional story. I have nothing against religious people - if they want to believe a story that was written when people didn't know where the sun went at night, then there's nothing I can do about that.

What does bother me, however, is how many religions portray God.

For the sake of my argument, let's all pretend for a moment that God exists. I'm also going to be sticking with the Judeo-Christian version of God, as that's the one that you and I are most familiar with (the various types of gods over many different civilizations is an argument against God's existence in and of itself, but I digress).

According to the Bible, God has three big, important characteristics. First, he is all-powerful, meaning that he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants. Second, God is omniscient, meaning that he knows everything. He knows everything that ever is, was, or will be. Finally, God is omni-benevolent, which means that he is infinitely good, and is the most-good being that could ever exist.

This brings me to the one question that I have most about God: If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, then why is there so much suffering in the world?

I mean, if God supposedly knows all the bad things that could ever happen, he has the power to stop these bad things from happening, and is so unbelievably good that he would never want these things to happen to us, then why does God let awful things happen to people?

There are three solutions that I have come up with in response to this question. The first one is that God is all-good, but he is not all-powerful. This would mean that God wants to help us, but he simply isn't able to. Second, perhaps God is all-powerful, but not all-good. In this scenario, God has the power to stop suffering should he so choose, but is indifferent to our struggle.

Essentially, he doesn't care.

The third and final argument is the one that I think reconciles the issue the best, and is the most likely, but probably isn't the one most people want to hear. Perhaps God is both all-good and all-powerful, but his definition of good is not the same as ours. What is good or evil or right or wrong varies dramatically by culture or time period, so who's to say that it can't vary between man and God? Perhaps what we think of evil, such as famine or disease or war, God thinks are wonderful things. I mean, he did make us in his image, and put all of the viruses and diseases we could ever get on Earth.

I don't believe in God. I feel like I've made that clear. However, if I were to get my skull caved in by some heavy mining equipment tomorrow, and I went to the Pearly Gates, I'd be kind of pissed. It wouldn't be because I was dead (well, also that), but I would do my damndest to give God a piece of my mind for creating such a crappy world for us to inherit.

Let's be honest here, if God went to divine creator school, he'd be a C student at best. Anyway, if there is a God, and he's okay with all of the suffering and pain and death on this world, then I'm not obeying that psychopath, and I'm certainly not interested in anything he's selling.