It is argued that evil is the absence of God. Evil is a moral concept and morality may be based on a rationally derived set of principles or it may be taken as a dogma based on faith. When faith is used as the source of a moral code, there is no room for rational argument, it must be taken on faith or imposed by force.

If a person is to approach the existence of God, he must honestly answer for himself the following questions:

Clearly, a passive god is simply the nature of the universe as it exists and not a superior being.

A conscious god with a material body becomes nothing more than a member of an advanced civilization and no more worthy of reverence than we.

Finally, if you can honestly convince yourself that consciousness can exist without matter - that is, that consciousness can exist in an absolute void - then this concept of God has no rational basis, for consciousness is that which arises from the organization of matter and energy. Those who try to argue otherwise, must explain the effects of food, drugs, fatigue and the host of other influences on consciousness.

Others would further argue that God exists outside of nature - that science and reason can never explain God, because these tools of knowledge deal only with the realm of nature. This is the weakest argument of all for, by definition, in nature (i.e. the universe) is where we, and all things, exist. It creates a non-concept that offers an unprovable existent and demands that it can't be proven not to exist. It requires that, he who is making the claim, should be believed simply because he claims it is so, and suggests that faith is the means to this kind of knowledge. This meaning of "faith" only provides a fantasy, not knowledge.

We see that from alchemy sprang the rational science of chemistry and from astrology sprang the rational science of astronomy. From religion, the repository of philosophy for millennia, springs a rational science for morality.

You may counter that you feel that there is an omnipotent being. But feelings are your mind's rapid calculation of thoughts it has already accepted. A person, who has decided they no longer want to live, may feel joy in death. So it is that a reliable tool for the acquisition of knowledge can not be found in emotions. When someone says they feel that God exists, they are exhibiting a circular phenomenon - they were taught to believe in God, they accepted it and now their emotions respond accordingly.

It is time for human beings to live up to their nature - a being capable of reason.