Lex's Rants/2/OrganizedReligion

Maybe it's my agnostic ignorance showing up, but really.. What exactly is the appeal of organized religion, nowadays?

When I was younger, I used to be a Christian. Protestant, to be exact. While I wasn't really raised in an entirely religious household, I used to take the whole thing as it goes. Until I started getting older. I started asking questions, and realizing that there was no specific type of answer for my questions.

While it was easy enough to just attribute all of life's answers to God, it was also somewhat unfullfilling, considering how doing so relied on assumptions, and still left room for uncertainty. Certain stories that I used to know and believe turned into implausibilities to me, and soon after, my questioning turned into full-out doubt. I couldn't really call myself a Christian anymore, due to the amount of doubt I felt about the "facts" of the religion. For example... well, everything in the Bible, really! Things in real life that conflicted with what the Bible taught. For one, the lack of Dinosaurs in the Bible. D:

What was originally a blind following had turned into a certain kind of doubt, and as I held onto this doubt, I started applying it to the other religions as well. More specifically, the ones that just so happened to be connected to Christianity. The "Abrahamic Religions", to be exact. Judaism and Islam. Because if one was technically incorrect, the other two would be as well.

And I was wondering. I'm obviously not the only one who's had these sort of thoughts before. How many people exactly, get these sort of thoughts, anyway? How many people start questioning what they believe in? And of all the people who do end up questioning their faith, how religious do they consider themselves? Do even the ones who claim to be strictly religious sometimes have doubts about what they believe in? What about people who willingly convert from one religion to another? Do they not get doubts about what to believe in? Do they not question? And if so, what is it, that makes them manage to cling onto their beliefs, passing them on to the next generation? In a first world society, where information is much more accessible to us than it was back then, don't people even get that little feeling that something may be off?

Or is it just me, and a few others? If so, I just have to say. I see these people who hold on to their religious beliefs, and I sometimes wonder if I'm missing out on something. Or perhaps they are missing out on something?

And the most grating thing about it? It's that I will never know for sure.