First off, I consider my self an agnostic. I'm not an atheist..... yet.

It's been a while since I've visited the "Wasteland of Wonders", but something drew me back to it. I also feel that I should start off by saying that I'm young by all standards. I'm only 20, but I'm having a mid-life crisis. Recently a lot of things have made me question practically everything in my life. Yes, it's part of "growing up", but I feel like to me, there's more to it than that.

I come from a very normal background. My Mom and Dad have given me nothing but love and support. My Mom is a Sunday school teacher at church. My Dad believes, but I've never been sure how much. I was baptized and essentially raised at church (Christian Reformed). I was always very active in church and I spent more time there than at home sometimes. But not because of my beliefs. Some of my best friends are people I met at church. I was there because my friends were there. And in 9th grade I went through the whole confirmation thing. You know, go through classes and at the end, stand up in front of the congregation with the rest of the class and basically say "I believe in all of this stuff. Now I'm an official member of the church."

Well, a few classes into this whole deal, I was having problems. I was asking questions about things and wanting more and more answers that just couldn't be given. On our little homework papers, when it asked "Who is your Lord and Saviour?", I left it blank. And I did the same for any other questions along those lines. I wasn't going to lie. And in a class of your friends, it's hard to be the one that doesn't agree with anything. But it drove me nuts that they were just doing it and didn't really believe it either. I know that one was doing it because he'd get a party and money, another because his parents were making him, and a couple others just because it was easier than not doing it. I couldn't accept that. I'm extremely lucky to have come from the church that I did. Everyone was very supportive and tolerant of my opinions and decisions. My parents were disappointed, but accepted it. They went to the pastor to talk to him and apparently he told them things would happen in time and not to worry about it. It was my choice to make. Cool guy. Still is. I still go to church occasionally, but not because of God. I go because of the people. I grew up with these folks.

So then I moved off to college. I start my junior year in the fall here at Hope College in Holland, MI. Now here's the ironic thing: Hope is a Reformed Church of America affiliated school. Yup, it's a Christian based private school. A bit odd that I'm here huh? Why? Well, because my church has strong ties with it and I came out to visit with a bunch of my church friends during high school. It really is a nice campus and some of the profs are great. There's just that darn religious overtone to almost everything. So why did I end up here? Because I was a slacker and didn't apply to very many schools and because they gave me money. And the way college tuitions are these days, $6,000 a year is A LOT! So I'm here and I've been questioning it ever since. This of course means that almost all of my friends here are Christians. Some of them are, for lack of a better term, die-hard Christians. As in, admit that you're not and you got a whole heap 'o salvation comin your way! My friends accept and respect my beliefs and I respect theirs. After all, they wouldn't be friends otherwise.

So now that I've told you my life story, I can get to the important part. Why don't I believe? Well, for most of the reasons everyone has already stated. Too many holes and contradictions, can't accept a "loving" god that kills everyone, can't accept "blind faith", etc. I really don't like the lemming phenomenon. You know, hordes of mindless lemmings marching off to their doom because no one used their own brain and said "Uh.... Maybe we should think about this for a sec." People use religion as an excuse to do things, an explination for things, and a way to ignore and cope with things. They don't look at what things really are. They rely on something else instead of relying on themselves. And how can a supposedly all'knowing and all'powerful God just decide to flood the whole planet because people had turned to evil and corruption. What, was it like "Oops. This batch didn't work out the way I'd wanted it to. Gotta erase the board and start over again."? Too many things don't make sense.

The problem is that I don't have any definitive answers. As an agnostic, I say "I don't know and neither do you" not "Yes there is" or "No there isn't." And right now, I'm on a quest for answers. I'm at a point in my life that demands that I make choices and come up with answers, which is very difficult when you're stuck somewhere like a school. All I want to do is take some time and drive around the country to make up my mind about things. My question to anyone who'll listen and take the time to help is this: Assuming that you're an atheist or an agnostic, you obviously know the questions, but how did you know when you'd found the answers? I have 30 million questions about everything, but the answers seem to elude me. So that's about it. I apologize for this being so long. And because it's not exactly a "Why I'm an Agnostic". Thanks for listening though.

-Mike