Opinions and conclusions about Religion and God.

Guaranteed to surprise no one:1) There's probably no such thing as God, or god, or any gods.2) Religion stems from the fact that, in a busy day, people don't have time to puzzle out all the big issues. Religion is a way of kind of skipping to the end of the novel - substituting someone else's mental labor for your own. And, hey, who doesn't do that? I only start to have a problem with it when people refuse to ever engage their own thinking process on any issue that they think their religion has covered.

I'm sorry but you're not making a lick of sense. Yeah, sounds like you're definately hitting some kind of pipe...

Challenges you how? Challenges you, as it did me, to replace what you figured out about the world with what they told you was true? Do those answers come from your own life experiences, or by opening the Bible?

You really think that's an uplifting message? I can't think of anything more disheartening - dehumanizing, even - than the idea that all this doesn't matter at all, not even as a test. And that Mother Theresa and Adolf Hitler rub elbows in the same heavenly strip joint.

What's the name of your church?I ask because I suspect you're thinking that my experiences in church happened in one of those stuffy, olde-tyme-religion churches that brooks no disagreement from established dogma.That's not the kind of church I went to. The church I went to was a church that said stuff like "we're here to challenge your beliefs", "we're not here to tell you what to believe", "don't check your brain at the door", "we don't judge people", "we're about community", "church isn't just for Sunday", etc.None of that was true, though. Oh, sure, they did a fairly good job of making it look like they were putting all that into practice, but at the end of the day, that church:1) was located miles outside of the town
2) was deserted except for Sundays and holiday services
3) judged people
4) told you what to believe
5) was only interested in challenging your beliefs if your beliefs differed from what the church said was rightetc. In other words, I'm very aware that there's a lot of churches that are telling people that this church isn't judgemental or dogmatic. What I'm here to tell you is that the fact that people are walking right out of these churches and onto internet discussion forums like this one to tell us evolutionists that we're wrong because the Bible says so, and that evolution is an evil belief that will send you to hell, and that gays and women who get abortions are abominations, all proves that these churches do exactly what I've been saying they do. At least the stodgy olde-tyme churches are more upfront about it, and don't try to hide it behind a facade of phony progressivism.

My brother!

Lol, no. It was my intention to greet you as my brother, or maybe as my sister, or as a kindred of some kind, for you expressed a view almost entirely congruent with my own.