I've thought about writing this for a very long time. It's been years in the making and over that time it has become increasingly something I have thought about. Here's the short version. I am no longer religious nor have I been for many years. This is after growing up as a kind of generic Christian, later becoming a Lutheran, still later being part of a Baptist Church and yet another Baptist Church, Then becoming part of a non-denominational church, and then attending several other churches over a period of a few years.
By saying I am no longer religious, I mean that I simply no longer believe in a God or gods. I am not claiming that no God or gods exist, just that I am not convinced that any exists. God or gods either exist or they don't, I just have not seen evidence that would convince me to the point of being able to convict a God of existing. Any God. All this means is that I now have a default lack of belief in something because I have not been convinced that it exists (rational thought process). In the past I believed because everyone around me believed and I simply thought that they knew something that I just accepted as being true without full examination.
Having taken a good hard look at the situation for myself, rather than trusting others, I find no convincing evidence for belief. When people cite evidence for the Christian God, it generally boils down to something said in the Bible which is a book that people claim "comes from God" without any supporting evidence that this is so. Then they claim that God exists because of some philosophical reason which was never why they came to believe that a God exists themselves. The philosophical reason, which is invariably flawed, simply has become the rationalization for the belief that they already had. The result is a poor attempt to prove that God exists that often starts off by assuming that God exists and trying to show that this makes logical sense (circular reasoning).
When all else fails what I hear mostly is that you just have to have faith. As it turns out, faith is just the excuse people use for believing something when they have no evidence that it is true (otherwise they would cite the evidence/reason(s) for their belief). Faith amounts to gullibility for believing something that is "too good to be true" and has no real supporting evidence for being true. Faith simply is not a reliable path to truth since you can just as easily believe something that is NOT true by faith as something that IS true.
I will pause to say the following. If there really was a God who is maximally powerful, omniscient, and full of grace and truth, I believe such a God would have the power to convince me that he, she, or it actually existed. Of course there are those who say God won't do that because it violates "free will." Nonsense. According the the biblical narrative the Devil himself absolutely would know that God exists and that didn't violate his free will. Also, the God of the Bible violated a lot of people's free will whenever it suited him. Knowing that God exists would simply give people a choice based upon knowledge, rather than giving them no choice (believe or go to Hell) based upon lack of knowledge.
Any God who depends upon only ignorant people believing in him, is not really a God (Excuse me, why does God need a Starship?). Yes, that is from a Star Trek movie, but it illustrates the problem of not questioning any agent claiming to be a God (a very powerful being was pretending to be God to get what he wanted - out of prison).
By the way, for what it's worth, I don't believe in Satan/Devil/Lucifer/Baal either. It's just another character in the same mythology. No I don't worship Zeus either and most likely neither do you for the same reason I gave up on the Christian God (also, not Allah, or anyone else).
So now everyone who doesn't agree with me is probably thinking I am some immoral person who does terrible things because I am without God to give me moral guidance. Sorry, but that is laughable once you actually read the Bible (Ex. 21 for example). No, there is NO excuse for the Bible (supposedly from God) telling you HOW to go about acquiring your slaves, how to beat them in an acceptable manner, how to own people as property and leave them to your descendants, and cheat them out of possible freedom. Oh, but that was in the Old Testament people will say. Well, guess what, slavery was treated as something completely acceptable in the New Testament as well. This kind of makes sense because the Bible says God is the same yesterday and today. Yes, God, as described by the Bible, didn't change because a "perfect" God can't change (even if he is perfectly wrong).
Perhaps you get the idea that I am mad at God and "just want to sin." Nothing could be further from the truth. I can't be mad at something that does not exist. That would make about as much sense as being mad at Voldemort from the Harry Potter books. Also, my sense of morality does not come from a mythological being and instead tells me when that being is acting immorally (commanding murder of men women and children on multiple occasions, drowning the world to fix a problem he created, and playing games with human lives like in Job). With regard to sin, that's about doing something against God which you can't really do if God doesn't exist. Regardless, no I don't run around doing evil things. Quite the opposite in fact. Am I perfect? Heck no. Neither is any religious person I have ever met either.
Frankly, even if the Christian God proved that he existed, assuming he was exactly as portrayed in the Bible I still would not worship him, her, it. That God is a travesty.
There, I've had my say and I won't harp on it. If you have any questions you can let me know, but I doubt that will ever happen. As I said initially, this is the short version and there is a lot more to say on the subject, but it won't be happening here. In the mean time I hope you all are recovering from what has been happening for the last year and a half. This certainly wasn't the way I expected to spend my retirement.
