(U-WIRE) LINCOLN, Neb. – When I was a young German (just picture me running through the Black Forest in my Lederhosen), I went to church just because it was what everybody did.

Back then I made a list of questions I wanted to ask God if he ever appeared to me, as he did to all those prophets you can read about in the Bible. They were really innocent questions … the kind my relatives would find “cute” when they saw the list in my room – kind of like, “Did you cry when Jesus died?”

As I grew older, still frolicking in the Black Forest, I got a little tougher on God. “Why did you make mean dogs? They bite.” Things didn’t make sense, and I questioned God’s authority. I wanted to know why God let millions of people die in World War II, and why he lets children starve to death every day. It didn’t make sense to me, and it was just a matter of time before I went from a curious child to an atheist, at about age 10.

I had all these questions, and God had no answers for me. Actually, I don’t blame God because he does not exist. By the way, I use the term “he” loosely. For writing purposes I had to assign a gender and I just went with the common impression of God being male.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out there is no God; not even a rocket scientist’s assistant or any other person for that matter. I understand people believe because it provides them with something to look forward to and maybe even a purpose in life, however irrational it may be.

That’s why it is called faith, I guess, but there was a time in our lives when we believed in Santa Claus. We had faith that some chubby old man brought us presents for Christmas. It is just as irrational as the existence of God, and most of us don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore.

We know now it is impossible for the old man to visit millions of homes in one night. With the kind of weight the guy is carrying around, he would have a heart attack on the second roof. Being presented with all the evidence, we lost faith, especially after we figured out that our parents would get us presents whether or not we believed in Santa.

To me, it is the same with God. I have no reason to believe in him. I’m not even going to support my argument with the help of the Bible. A brain-dead person could show by the flaws in Scripture.

For example, if Adam and Eve were the only people created by God, where did all the others come from? Last time I checked, most major religions were not big on incest.

It would be too easy to point to passages in the Bible to show it is all just a sham, that belief in God in most major religions is just a kind of afterlife insurance – “believe now, give money and help our cause and we promise you eternal life later.” Pretty clever, too, with all of us being afraid of death and with no proof that religion keeps up its part of the bargain.

It goes well with assigning guilt trips about having committed sins and then hearing God gave his only son so we could move on to a better place. It makes people like me, who do not believe, look like ungrateful asses.

Instead, I will make you think for yourself. It goes with the theme of the questions I mentioned earlier.

Let’s say there was a God who created the universe. This already does not make sense. If we are in fact the chosen few, and he created all this for us, why are there planets and stars billions of light-years away? What good are they going to do us? We’ll never get there. Did God think it was fun to make planets and just kept going?

Put yourself in his shoes. If you were to create something really neat, like an earth with all these creatures running around, wouldn’t you take care of it? Personally, I wouldn’t let all the bad things happen to humanity, and I don’t see why God, who is supposed to be all good and a great and righteous being, would let it happen either.

Sure, all you Bible buffs out there will point me to Genesis 1:28 where it says the earth is man’s dominion. Still, just because you put someone in charge of something does not mean they can do whatever they want. To illustrate my point, let me reduce the scale of my example a little bit.

Let’s pretend I have bought 1,000 mice and made them a really neat cage. I let them run around and have a good time. Then one day, this one mouse talks to a few others and tells them they are a group of supermice and they should go out and whack all the others. So these Nazi-mice start killing off a bunch of their peers.

Now, I, as their supreme being, who purchased them from a pet shop and built the cage, would just not stand for that. There is no way I would sit there and let my mice kill each other.

Or maybe one corner of the cage gets all the food and 20 mice get fat, while on the other side of the cage, hundreds of the others starve to death. Personally, as a supreme being with the power to put food wherever I want to, I would try to distribute it more evenly to prevent starvation. I guess if there is a God, he would disagree because never in the history of mankind have we had an equal distribution of resources.

So why would this great being let all these bad things happen to his own creations? I don’t know. I would be somewhat upset to watch from above and see humanity destroy my precious creation.

What would really piss me off, though, would be when all these bad things happen in my name. All the religious wars, persecution of innocent people or the attempt to hinder mankind’s progression (such as the medieval scientists who were burned at the stake) in God’s name. I would never tolerate anybody using my name to justify injustice.

And if God existed, I am sure he would not either.-Klaus Marre is a student at the University of Nebraska.