A Rational God

Technically I'm agnostic; I can't say for sure that there is no god, and am therefore open the existence of one.

The distinction is uselessly pedantic, however - I am only open to the existence of a god because I can't be certain that a god doesn't exist. I still choose to believe there is no god.
I feel it's an important point to make, since it's effectively the same application of faith everyone else makes - nobody knows they're believing the right thing (which is a significant facet of faith), and so technically, they're open to the existence of a different god, an additional god or no god - but it's the choice you make that defines your faith. Otherwise we'd all be agnostic.

What is agnosticism then?
We could clumsily refer to it as being a personal choice to not apply a specific faith - you're open to any of the possibilities, but choose not to select any of them.
I have, in the past, uncharitably described agnostic friends as being "faith lazy", but really not allowing one's faith (or atheism) to be a defining characteristic of oneself doesn't lift any of the human responsibility to convey oneself in a moral and ethical way throughout the world.

Note that each person's definition in this area tends to differ - terms such as "strong atheist" or "gnostic atheist" (that is, one who knows that there is no god), weak atheist, and agnostic tend to be used to mean different things to different people. I guess it's enough to say that the above are my definitions, and I'd like to think I've described them enough for people to get the gist, as opposed to just saying "I am an atheist".

All that rubbish aside, I thought I'd take a moment to flesh out why I've chosen to believe in no god, rather than to simply refrain from making a choice.

I guess for myself, at this point in time, I have some qualifications for god - I require god to be omnipotent (that is, effectively capable of doing and knowing anything), which is probably a non-controversial attribute. I also require god to be rational, in a way that is at least understandable in a human capacity. This is not necessarily so non-controversial.

A theologian will probably take issue with the concept of restricting god to human rationality, but it might help if I mention that this restriction is for the good of simplicity - if god is beyond human rationality, then what good is it arguing the finer points of what such a god wants from us?

Put another way - if god is beyond human reason or rationality, then god is beyond the ethical and moral constructs that many of us are so quick to assign to his will.

Consider this scenario - bear with me, because I'm going to lay into the CARM people a bit, and they probably don't deserve it.

Let's say a man is the chief of police, and he knows a gang will be headed to some honest citizen's house with intent to destroy and rape. Let's also assume that said chief of police has a window overlooking the action. He sees the gang threatening the owner of the house and he sees the owner of the house toss out his own daughters to be raped.

Such a chief of police is a dick (to say nothing of the father). By human standards - of almost any period of history - someone who has the knowledge and power to prevent something like that from occurring and doesn't has failed in their humanity.

But wait! CARM has the answer for these kind of things - people are dicks, but god tolerates it.

This fails the test for my requirements for god one way or another: if you subscribe to the "god knows better than us, and it's part of his plan" philosophy, then god is still a dick; he needs to have a better plan than one where people get raped. He is not rational by human standards, and is as at fault as our hypothetical police chief.

There is another possibility, and that is that god is bound to operate in this way - it's part of his plan, because he can't execute it with no injustice. In which case god fails the omnipotence requirement.

Certainly it's still an oversimple argument, and anything like this becomes complicated by discussions of free will and so on and so forth. But the fact remains, we can imagine a world better than the one we've got, so as far as I'm concerned, an omnipotent god could have delivered that world. And if an omnipotent god did not do so, then such a god is a dick, and I refuse to even bother to give him my faith - what's the point?

So there it is - I can't see, based on the evidence available to me, that a god can exist who fills both my requirements, and I therefore choose to reject all possible gods, opting instead for the mild absurdity of atheism.

What would it take to change my mind regarding my belief in god? Is there some evidence that could be provided to help me reconcile a rational and omnipotent god with one who would allow injustice and suffering?

Well no - but that said, I am as yet unable to imagine such evidence, and if I could even think of it, it'd probably soften if not alter my view. But at the present time, I cannot.

This is, of course, entirely human - the concept of evidence when applied to faith is, rather perversely (and, somehow appropriately) irrelevant - it'd be hard to imagine some kind of evidence which would change the faith of any of the world's theists, and to be honest, I'd be disappointed if it could. That's sort of the point.