Questioning the Existence of God and the Veracity of the Bible

I always had a belief in God when I was growing up as a kid. Although I wasn’t raised in a religious household, I was always told that there was a God who lived in heaven and watched over every single person on earth. Heaven was a place where all of the good people went to when they died; Hell was for all of the bad, evil people. That was basically the extent of my knowledge and belief in God. Outside of saying an occasional “now I lay me down to sleep” prayer before bed as a child, I didn’t perform any set method of religious worship. I just accepted what I was told about God being real. However, as I matured and moved into young adulthood, I started to question and analyze everything having to do with God and/or religion. And the more I questioned and analyzed, the more dubious and doubtful I became towards the existence of any God.

The main problem that prevents me from wholeheartedly believing in and worshipping any God is the absence of any valid proof as to his existence. I find it hard to blindly follow and/or worship something that has never been proven to exist in the first place. Now, I know that most religious people say that “faith” is all you need to believe in God; that if God could be proven to exist, faith would be unnecessary. And that’s true. But believing in and worshiping something that may or may not be true requires a tremendous leap of faith on my part that I just can’t perform. And one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of my lack of faith in any God is the Bible itself, God’s purported word!

How do we know that the information and writing within the Bible is true? God supposedly dictated to and inspired countless individuals throughout history to record his words and decrees into the book we know today as the Bible. So, we are to assume that the Bible contains God’s infallible words that have been recorded and passed down and preserved unadulterated through hundreds and hundreds of years. Totally untouched with all of its original meanings and decrees intact. I find that very, very hard to believe. Assuming that God did exist and that he did dictate and inspire his words to be recorded by a select group of individuals is one thing; believing that his words were passed down from generation to generation wholly intact is quite another.

Men, after all, are sinful and corrupt by nature, correct? At least that’s what the Bible says. So, are we to assume that all men are sinful and corrupt by nature except for those chosen men who were in charge of not only recording God’s word, but in who’s hands the Bible passed down from generation to generation? How do we know that the Bible hasn’t been altered or marred in some way? Is it possible that certain men with certain agendas throughout history tampered with and corrupted certain areas of text within the Bible to fit their own unique circumstances and times? It’s possible that the original writings and text of the Bible are completely different from what we know now as the bible. The opportunities seem to be endless for many types of nefarious deeds to have arisen in terms of corrupting the integrity and soundness of the bible.

As a result, the amount of blind faith that is required to believe not only in the existence of God, but to wholeheartedly believe that the bible is God’s infallible and unadulterated word is a level of faith that I can’t muster.