Wanderer: You are traveling a well trodden path. The questions you are grappling with can serve as the starting point for a very liberating and fulfilling experience. I was a Witness for most of my life, but there was always some nagging doubt (even when I served as an elder) about the way the Witnesses (and a majority of theistic beliefs) completely dismiss or ignore the vast body of scientific evidence regarding the "deep time" aspects of earth's history and the anthropological evidence for human evolution. We aren't so special...we are just another species that has appeared on the scene, for maybe a little while, maybe a little longer. If there is a good university nearby, go sign up for some geology classes and evolutionary biology classes--MAN, what an eye-opener--once you start to dig (no pun intended) for answers you won't be able to stop. The atheist can no more prove the non-existence of god than the theist can prove the existence of god (or even a spiritual realm inhabited by spiritual beings). Both positions are logically untenable. That being said, the human brain, as far as I can see, is the most amazing thing this vast universe has produced and it has served our species extraordinarily well. I don't think it is a stretch to say that our brains have enabled us to build our base of knowledge and civilization to unprecedented levels of sophistication (in spite of the mess we have made of many things) because humans have either consciously or intuitively employed the scientific methods of hypothesis, experimentation, and deductive and inductive reasoning to achieve what we have. The same scientific method(s) work just as well when exploring the atheist/theist arguments. After all, if you think about it, science really is a pure search for truth. So, weigh the evidence for yourself--what does it tell you? Most of the people I know who have been willing to free their minds from the fetters of preconceived ideas about why we are here and whether or not there is a purpose, have come to realize that on the continuum from belief/theism at one end to non-belief/atheism at the other end, the evidence stacks up pretty heavily at the atheist end. But, atheism is just as dogmatic as theism and it doesn't appear that there will ever be incontrovertible evidence that will settle the issue in one camp or the other. So, for me and my journey, I am left with the empirical evidence for what the cosmos, our earth and its geologic/paleontological story, and my mind tell me is logical --that this probably is all there is, that there is no life after death, that there is no god looking out for us, that it is up to us to solve the problems and create solutions to perpetuate our species. It was a very scary thing to relax and just let go of a belief in a benevolent god, but once I did it was an incredibly liberating and peace-inducing experience. For what it is worth, there are great groups of people out there, especially secular humanist organizations, that explore this kind of stuff in great depth and with great care and understanding.
