Why I'm an Agnostic

I'm no stranger to churches. When I was little, I attended services in a Protestant church. Pretty much all of my father's side of the family were members, inlcuding my great uncle, who was quite devout, a church elder and the director of the church's Sunday School.

And back in the Canada of the 1960s and maybe early 1970s, people were pretty much expected to go to church. It was simply the expected thing to do.

I haven't been inside of any church for years now and don't have any desire to attend the services of any church.

One reason why I don't know whether God exists is that I cannot verify God's existence with any one of my five senses.

Similarly, there is no independently testable evidence out there that proves God exists. To be able to rely on or make use of such evidence, it has to be accessible to one or more of your five senses.

A few try to argue for the existence of God by pointing to the Cartesian argument from design that states that the order found in the world that is seemingly drawn from an intelligent designer, is proof of a Creator. Still, there is no evidence that allows us to prove that Descartes' argument is valid.

When I see all the pain and needless suffering in the world, and the greed, the stupidity and selfishness, I have even more difficulty in believing in God.

Some try to argue this issue away by claiming that it's 'God's will' that all this suffering should, or must occur. Or they say it's due to man's inherent wickedness - i.e., 'original sin'.

But doesn't it follow that if man is evil due to original sin, he must be so because God created him to be so?

And I have still more difficulty with reconciling this with the argument that God wants to have a personal relationship with each and every one of us, yet allows the suffering to go on.

If it is true that God exists and we are all of his children and that God loves all of them, why does he allow them to suffer so? Surely a loving God would not want to see any of his creatures suffering.

The Bible tries to get around this by claiming that God allowed man to make his own decisions, yet people who neither cause suffering nor seek to cause it, suffer grievously.

Therefore, I cannot reconcile the idea that a loving, caring God co-exists with the massive suffering that goes on in our world. Only two logical possibilities exist in such a case: there is either a good possibility that God does not exist, or God is indifferent to the plight of his creatures and is about as helpful as an absentee landlord who ignores the pleas of his tenants for help.