No--I'm not "just guessing". I feel I have good reasons for not believing in gods--just like you have good reasons for not believing in Santa Claus. The most obvious reason of all is that believers feel the need to threaten and intimidate people into believing--much like you are here--("cause for alarm"), with of course, the spoken or unspoken threat of Hell.
Here is my evidence that indicates an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God as described in the Bible does not exist. Especially one described as “objectively real”, “exists everywhere”, “all-merciful”, and a God of “perfect justice”, and that this god loves and cares about his followers, and listens to and answers their prayers, and finally that nonbelievers are punished by banishment to Hell after death, described as an “unquenchable fire“ by Jesus himself.
This is not conclusive evidence of course, after all, we cannot prove the negative for claims of this nature, but taken together, I think I can offer a compelling case that the God described above most likely does not exist. I will use the Christian God for this exercise, although many of these objections could be applied to any god claim.
1) God’s apparent non-existence. It is often claimed that “God is everywhere”. Yet even after thousands of years of trying, Christians have been unable to demonstrate any hard verifiable evidence of God’s existence. It gets worse. If god is all-knowing, he knows what would persuade us. If he is all-powerful, he could do so easily. I can provide a whole list of things that would persuade me. And if he is all-good, he would provide this evidence, rather than punish non-believers for their honest and rational skepticism. Therefore no such god exists.
2) The absolute failure of intercessory prayer. Multiple studies have demonstrated that prayer fails to work. They have even done studies where multiple religions were studied, and all compared to a control group. Prayer failed to show any statistical improvement in outcomes for hospital patients. Furthermore, believers who are amputees probably don’t even bother to pray for their limb to grow back. Why not? We all know it doesn’t really work at all.
3) The apparent mythic roots of the Christian religion. The Jesus myth bears many similarities with other gods in the Mediterranean area, such as Horus, Mithra and others--such as the virgin birth, birth on the solstice, number of disciples, his resurrection, and so on. This is compelling evidence that Jesus is either a myth, or at best, he was a Jewish rabbi who was executed by the Romans, and who’s actual story probably bears almost no resemblance to the Biblical account, but was embellished and mythologized in the decades following his death through word of mouth retellings. If we were talking about any other god, we would not hesitate to call it a myth.
4) The absolute absurdity of the Jesus Story itself. Christians hate for it to be told this way, but substantively, this is the story. Perfect God created mankind flawed, and hates us for that so much, that he blames Adam and Eve’s biggest mistake--”eating from the tree of knowledge” down to their distant descendants, punishing them by burning them forever. But, there’s a way out! He’ll send his best son (who is really himself) to save them! This son will be a blood sacrifice to create a loophole so that all-powerful God somehow finds it within himself to forgive men for their imperfect nature that he gifted them with in the first place. So Jesus becomes a scapegoat. Think please. What kind of parent would torture their best child (“only son”) in order to be able to forgive the other children? It doesn’t make a lick of sense and is patently absurd on the face of it. Christians have NEVER been able to give a logical account for this.
5) The Huge Problem of Evil. Never easily explained away by Christians. God is all-powerful. God is all-good. Just look at the horrible evil in the world--and much of it caused by God himself. If evil exists, then God can either do nothing about it, or chooses to allow it, in which case he cannot be called “all-good“. Christian apologists usually take one or more of three tactics to try to slip out of this problem. A) Blame it all on us--”Free Will”. But first, much evil in the world is not caused by man at all. Also, even if some men cause evil, shouldn’t any conscientious being try to help? Is it good to stand by and let the Nazis kill all the Jews? The fact that men create much evil does not alleviate a “good” entity from stopping it if they are able. B) “God is punishing us”. Including innocent children? This is one of the most repugnant things about Christianity--trying to make everyone guilty from birth. Finally, the ultimate fall-back C) "Who are we to judge?" The biggest problem with this is that it is a cop-out. Also, Christians DO judge God! They do! They judge him to be all-good! Then when skeptics point out the obvious and logical evidence that if he existed, he cannot be described as "good"--then they tell us not to judge. It boils down to--believers judge God good because they have been taught to--and skeptics judge the god character not to be good based on his actions and inactions.
6) The Huge Problems with the Bible itself. Forged books, contradictions, inconsistencies. We don’t have the originals--just copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of translations of copies of copies of copies of translations of copies… There are many passages that are absurd or impossible, and there is no guide to say what is metaphor and what should be taken literally, allowing believers to come up with their own individual interpretation--in which case--how can anyone say what is true about it? What kind of all-knowing, all-powerful god who cares about his message getting out would have such a flawed book? Why would he even need a book to begin with? He’s all-powerful--right? His word should be imprinted in all of our minds and in our DNA. Then no one would doubt, and no one would have it wrong.
7) The huge numbers of Gods and religions, and the geographic distribution of them. What kind of all-powerful, all-knowing God would allow billions of people to grow up in ignorance of his revelation? How can Christians explain the billions of people who were raised Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist, and how rare it is for them to convert? This is evidence that people are indoctrinated into their religion, and keep the religion of their society--they do not mass convert because one religion is right. There have been thousands of god beliefs. What kind of all-powerful god would allow this? Especially if he was torturing people in the afterlife for their non-belief--and yet we call him all-good?
8) The Horror of Hell is completely inconsistent with the idea of an “all-good“ God who is described as “merciful, just, loving“. What kind of all-good God would torture ANYONE for all eternity? And just for the thought-crime of not believing? I know Christians lately have been trying to soften up Hell to get around this, but when they do, they ignore the Bible, and they also ignore thousands of years of doctrine and precedent, as well as what the vast majority of Christians believe. Jesus himself described Hell as “unquenchable fire”. Christians lately are saying “well, that’s symbolic” (as if they know!)--in an effort to quench the Hell problem. But even if it’s symbolic, it’s still apparently horrible enough to be symbolized as such, therefore the problem is NOT side-stepped at all! What does it matter whether it’s an actual fire or not, if it’s still comparable enough to one to be symbolized as such?
9) The illogic of an all-powerful god. Think of what it means to be “all-powerful”. This means that there is absolutely NOTHING that God cannot do. Sooo--can he create another God? One that is more powerful than he is? A weight so great he cannot lift it? One can get a headache real quick trying to come up with questions like this--and I’m sure you will dismiss it out of hand. But the truth is--once you start demanding absolutes as characteristics of your God, then the universe can get really weird indeed.
10) The use of coercion indicates that Christians are playing with a weak hand. All too many Christians, if they can get away with it, will not hesitate to punish the unbeliever. Christian coaches will kick young atheists off the team. People will phone in death threats. Christian families will kick atheist children out of their home and disown them. The church lost it’s best argument when they were no longer allowed to literally burn people alive if they didn’t believe. But they still use the good ole Hell claim to coerce people. Ask yourself. If someone told you that Bigfoot exists, and when you say no, they tell you will burn forever for your lack of faith. Is this a sign of a strong claim? Or a weak claim that has to use threats to keep people in line?