Welcome to agnostablog

Welcome to my blog!! This being my first post, I'd like to explain a little more about the purpose of my blog and my reasons for starting it.

To put it bluntly, this blog is about faith -- well, rather lack of faith. This blog is a place for me to post thoughts and questions regarding religion. Currently, I would consider myself an agnostic, so most of my posts will be related to this topic; hence the title. However, I do not want my blog to be exclusive to only people that doubt the existence of God. Quite the contrary. I am actually very interested in the theist/deist perspective on my posts. I would like this forum to be a free, civil exchange of ideas between myself and readers, both theist and atheist.

Perhaps you're wondering how I became an agnostic? I was raised a Methodist until about the age of 13. Although I went to church and felt like I understood my faith, it never really took root for me. I never quite felt that I was hearing truth. Don't get me wrong, there were times when I definitely felt more certain of my faith, but for the most part I felt doubtful. As I grew into my late teens and early twenties, I found other religions, especially eastern religions, to be quite fascinating. It was interesting to me how different philosophically they were than Abrahamic religions. I still believe in much of their philosophy today. However, as a religion and an explanation of the world around us, they fell as short as other mainstream religions. For a long time after that, I considered myself a deist. I felt pretty sure that a God existed but I felt that he left people up to their own devices. I felt this way mainly because almost all religions believe in a God, yet they all portray Him differently. I figured that there had to be some truth to God's existence. However, I then began to question the existence of other things such as Heaven and Hell. And if I couldn't pinpoint which religion that the official "God" supported, how could I ever expect to do what He would consider to be right and just. How could I get to Heaven and/or avoid Hell? I later realized that I was trying to rationalize existence using an irrational method. How can I try and explain the natural world using an invisible, supernatural means? Once I understood this, I was able to read religious texts, such as the bible, objectively and in this light, it seemed absolutely absurd. This is not to say that I am not open to possibility of the existence of God; hence my careful choice of agnosticism. But I see no reason to believe in God for lack of a better explanation of the world and its origin.

Again, thank you for looking at my blog and I look forward to making future posts and hearing the thoughts of readers.