By “God” I’ll mean here God as God’s conceived by the three major monotheistic religions: a being outside of the laws of nature who willed this world into existence according to some moral purpose and who plays a role in the unfolding of human history. I would offer a three-pronged argument against God as so conceived, and it’s a complicated one.

It first considers all the arguments offered for the existence of that being and analyzes how each of them fails to establish its conclusion. It then goes on and explains why, given human psychology, there is nevertheless an almost irresistible urge to believe. And lastly (and as far as I’m concerned this is the most important prong and can stand on its own), it looks at that unfolding human history, marked by the suffering of innocents, sometimes brought about through the actions of others, but also through natural processes. The intellectual gymnastics (known as theodicy) that you have to jump through in order to reconcile the suffering of innocents with the being described above (the attribution of free will will only take you so far) is so torturous and, ultimately, insensitive to the horror of suffering that the best conclusion to be drawn is that there is no God, especially given the first two prongs.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is a philosopher and the author of a number of novels, including The Mind-Body Problem and most recently 36 Arguments for the Existence of God.