If you are a religious person, it should be (and is) because you have chosen that path as the optimal expression of your values and preferences. It should not be because you feel compelled to be religious –because you feel that everyone should be religious, and that you absolutely must be religious or else. And yet such an aura of inevitability has always existed around religion, in virtually every society and every period of history — an aura that has been artificially and relentlessly constructed and maintained.

One component of religious arrogance is the tenet that religion is essential, that it is indispensable, that it is required for moral vigor and societal stability, that an individual who does not indulge in it will be savagely penalized by God Himself. But the pillars of reasoning the religionists offer to support that thesis crumble at the slightest scrutiny. Let’s look at the six primary pillars, and see why they are so flawed.

1. The Creationist Fallacy

“There must be a creator, because the universe could not have just happened by pure chance.” So they say.

Aside from the fact that “just happened by pure chance” is a gross oversimplification at best of the evolutionary processes in nature, throwing a creator into the mix does absolutely nothing to explain any origins. On the contrary, it just compounds the enigma. Because if you conclude the universe must have had a creator, then you also must conclude that the creator had a creator — or at the least, an unexplained origin. And if the creator had a creator, then the creator of the creator had a creator. And so on. How does it benefit your understanding of the cosmos to simply stack one mystery on top of another?

The creationist fallacy is often expressed in terms of the watchmaker fallacy. If you find an intricate object like a watch, the argument goes, then you can conclude that someone must have made it; so you can deduce the same about the universe. But this is a false equivalence of the most abject breed. A watch is by definition a device, a man-made object. The universe is about as diametrically opposed to that as it possibly could be.

2. The Morality Fallacy

“But if there is no God, then where does morality come from? What’s to prevent you from murdering and stealing and raping?”

Such questions are rather frightening in their implications. Because they suggest that it is only the fear of divine retribution that keeps believers from committing atrocious acts. And this is corroborated by the fact that, even with the fear of divine retribution, believers still commit atrocious acts.

Still, there’s really a very simple answer to this line of inquiry. Without religion, morality comes from the same place it does with religion: namely, from ourselves. Channeling your values through standardized doctrine does not alter the fact that they are still your values.

Nobody is born a believer. If you are religious, it is because at some point in your life you made the decision to convert. You determined that the beliefs embodied in some particular faith constituted a code you wanted to live by, that they were a good fit for what you wanted to strive for. And you continue to make that decision every day you stay committed to that faith.

The only alternative is the premise that your beliefs were thrust upon you — that someone injected you with a drug to make you believe, or somehow you were indoctrinated against your will, or that God just opened up your skull and inserted a set of convictions. In which case God is deciding who does and does not believe, and nobody has any say in the matter, so there’s no point in concerning yourself with it.

Four other important facts worth noting.(1) As mentioned above, religious people have always committed some truly horrible deeds, individually and en masse. And very often have actually justified those actions by citing holy creeds. (2) According to sacred scriptures, God not only condones but commands such barbarities — including the wholesale slaughter of innocent men, women and children. (3) While atheists comprise as much as 10 percent (or more?) of the general U.S. population, they account for only about one percent of the prison population. (4) Researchers have determined that certain animals — including apes, monkeys and elephants — can and do make moral decisions. And so far as anyone knows, they have no concept of a divinity whatsoever.

3. The Risk Vs. Reward Fallacy

“But you have nothing to lose by converting, and everything to gain.”

That’s a very common sales pitch (sometimes called Pascal’s Wager) from proselytizers. And it’s a highly inept argument, full of almost too many holes to count.

For one thing, it’s really pointless because belief can’t just be turned on and off like a light switch. Additionally, it’s an arbitrary premise: you just as easily could make the same argument about the importance of believing in Bigfoot, or subscribing to the Wall Street Journal. Or that you should follow Satanism or Greek polytheism instead of, say, Christianity or Islam. It doesn’t make one bit of difference that a great number of people believe a in a certain dogma, or that their doctrines are so detailed. Many people also once believed that the earth was flat, and had a highly detailed cosmogony to go along with that tenet.

4. The Problem of Suffering

Why does God allow suffering? That’s a problem that religionists have struggled with (or struggled to avoid) for ages. And nobody has ever provided a satisfactory answer.

The most common refrain in response to this query is that human beings need challenges in order to become stronger and grow. Well, that’s true enough. But suffering isn’t merely adversity. Suffering is agony of one kind or another. And it doesn’t really teach us anything (beyond the lessons of the accompanying crisis) except that human beings must endure suffering.

Whatever benefits one might (theoretically) derive from suffering, many people never have an opportunity to reap them — e.g., young children who are afflicted with horrible diseases or trauma, then die. And whatever God might want us to learn from suffering, He also could have arranged for us learn in some other way; in fact, He could have contrived an infinite number of ways. (He can do anything, right?) The only conclusion one can draw is that God wants us to suffer.

Furthermore, it isn’t just a matter of God allowing suffering; it’s a matter of Him causing suffering. (He’s the creator and mastermind of the universe, remember?) This is a bit of a problem when you realize that one of the attributes of the divine being is supposed to be benevolence. Making people suffer unnecessarily is not a sign of benevolence. On the contrary, it’s the very definition of evil.

5. The Free Will Contradiction

If you’re suggesting that people ought to convert to the One True Religion (your own, of course), there’s a huge problem staring you in the face. Conversion is of necessity an act of free will. And the existence of an omniscient Supreme Creator would eliminate the possibility of free will.

If God created the universe, He set every little gear in motion for every minutest event that would occur until the end of time. And, if He is omniscient, He set those gears in motion knowing every little detail of everything that would happen until the end of time. Within such a framework, how can free will exist? Everything you chose to do would not really be a choice, but merely a fulfillment of the script established long ago. God would have chosen whether you are a believer or not, so why concern yourself with it?

Theologians have long debated about the question of free will versus determinism. But there really is no debate, not in a theological context. There are only three possibilities: (1) God does not exist, so free will might; (2) God exists but is not omniscient, so free will is possible; (3) God is omniscient, so free will can not exist. Any one of which throws a big monkey wrench into just about any religious dogma.

6. The Omnipotence Fallacy

Another supposed attribute of the Almighty is omnipotence — meaning, of course, that He can do absolutely anything. But that’s an impossibility, even for an entity known for accomplishing the impossible. Because omnipotence is a nonsensical concept.

There is an old hypothetical you may have heard: if God can do anything, can He make a rock so heavy that even He can’t lift it? Whether the answer is yea or no, it establishes that the idea of omnipotence is self-cancelling.

But I have another hypothetical that I regard as even more potent: if God can do anything, can He will Himself out of existence? Can he do so in such a manner that He never will have existed in the first place — and the universe continues in His absence to operate just as it does now? If He can not do these things, He is not omnipotent, and can be safely ignored. If He can do these things, then the universe can get along just fine without Him, so He is unnecessary — and can be safely ignored.

None of this necessarily means that you should abandon your religious beliefs. It just means that if you maintain them, you must have faith not only in your creeds, but faith in your faith. You must trust that all these conflicts and contradictions (and numerous others!) can be resolved somehow — even if you have no idea how.

But you should realize that your choice of religion is just that — a choice. And an arbitrary one. And you should not expect those of us who live with a bottom-up paradigm to ditch it so we can embrace your top-down paradigm. We’re just fine the way we are.