I'll start out by saying that I've never been a devout Christian. The most I went to church was with my aunt as a child, and that was rare. However, if someone asked me when I was little, I would have responded with sure, I believe in God, I'm Christian, all that good junk.

I should also mention that I am young, only fourteen in fact, but I don't believe you should just reject this story over my age.

Then, a few years ago, I started having doubts. It wasn't necessarily that I lost faith completely, just some things bothered me. Suddenly, the idea of there being a place after death, a God that watches over us constantly, seemed a little odd to me. I had learned so much in science, watched enough specials, done enough of my own research, that...it just didn't right.

Last summer was when I officially gave it up. Actually, I went through a period of time where I was quite depressed, because the idea of having no conscious - no existence - after death terrified me. But all the while, the back of my head kept saying "Where is God? Shouldn't this be his signal to show me the way? To try and convince me that he is real?" But, there was nothing. As painful as it was, I spent a few months in depression with no real comfort except from my mother, who also has sort of the same views as me.

Then one morning, it just dawned on me. Suddenly, the prospect of having no existence, although is sucks, isn't going to be all that bad. It took me a long time to fit the idea that it won't matter to me anyways, so there's nothing to fear.

The idea of hell has never made sense to me anyways (I've had people warn me that if I don't go to church then I'm sentenced to go there). I mean, I can understand sinners going to hell - if I believed in a soul that remained after death, then I can certainly respect God wanting to cast the murderers and rapists into hell.

But the fact that God would just as easily cast millions of other people into that same terrible place, just because they were BORN outside of a Christian family (let's face it; if you're born into another religion, what are the chances of you converting?), is horrid. I feel like it goes against the idea that God loves everyong. He loves everyone so much that he's willing to send much of this Earth into eternal damnation because they were born in a non-Christian area?

That was my beef with hell. Heaven is kind of the same way, but back to the idea that I don't believe in an afterlife at all.

Science also has backed up my lack in faith. We have so much to deny the Bible at this point, if there is some kind of supreme being, it can't possibly this one that is mentioned in Christianity. I'm sorry, but I just can't believe that anymore.

Now, I am an apathetic agnostic, not an atheist. We believe that there is no way to prove or disprove the existence of any kind of supreme being - and if there is one, they don't seem to care about humans in particular. As much as atheists hate to admit it, they can't fully disprove God, no more than Christians can fully prove God. I'm sure there is something out there that defies the laws of our universe, and MAY have had a hand in our creation, however, I don't believe that supreme being singles us, one tiny species on one tiny planet, over everything else, and gives us special treatment.

Who knows, my beliefs might change; after all, I am only a growing teenager. However, until then, this is what I'm sticking with. Thanks for reading to those who sat through it all.

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