Why are we here?

Why are we here?

It's 4:00 in the morning and yet again the midst of another sleepless night. Life is such a roller coaster... It's a fun ride, but it's full of ups and downs. Right now i'm going through a loop, one of confusion. Some of my family and friends from the past are no longer alive; Where did they go? My life is slowly approaching the half way point and I'm still not sure what I'm here for.
I'm not looking for sympathy, in fact I'm a very happy person... I'm just looking for answers.
Is there a God?
I'm too much of a logical thinker to believe in God. It simply doesn't make since to me. Science makes since because it is full of logical proven explanations. The bible, the stories, I see no logic in any of that. Some people are willing to just accept it but I can't. I cannot believe in something that I can't see, can't feel, can't smell, touch... I just can't. My dad was a very strong believer in god, he preyed for me every day and night. He tried hard not to push his religion on me but he wanted to "save" me so bad until the day that he passed away, he tried hard.
I have to ask.. If there is a god then why would he let little children die of cancer? Why did an entire family "three generations" get killed in a van on the freeway a while back just because someone was in a hurry to pass? Somebody explain this to me please!
Another thing... If God is perfect then why did he create us imperfect? If he created us perfect then we wouldn't sin.. It's a fact that we were created imperfect. Were we setup for failure from the big man himself?

Say I write a computer program to randomly pick a number either 1 or 2. Then it will pick one of those two numbers every time guaranteed! So I'm happy when it picks number 1 but I'm mad when it picks number 2.
When it picks number 2 I will take a large hammer and smack it on the keyboard. Sounds kinda dumb doesn't it... Why? Because I wrote the program. We as people can randomly pick more then a simple 1 or 2. But we still can only pick with in the list of limitations "programming" that was created in to us .

My questions could go on forever... If you blame all the bad things in this world on the Devil then I will ask.. Didn't god create the devil? And then kicked him out of heaven? Well if the devil was so bad that god didn't want the devil up there with him then why would he allow the Devil to roam around down here causing harm to us? (his precious kids).

Here's another one.. Believe me I'd love to hear the answer to this riddle!
God says that if you don't believe in him and follow him then you will burn in hell for eternity (eternity) because he told you to believe in him. Okay... If you tell your child to do something and he chooses not to do it will you spank him for it, not once, but repeatedly every day for eternity? Were all gods children right? Even the naughty ones! To me eternity sounds like a bit of an over punishment for the wrong doing that may be done during our extremely short time on earth.

I remember when I was a kid hearing a story about how we humans were trying to build a tower to heaven and God got bent out of shape about it and punished us all by spreading us out and giving us different languages or something... Perhaps that's what happened to the twin towers.. Okay that wasn't very funny!
"Lord I apologize for that twin towers comment and be with the...." -Larry The Cable Guy C2004

On several occasions I wanted to fake it just to make my Father happy, but then I got to thinking... What if there really is a God? ...and what if I fake it until the day that I die then I would go to hell right?
That sure doesn't seem fair. If there really is a god then wouldn't it only be fair for him (or her) to let everybody know that he/she does in fact exist? Then people could either serve or say to hell with it. (No pun intended!)

Let me repeat some of the answers that I've got so far from "religious people"...

"you just have to believe" How can I believe in something that I do not know exists? I can pretend if that helps?

"you have to study the bible to believe" What bible? Which one? What religion? There are over 2500 religions out there and each of them believe that they are the right one. To me, this means that even if one of them were the right one my odds are 1 in 2500 of picking it! 1 in 2500 of a chance of having eternal life! Those aren't very good odds!

"your closed minded" I'm not trying to be, I really want to believe in God but for crying out loud God if your out there then show yourself!

"you have to search for God, prey and ask him.." Seriously now, do you think I haven't tried that?

Another funny thing that I noticed about religion... Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that if there was truth at one time then it wasn't preserved very well. Seems to me like 2500 different people must have looked at it and said to themselves "I like that, but this doesn't fit my needs" so they simply edited everything to fit their lifestyle and called it a new religion. How convenient! Then they recruit followers. I believe that this has happened about um... 2500 times.
And here's where it gets really confusing... It breaks down even farther... Still with me?
Check this out....
Now when followers chose the religion that fits their needs then they filter it some more by following some parts of the particular religion and ignoring other parts. It's a pick and choose kind of thing. You know like they will live together unwed and have sex but they'll um.... they will stop using foul language and um.. no more looking at dirty pictures.

I may offend some of you by what I'm about to say but it's my blog so if you don't like it then stop reading it.
Until recently I believed that religion was a crutch for the weak minded, not making fun of the weak minded but you can tell weak minded people anything and the will likely believe it. Specially if they are raised to believe it because their parents raised them too. To me, that is programming!
Well I do not believe that theory anymore. I'm having friends that I feel are equal to or perhaps more intelligent then myself turning to this so called "God" possibility. In a way this gives me hope because I think that if they are as logical and intelligent as I am and they believe... then they must be seeing something that I don't see and this makes me want to try harder to figure out what it is that they are seeing. So when friends turn to god (the ones that don't turn their back on me) it gives me hope that they might say or show me something that makes perfect logical since and that, in turn, may help me believe. So far it hasn't happened and I refuse to be programmed in to religion but I try to stay open minded also.

Your probably asking yourself why in the hell is John talking about god? It's simple; I've just realized that yet another friend, a best friend has now turned to this so called God. This friend of mine made more money in a month then I make in a year, and my kids aren't missing meals if you understand, he has all the toys too. But this friend is "was" in the adult industry; he shot photography for many of the big boys like playboy. He was in a business that I see nothing wrong with because I'm not religious and I feel that there is no shame in nudity or the production of such content. We were put on this earth naked were we not? Honestly I have no idea (lol)
My friend just walked away from all that money and is in the midst of a total change of life. I simply do not understand it no matter how many times he tries to explain it. I guess I'll just have to keep picking his brain.

One more thing before I end this boring entry... It just occurred to me that I may be writing this out of pure greed (lol) People around me are eating candy, it looks good and I don't know where they are getting it.. It's just not fair... Know what I mean?