Undisputed criteria:
- The earth is old, the universe is old, the sun is old. These things are proven; there simply is no debate. Those who deny such things deny the evidence that is before them and which has been accepted by countless people smarter and more trained in science than those in objection.
- Those who continue to support the idea of a young earth and universe and sun, do so because ideology and religious superstition are put above objectivity.
- As time has gone on in the U.S. and people have become more literate and more educated in science, and in general, as people have become less superstitious, the arguments traditionally used to vouch for the existence of god or gods or spirits have eroded.
- Whereas all of nature and its mysterious forces were before attributed to God or the gods or other spirits, and are now attributed to the behavior of matter acting according to natural laws, in modern times God has been reduced to the explanation for the big bang or a random quantum fluctuation.
- As these arguments were picked away gradually, and as science more sharply conflicted with traditional religious ideas, those who militantly clung to the traditional ideas as opposed to science became fundamentalists and founded the fundamentalist movement.
- Because fundamentalist doctrine favored ideological and religious views over science, the element of anti-intellectualism and intellectual dishonesty manifested itself in creationist teaching.
Further criteria:
Science explains the natural world through theories with natural, verifiable tests. Superstition, such as that found in ancient nature religions and in witchcraft, are the backbone of religious ideas. Superstition is belief in a supernatural explanation for the behavior of the universe. Religion is organized superstition.
How can, or why would, anyone believe in a god, even a pantheistic god, when there is no reason to believe in one?
Conclusion:
There is no god. Science shows us that everything has a natural cause. Using gaps in our current knowledge (i.e. first cause argument) to show that god could exist, does not show that one does exist. There is no reason to believe that a god or gods or spirits exist.
Challenge:
Show me one single case of a supernatural event occurring, such as levitation. There is none.