I’m an agnostic atheist.

I saw a lot of pain and hurt caused by the church. People raped by their pastor father and grandfather hiding behind religion. Pastors covering up heinous acts in their own churches and being elevated to positions of power. Constant pedantic infighting, subjugation of women, shunning of others, etc.

None of these instances are necessarily reflexive of errant doctrine rather than evil people, but it did open my eyes to look a little deeper. That reveals things like traditional missions work being used, not for spreading the gospel, but for self aggrandizement/pity and with the effect of westernization rather then genuine converts; biblical inconsistencies calling into question the belief of intrinsic inerrancy; the use of biblical writings as a cudgel rather than a guidebook for ones own life; and the purposeful, blatant misinterpretation of scripture to “prove” preconceived notions (i.e. 1 Corinthians 6:19 being used to mean smoking is a sin rather than as a justification for why one should not sleep with a prostitute as it actually means).

So what do you do when so many people around you who claim to believe in the literal interpretation of scripture don’t actually act like they do? You start finding out about the world.

• Amino acids have been synthesized in a lab
• Protocells have been synthesized from amino acids in a lab
• Self replicating proto-cells have been synthesized in a lab
• Multicellular clusters have been synthesized from traditionally monocellular life forms in a lab
• Complex multicellular lifeforms have been observed developing additional characteristics in multi-generational lab studies
• Fusion of human chromosome 2 compared to other great apes
• Impossibility of water volume to support a global flood
• Robust geographical evidence of an old earth
• Robust fossil record
• The (actual) historical and anthropological record of the Jewish people
• The biblical stories being direct copies of existing stories from other religions
• The evolution of monotheistic interpretation of biblical gods from the more traditional polytheistic interpretation that was practiced around the time the Bible was being inscribed

At some point you have a choice, accept all the evidence before you that the world is old and life evolved over a very long time and religion evolved along with people and society, or you reject the evidence of your eyes and the opinion of experts who know more than you and bury your head in the sand. I couldn’t reject what was provably and evidently true and that was that.