Why I have sincere doubts about there being a God

Recently I have been requested (I think by my mom) to write about the origins of what a lot of my blogs have centered around lately, that being my strong doubts as to the existence of a God.

One thing I want to clarify is that my current disbelief is nothing tragic. It’s not a poor soul who lost his God and is lost in life. It wasn’t as if I witnessed a human die a tragic death and could simply no longer believe. I think it is a wonderful thing. It is my next step in development as a human. I no longer believe something I had to trick myself into believing. I now see what I truly think is the truth, and rather than tricking myself into believing it, I get to gregariously study life in an honest sense to learn more about this truth, and how this truth can help others. It’s no a poor me, lost my God, y’all should be worried about my troubled soul type of thing. More of a, I’d like to share with you what I think the truth is and how it can really help people out.

That said, the first reason I don’t believe is simply because I don’t believe. From the time I was old enough to comprehend the belief in a God on a higher level that Jesus loves me for the bible told me so, I always knew in the back of my head that I didn’t really believe it. In my later high school years I tried to get really into the whole youth Christian thing, going on a mission trip and telling others about my love of Jesus, now I realize, and I realized to some extent while I was doing it, that this was really an overcompensation for the guilt I felt because of my doubts. Whenever I had a doubting thought, or heard some new idea that conflicted with my beliefs, that couldn’t be reconciled with what I thought I should believe I felt guilty. Whenever I had this guilt I would go like a criminal into public service to make up for it. What I realized as I got older is that I wasn’t really committing any crimes. I had nothing to make up for, and should not feel guilty for having evolving beliefs. I realized I didn’t want any part of a system that would cause me guilt for growing as a person. So to summarize, guilt and that whole system aside, I simply didn’t believe in it, couldn’t convince myself to believe it, and realized that if I had to convince myself to believe it when everything else I was starting to believe was contrary, without any substantial evidence for why I should convince myself to believe, WELL, I just don’t see why I’d believe that.

Now, to clarify again, what I am renouncing here is any established religion’s take on a higher power. I am not saying that there are not forces out there that humans do not understand; I am saying that we simply do not understand them, and that I have strong doubts as to whether these not-understood things can be explained by a God. I am also not ruling the idea that a conscious super-human being could play some role on those unexplained things, because to do so would be to rule out a solution without substantial evidence to do so. I simply wish to proceed with my beliefs as a logical thinking scientist would. Example: If I am trying to cure cancer, and there is a bunch of evidence that this new chemical treatment can help, and I also have a colleague that says a voice told him that the cure is in prayer. I am going to give 90% of my energy to researching this chemical treatment and maybe some afterthought to this prayer idea, simply because it makes sense.

All of this really brings me to my second big reason I don’t believe. I simply think it’s a thing of the past. For thousands, possibly millions of years, humans have been attributing anything they cannot explain to some supernatural being.
Thunder in the sky? –Zeus.
No rain for a month? -Gods must be angry
I won a battle? – God’s are smiling upon us
Life seems too complex and beautiful – God must have made it
My friend with cancer got better – must have been all that praying we did
My friend with cancer didn’t get better – God decided it was his time
Humans benefit from being good to one another – Because God says so
Sometimes life is horribly cruel –God works in mysterious ways.

What amazes me is that though we now have explanations for thunder, weather, forces of nature, evolution, the way disease progresses, battle strategy, sociological studies etc. that provide more logical and evidenced reasons for why all of these things happen, we still continue to attribute the things we have yet to explain to a higher being. The number one thing being death; which I won’t cover here. I think those times are simply behind us. Science, logic and research cannot yet fully explain anything, and strictly speaking even if we think we have a complete solution, science always holds that it can be disproven. Yes, it is scary to go into a world without knowing what this world is, but how will we ever discover if we have a belief system that makes us resistant to new discovery?

A metaphor I thought of yesterday (I like metaphors) is this. Say you are going for a trek through some woods; you have to get to the field on the other side. The first man goes in and his guide tells him, these woods are good, there are definitely no bears. The second man goes in and his guide tells him, there are just tons of bears everywhere, and they are super hungry, will probably eat you within a minute. The third man goes in and his guide tells him, hey, these woods are probably good, but it doesn’t hurt to be wary of bears. Whose guide gave them the best advice? Your opinions may differ, but for the purpose of this metaphor I’d say the third man. The first man is going to boldly walk in, and if there are bears, he’s going to never see it coming, bear is going to EFF HIM UP. Second guy is going to go in there all super cautious, take forever getting through those damn woods because he thinks bears are everywhere, if there are bears, he’s probably going to stand a good chance, but it won’t be an enjoyable journey. The third guy is going to walk, with a chip of caution on his shoulder. If there are bears he’ll stand a better chance then guy 1 and if there aren’t he wont be held up and as fearful as guy 2.

Now, I know what you are all thinking. If there aren’t any bears it’s best to be guy 1, he walks through with a blissful mindset and gets to the other side the easiest. He’s got faith and unquestioning “truth” to guide him. I’m sorry but I will always live by the mentality of being cautious, not overly cautious, but not being oblivious to danger. It just makes sense. You tell me right now that if you see a dude walking naked and blindfolded into some woods you’ve heard were bear infested you wouldn’t stop him and tell him he’s being an idiot.

So simply I am tired of progress and human understanding being held up by a belief system that thinks it understands everything already. A world that thinks it has an explanation for everything in the world no longer has a reason to be interested in the world. I am tired of people doing what they have for thousands of years an attributing the unknown to a higher power that is equally unknown. Why can’t we be brave enough to simply say, “Hey, I don’t really know why that thing does what it does, and that’s kind of scary, but damn it if I’m not going to do my best to figure it out”

Isn’t it far more beautiful to think that life spent billions of years coming to be the beautiful thing it is now? Isn’t it more beautiful to believe that a reason we should be good to each other is because being good to each other begets goodness, rather than because a big scary guy says so? How wonderful is it that we now live in a world where not everyone will die from the flu, not because we are performing silly rituals, but because we sought to further understand human physiology and how the flu operates within it? Isn’t it a more beautiful world where we can accept people not despite of our beliefs but because of our beliefs? Where there are no obligations to an unknowable being to like/dislike certain people or things. I now only have myself, my species, my planet, and life-itself to which to answer. No longer do I have to think, would a God approve, but only is this good for me and for life? It’s liberating folks, the outlook is more challenging, but has such brighter prospects.

A final request, if you share these beliefs, don’t be afraid to share them. You have just as much right to let others know what you think the truth is, as they do you. I’m not saying evangelize, but don’t be ashamed of them. I think they are something to be proud of.

I’ll leave this with one of my favorite excerpts from Atlas Shrugged.

By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: 'Who am I to know?' -he is declaring: 'Who am I to live?'

and a response from Richard Dawkins (who I think is a bit too atheist) when asked "what if you are wrong?"
Dawkins replies -"What if you are?"










This is just the tip of the iceberg folks, I love discussing this stuff, challenge my beliefs, it's the only way they'll grow.