To assert that God exists is to claim special knowledge over and above what we know about reality. There’s no obvious evidence, logical or material, that makes the existence of God a necessary fact. Quite the contrary, there are several facts about the world we find ourselves in that seem to suggest that there is no God.

In this article, I’ll explain three of the best arguments against the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God. You know, the one you learned about in Sunday School, and the one pastors preach about at the pulpit. As you’ll see, these three traits are often mutually exclusive, and theists who cling to them aren’t doing themselves (or their congregation) any favors.

You don’t, actually. The tricky thing about atheism is that it isn’t really a belief system. It’s a negative response to other belief systems. It is essentially having a “no” answer to the arguments for God’s existence. 

However, that “no” answer doesn’t come from nowhere. There are inductive arguments that show that the God hypothesis is less likely, and there are deductive ones that show it is self-contradictory, but there isn’t (and doesn’t need to be) a specific argument put forward that atheism is correct. Atheism is, for all intents and purposes, the default answer to philosophical questions like “What happens after we die?” (We don’t know) and “Does God exist?” (No). The arguments against God’s existence are against the probability or coherence of the ones that say He exists, not standalone arguments themselves.

Assuming we’re talking about the all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good God espoused by Christianity, here are three arguments against His existence:

The problem of suffering is such a blatant issue for theists that it’s been a hotly debated topic for several centuries. As St. Augustine put it, “God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.” But modern philosophers have trouble squaring the idea of suffering with an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God.

This argument only really applies to an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God. It points out that these three traits are logically incompatible when taken alongside the fact that there is unnecessary suffering in the world. “Unnecessary” here meaning the natural, unobserved suffering that happens in the animal kingdom every day through predation, disease, or starvation.

We could have a separate conversation about human suffering, but there’s no need when we know that there’s completely unobserved suffering that no one benefits from in the least. Why would a good God allow for that?

Anyone who’s seen the 1983 film War Games will remember this line. It’s said by an AI that takes over the world’s nuclear armaments. To get it to relinquish control, Matthew Broderick instructs it to run simulations of a global nuclear conflict. Like a game of Tic-Tac-Toe, every simulation using the best possible reasoning ends in a stalemate. Thus, “The only way to win is not to play.” I’d argue this also gives us our answer to the problem of suffering.

If God is all-knowing, He’d know that any world He could create would either be devoid of unnecessary suffering or include the mechanisms that lead to it. If He’s all-powerful, he could decide not to create a world just as well as he could decide to create one. If he’s all-good, he would not want to create unnecessary suffering. Thus, “the only way to win is not to play.” He would choose either to create a world completely without unnecessary suffering or not to create a world at all. Those are the only “all-good” answers to the conundrum. 

Since we find ourselves in a world that exists, and has unnecessary suffering in it, such a God could not exist because it would have necessarily made a different decision. Perhaps a “mostly-good” God would create this world—or a “mostly-evil” one—but “all-good” implies that there is zero bad, and unnecessary suffering is a “bad” without even a potential for good.

Theists offer several interesting theodicies for the problem of suffering. Soul-making and free will, for example. These thought experiments are fascinating, but there’s a fatal flaw with them: they cut both ways. Any theodicy you offer to explain the problem of suffering leaves the door open for other theoretical beings, and that’s where the next atheist argument comes in:

If you accept premise #1, then you have to accept premise #2 purely on logical grounds. Thus, you now have two theoretical gods, and any attempt to prove one must disprove the other. This is the problem with believing in gods with absolute values; they can often cut both ways. 

This argument only relates to Gods who are described as “all-good.” It wouldn’t argue against a deist god who made the world and then walked away, or a pantheistic godforce like Brahmin. However, it does point out a fatal flaw with all theistic arguments: that they invite interpretation where none is needed.

As far as we know, suffering is a natural result of complex social systems, natural selection, and entropy. Certain biological and social facts make suffering inevitable, and empathy motivates many people to go to school to earn degrees in medicine, wildlife biology, and the social sciences so they can learn how to reduce it. No God required.

When you add God to this equation, you just complicate the facts, and you give yourself another thing to explain or interpret. Now, you have to wonder “why” suffering exists, which is like wondering “why” gravity exists. It’s a waste of time and effort. “What” suffering is and “how” you can put a stop to it are far better questions that don’t beg supernatural answers.

Dan Barker put forward this argument during his 1996 debate with John Morehead. It points out that “all-knowing” and “all-powerful” are mutually exclusive properties when taken alongside the existence of free will. Here’s how:

Much like in the omnipotence paradox, the FANG argument points out that some traits commonly attributed to God are plainly nonsensical. You cannot have a God who knows the future and can change it. “Knowing” the future means knowing every decision that led to it, including the decision to “change” it. Ultimately, there is no “change” to an all-knowing being, since everything happens in accordance with what they already know. 

That also means that such a God wouldn’t have free will, since He knows every decision before He makes it. There’s never a moment of uncertainty in which He is free to choose between two avoidable options.

This all just goes to show that the divine, supernatural being of awesome power that many want to believe in is simply illogical. It might be possible to argue for a smaller God who works within some limitations, but the grandiose claims you hear many pastors espouse from the pulpit don’t stand up to scrutiny. But the conversation is still far from over, as there are other, more logically sound iterations of God that call for a more nuanced discussion.

My next project is a book that seeks to do just that. It’s a nonfiction book titled Choose Your Own Debate With: An Atheist. With its choose-your-own-adventure structure, it can be your friendly, respectful debate partner, helping you peel back the layers of theism and uncover a useful philosophical core we can all agree on. Check it out in my Works in Progress page, and follow me on Bluesky to see how it's coming along.