Throughout the Attic and elsewhere in the Anti-Religion Webring, numerous articles and rants about the asinine reasons Christians assorted theists use to maintain their curious cosmology can be read. Most of said rants are humorous and sad. The humor is self-evident, but the sadness is because it is difficult at times for freethinkers to believe some of their fellow human beings manifest such a gaga enthusiasm for a God based on usually fractional and illusory "reasons."
Cardigan wrote about how some people find their faith strengthened when confronted by personal tragedy. But there is another side to that coin. It is to my utter chagrin that a great many nominal non-believers profess their personal atheism without any foundation whatsoever, usually based upon some subjective tragedy that happened to them at one time ranging from the grandiose to the trivial.
A few years back, I crossed paths with a guy I attended church with in my early teens when I lived briefly with my then "born again" father. "Kenny" and I retired to a bar to discuss old times, and as the evening wore on, we ended up on the sordid topic of religion. I was then an agnostic and asked Kenny if he was still a believer in the folklore we were taught in Sunday School. Kenny vehemently denied any theistic belief because his father died from a brain tumor when Kenny was 17. Kenny's prayers to the "Lord" were not answered requesting his father's recovery from the cancer that killed him. I was left a little speechless that a person would reject an entire school of metaphysics on the death of a loved one. Death comes to all in various forms. Kenny wanted to know what "happened" to me to lead me away from the evangelical Christian faith, and he was uninterested that my readings in evolutionary biology and various other works I read by Bertrand Russell, H.L. Mencken, Nietzche, and just utilizing basic common sense led me to my current un-belief.
Now if Kenny were with me presently, I would ask him if his father had recovered from his tumor, would he still be a Christian? Kenny's answer would most likely be in the affirmative, since his atheism was due to his padre's demise from said tumor. To me, people like Kenny are not really atheists. They are pissed-off theists. When personal tragedy strikes they tend to mock a belief in God, but when their personal lives are benign, God is one cool loving dude.
The late John Lennon was on record saying that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." Amen, Brother Beatle.
The meat of this article is to state that the known universe we live in is obviously not in Terran dwellers' best interest. Thanks to astronomy, we know that we live on a insignificant small planet in a jerk-water solar system on the outskirts of a galaxy 'midst infinite others. Our lives are really lived on borrowed time, and we should not base a metaphysics on personal setbacks or advancements.
God does not exist, because there is no reasonable deductive proof in a Supreme Being. If your dog is run over by a truck, your uncle is slain in a drive-by, you flunk out of college and end up working at Wendy's, it is due to circumstances and/or choices. It is not a divine punishment, nor it is a clear sign that there is not a God.
It is just this confusing thing called - Life.