My standpoint on religion

i respect all religions and think they serve meaningful purposes in society, but i would personally describe myself as agnostic. i don’t believe that anything like a soul transcends beyond death. the idea of not existing after death is something i can really understand because i believe that when i die, there’s nothing. i also struggle with the concept of ***; i think it’s often used to scare people into behaving correctly, which means people are doing the right things, but for the wrong reason. i physically can’t believe in god, so it’s frustrating when people tell me i will go to *** for not believing in jesus. the way my mind works, i have to reason that something exists and can’t disprove it in order to believe it. i wish i could believe, and i’m jealous of those who can have faith without physical or reasonable proof. the bible has been translated so many times that it’s hard for me to trust that jesus’s original words exist today. i also find it difficult to have conversations with people who try to prove god exists using the bible, because that’s a circular argument, telling a nonbeliever that your religious text proves your religion is illogical, because if i don’t believe in your religion, i therefore don’t believe in your religious text. another reason i struggle with belief is suffering. if a god is truly all-powerful and all-good, i struggle to understand why we go through so much pain. i can’t get past the thought of reasoning that someone who does nothing wrong could die. if god is all powerful and all good then he could just step in but chooses not to. you could say free will, but god is all powerful, all knowing, all good so he could stop that. i also think religion is human made, which is a big reason i struggle with belief. i understand why early humans created religion, they needed ways to explain the world around them when they lacked scientific and generational knowledge. having a god to turn to for answers can provide comfort. but, as history has shown, many things that were once thought to be “god’s work” are now explainable through science. i also feel that attributing all good things to god can take away from the personal effort and growth humans put in to achieve success. for example, if you train and run a marathon, you deserve to thank yourself for the practice, effort, and time it took, not just god. at the same time, i think religion serves a genuine purpose; it gives people hope and something to look up to. i just don’t think it’s the path for me personally. on a scientific and philosophical level, i don’t think the idea that “every creation needs a creator” is necessarily logical. in daily life, we usually observe matter and energy changing form, not things appearing from absolute nothing. we also don’t know whether the same rules of cause and effect apply outside space, time, and physics, because that hasn’t been proven. that’s why the big bang theory makes sense to me; it explains that the universe was once extremely hot, dense, and in an early tiny state, and then space itself began expanding. some people believe god caused that process, which is why they see god and the big bang as compatible, but claiming “everything needs a creator” is still a circular argument, because then i could just ask, who created god?