The literal interpretation of the Christian Bible involving creation of the world and universe in six, 24-hour days by a God is rooted in impossibility from the start simply because of a few logical errors. First of all, according to the Bible, the Earth was supposed to have been created before the Sun. In Christian philosophy, God created the Sun, on the fourth day. The problem with this quite simply lies with the previous three "days". How could there of been three previous days when by definition a "day" is a rotational cycle of the Earth involving the rising and setting of the Sun! One with a logical mind can easily see how the Bible itself starts off with a great logical error and contradiction.
If one examines the genetic code of humankind and compares it with of a one mouse or any other mammal, it is seen that it is strikingly similar upwards of 90+ percent! Although this "tidbit" of information may be "shrugged off" by the non-scientist and religionist, it is indeed one of the most important single greatest evidences of evolution! The religionist has yet to answer why the human genetic code is 90% identical to the genetic code of a mouse! The religionist also has yet to answer why chickens and other birds possess an "unused" gene for teeth and tooth formation. The religionist has yet to account for the reason why whales possess a gene for hind legs. If these creatures were allegedly perfectly created at the hands of an invisible God, why do they possess wasteful unused genes in their genetic code?
Of course, the rational atheist has no problem accounting for these situations! It is expected that humans will share an incredible amount of their genome with other mammals simply due to humans and all mammals sharing a "recent" common ancestor many million years ago! Comparing the genetic code of a mouse to that of a human allows us to peer 70 million years ago into the Earth's past when mice and humans shared a common mammalian ancestor! Evolution splintered off one line that developed into the rodents. Evolution splintered off another line from this common ancestor that went on to develop into the primates and consequently humanity!
Man's purpose, "the reason for which we were designed and created by God", according to theological philosophy is simply to love God and to love our own selves. It is interesting to note, that if this is the reason that a God would create beings, it appears to be blatantly self centered. There is danger in one believing that their God is selfish or self centered, simply because it is self refuting for an all powerful, loving God to possess a negative human characteristic such as jealousy and selfishness. Yet, for some reason, most religionists never realize this contradiction and have no problem believing that their "god" is a jealous "god". What a way for a god to set an example!
The religionist will argue till the very end that prayer does indeed work, but yet still offer no evidence to prove that prayer works! Everything that the religionist boldly argues to be the work of a prayer, anyone else with common sense can come along later and see it to be totally the result of some natural process! Religionist arguments from the belief in prayer suffer from two major things. The first one being that as stated earlier, the belief in a prayer "working" automatically contradicts the nature of a "divine plan", unless of course if it was already preplanned out for you that you would "pray" at that point in time! (This type of scenario brings forth a whole bushel of other logical problems that were addresses in Chapter 10) The second pitfall of the belief in prayer may just be that it is a bold, self fulfilling prophecy that enables one to get through "hard times" by fooling your mind into knowing you are doing something that "might" help. The religionist puts the situation in God's hands because they momentarily realize they are powerless in a cold indifferent world.
One of the most important attributes about any claim of the supernatural is that those who believe in the supernatural only count the "positive" hits! Meaning that, if you ask people who believe in a god if prayer works, each and every religionist will perceive it to work 100% of the time simply because they instantaneously forget the times when it didn't seem to work! Or if they didn't forget, they will rationalize the situation to still be in God's favor either way by believing, "God knows best for me." This type of illogical, double-sided, all encompassing rationalization is further explained in the bonus section of the book. See the Ad Hoc Fallacy.
I firmly believe that the Religious Trap basically can lead to a type of psychosis, which should seriously be studied by modern psychology! It is amazing how the Religious Trap can destroy a person's common sense to such an extreme that they will readily chose to believe the unbelievable. The religious trap has the power to take a normal human being and instill a yearning for the fanciful so deep within them, that even when faced with a mountain of evidence, which destroys the fantasy, the religionist will only tighten his or her grip on the fantasy! In a situation where it is exposed that "gods" and miracles are not the answer, the religionist may accept that "god" did not factor in to that particular situation, but yet still believe that a God does exist!
The religious trap makes the religionist believe that for some reason, even if right before them there is concrete evidence against their belief in a God, that evidence is still "insufficient" to overpower the history of humans believing in a God! And for cases where thing are exposed to not be the work of a God or the supernatural, the Religious Trap has already instilled an overdose of wishful thinking and hope that it is still possible for a God and the supernatural to exist somewhere in reality, just not in that particular case that was exposed as false!
Faith is the irrational and almost psychotic belief in some proposition. These types of beliefs are always contrary to the overwhelming sum of evidence! For example, if I were to believe that the Earth is a cube and not a sphere, I would be forced to believe such only on the strength of my psychotic "faith". One could easily look at the evidence and come to the logical rational conclusion that the Earth and the rest of the planets in our solar system are indeed spherical and not cuboidal! Faith is the decision making tool of last resort and is characterized by a situation where all the evidence conclusively points to "A" and you, defiantly for no good justifiable reason want to believe "B". That is what faith is. It is ten steps below wishful thinking(interpretation regardless of the facts and evidential base) and not valid in any other aspect of life except for religion!
The religious faith based view on life would not produce satisfying results in any other aspect of life beside from religion. Meaning to say, none of us would want to go to the doctor and have the physician tell you, "you don't need a cardiologist, your just having severe chest pains because there is an evil spirit in it." None of us would want to bring our car to a mechanic only to find out that your mechanic will not repair it because he believes that it was God's will to have you stranded on the New Jersey Turnpike for 12 hours in minus thirty degree weather and he will not have anything to do with trying to alter God's plan. No parent would want the children to claim that "it wasn't me mom, it was Jesus and his friends who stomped mud through the living room." There isn't a legal system in the world that would find you to be "sane" if your defense was, "the devil and the four horsemen robbed and raped that woman, not me."
In science and in our daily life, we want real, useful, natural explanations. We don't want cheap superstitions and groundless worn out claims of miracles and a god. So why do some of us accept this outlook and believe in a god or religion? Religion and God are the world's biggest and longest running Rorschach test! Meaning that, one can find whatever they want to find in it and one can see whatever they want to see in it.
The Argument From Ignorance Fallacy: This fallacy occurs when a religious person argues that religion and God are true, simply because they have not been proven false. Or it may manifest itself as, "something must be false, because it can not be proven true". An example would be, "Without a doubt the Bible is the inspired word of God. Nobody can prove otherwise!" This type of fallacy is very successful in religion because it appeals to the believer's predisposition toward faith and "wishful" thinking! People who want to believe in the idea of an afterlife may be more prone to think for some reason that, the impossibility of scientific proof against an afterlife is the same as "proof" for an afterlife. (It is impossible to undoubtedly prove or disprove an afterlife unless you dies and come back to tell your friends!)
The Appeal to Misery Fallacy: This fallacy is similar to the above fallacy but is characterized by an attempt by someone to get a conclusion accepted based on sympathy and empathy. This is commonly used by the religious follower and may go as follows: "Don't you dare tell me that God doesn't exist, who do you think helped me get through my hardest times? Who do you think is helping me now cope with the terminal illness of my mother? God is!" Although heavily possessing empathetic and sympathetic inducing content, this is still a fallacy that offers zero evidence for the existence of a God. This is indeed a fallacy because even if a belief in something helps you get through hard times, it still does not mean that your belief actually exists.
Shifting the Burden of Proof Fallacy: This fallacy is second to the many questions fallacy in frequency of use. This occurs when someone tries to put the burden of proof onto the person who denies the assertion. It may go as follows, "These atheists do not think there is a god, what these atheists then have to do is prove to me that I should trust science and the scientific method!" This is a very common fallacy. The fallacy was committed in the above example because the atheist does not have a burden of proof! The burden of proof always lies with they affirmative or in our case, the ones who make the outlandish assertion that there is an invisible all-powerful God! They are the ones who have to prove their case! It is the same as someone proclaiming that there is an elusive 3-eyed monster in Southern New Jersey. There is no need for a skeptic to search the entire region of New Jersey to find this monster! Those who proclaim that this monster exists are the ones who are obligated to capture and display it or stop wasting everyone's time.