by Frank Baugh

Created on: August 20, 2009   Last Updated: August 25, 2009

I think that I am turning into an agnostic. I have whistled in the dark long enough and preached to the choir long enough, but I have had a shift in attitude of late that has been creeping up on me in increments. Well, I really can't say that it has been "of late." It has been there to some degree for me for as long as I can remember, and I'm almost certain that all religious or spiritual people to some degree, even if slight, have a doubt. I have always had doubts. I have been assured by many very good Christians and clerics, including my own father who was an Episcopal Deacon, that it is healthy to have doubts. So there you have it; I'm out of the ecclesiastical closet so to speak. I'm afraid I might be an agnostic.

What exactly is an agnostic that I should think that I am one? A dictionary defines an agnostic as "a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience." Under that definition a lot of people are agnostics. Let's be honest: who really knows God? Even my favorite preachers who claim to know God claim that God is a mystery too big to be comprehended by measly human minds. God is too big for us to conceive of. Admit it! That's agnosticism!

I kind of equate belief in God to that of believing in ghosts: I've never seen one (that I know of) but I'm far from saying that there are no such things. I always find it funny when hardcore Christian types say there are no such things as ghosts when their very own disciples of Jesus thought that they were seeing a ghost when Jesus was walking on the sea.

And what is up with The Bible anyway? I have read it from cover to cover at least a couple of times and decided that it depresses me. I mean have you read the Old Testament? God was as mean as a snake to people.

For example what about Adam and Eve? God places them in the Garden of Eden with simplistic minds that don't know the difference between good and evil. Then God just so happens to plant a tree there thats fruit conveys the knowledge of good and evil and tells them not to eat of it. That's like leaving a loaded gun in a baby's crib! Why did God plant that tree in the first place? What purpose did it serve except as a dangerous temptation? God put it there on purpose! And, how could Adam and Eve be tempted in the first place? They didn't understand tempting or the difference of good and evil - that only came after they ate

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