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October 2, 2011
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Wes Side Stories: Why I am an agnostic
by Wesley Dugle Oct 2, 2011 6:38 pm
Wesley Dugle
One of my most poignant memories growing up was a little incident between me and a few of my friends during elementary school.
I’m not exactly sure how the conversation got to this but somehow my friends started talking about their religious beliefs and how they always go to church on Sundays.
I, being raised in a pretty non-religious, agnostic household, simply said, “I don’t really believe in God.”
Then all hell broke loose.
Suddenly my friends were furious with me and outright shunned me for a week.
Eventually they cooled off and we were all back to being friends again but it was a weird experience for me because it was the first time I really took notice of peoples’ beliefs about religion.
Throughout my life I never really considered myself very religious.
I’m not atheist for sure because I do believe that the world is so fantastic of a miracle that the universe couldn’t have possibly happened by coincidence.
The fact that we even exist is a miracle in itself.
But I don’t believe in the way organized religions view “God” or “gods,” depending on which one you talk about.
In particular I don’t believe in the way Christians and all the other denominations, view the creation of this universe through God.
There are too many contradictions with it.
With all the evidence we have of dinosaurs, ice ages and how old this planet really is, it astounds me that people out there still believe the world was created in seven days.
It baffles me that they can even tell me that on the first day God created light then made the light source on day four. Don’t you need the latter first?
On top of that, they mean to tell me the whole of humanity was supposed to sprout from two people who had only sons?
Sorry, I have read better fantasy fiction than that.
The Christian God just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, both in a scientific and in a social sense as well.
Christians have the belief that God gave us free will to believe however we want to believe.
Then they come right back and say we are supposed to devote ourselves to him.
Isn’t that a contradiction?
I like to believe that we are all in control of our own destiny and that a God or gods has no part in it.
But the Christian belief doesn’t seem to see it that way because they believe that God is involved with every good or bad thing that happens to us or “God’s will” as some proclaim.
Personally I think God’s will is a bunch of crap because all you have to do is look around the world to see that any “loving” God should be able to do a better job than this.
Seriously, all you have to do is look at Africa and the Middle East to understand that it couldn’t possibly be some God’s “will” to have this happen.
It would justify the deaths of million of people and for what reason?
Well, God works in mysterious ways, I guess because he won’t tell us for whatever reason.
It just doesn’t make any sense to me.
Look, I’m not trying to bash Christians as people here ­— their beliefs are their own and there is a lot of good philosophy in the Bible that I take to heart.
I just think that Christianity and most organized religions’ view on God is illogical.
The way I see it is when you look around the world you either think to yourself that God is either incompetent, doesn’t care or has no involvement with our daily lives.
There’s no way in my mind that a just and loving God would let such hate and suffering exist in this world.
I do believe that the world is a miracle and there may be some kind of divinity involved with its creation but the way Christians see it and generally all organized religion just seems way off in my view.
I say only we are in charge of our lives and our destinies and no God has any part in it.
The world is still, despite the carnage, a beautiful place and it’s amazing in itself to me, without the belief in a God coming from a book written thousands years ago.
One thought on “Wes Side Stories: Why I am an agnostic”
Ted Rudow III, MA on October 3, 2011 “The only Bible most people will read is the one bound in shoe leather.” Some say that what Moody meant was that most people won’t so much as open a Bible, so the only way they’ll hear the Gospel is if someone takes it to them. Others say he meant that most people form their opinions about Christianity and what it has to offer them not by reading the Bible, but through their interactions with Christians-through Christians’ personal examples, in other words. Possibly he meant both, because both are true.People need to hear the Gospel and have it explained, but they also need to see an example of someone living it. The words are necessary, but to be most effective, witnessing must go beyond words.