In my younger years I really didn't know whether or not there was a God.  I operated under the idea that if I lived like there was a God and after death I discovered in one way or another there wasn't, well, no great loss.   I figured if I lived like there was no God and I discovered in one way or another after death there was, then I could be in deep trouble.

I found that approach to be the most logical and reasonable.

I would even apply my reasoning to others who engaged me in religious discussions.  I would ask them to prove there was actually a God.   To a person they would tell me that I had to merely accept there was indeed a God.  I had to take it on "faith" that God existed.  Some would even quote the biblical verse Hebrews 11:1 as proof, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, (King James Version)"   Their contention was one just had to blindly accept the existence of God.  It was not all that much different than what I believed.

I have no idea how many times I heard or read that verse and those following and missed two very important words that told me I did not have to blindly accept the existence of God.  One was "substance" and the other was "evidence."  What it actually said was faith, or belief, comes NOT from blindly accepting but from substance - physical material from which something is made or which has discrete existence - and evidence - something that furnishes proof.

Hebrews 11:1 doesn't say we just have to accept.   It says we can know beyond a shadow of doubt whether or not God exists.

Some 35 years ago I met a man named John Clayton.   John is an Earth Science professor at an Indiana university who was born to practicing atheist parents and spent a good part of his life seeking to prove God did not exist.  John was the one who proved to me beyond all doubt that God does indeed exist.