At what point in my statement did I say I don't believe in God?
I have unshakeable, unswerving faith absolutely that there is a creator, that he/she/it exists, and is present and watching us.
There are two things I do NOT have: any kind of logically valid proof that I am in fact correct - and faith, no matter how profound, does not constitute a rational argument - or the colossal arrogance required to even HINT that I possess the capacity to understand the divine, its nature, or its master plan.
Again, I have faith that there is one; I simply have no way to know what it is. The evidence so richly laid before us indicates that the ultimate purpose in life of some people is to serve as such catastrophic fuckups that they inspire by negative example better behavior from the rest of us; simply living the best you know how is no guarantee that your place in the divine plan won't suck for you anyway.
...You should act in ways morally justified because they are morally justified, not because you owe some kind of debt to the creator.
There is ample evidence - although admittedly the best of it is really only clearly visible to physicists and biologists, which is why so many of them are true believers - that there IS a god.
This is one reason the entire "evolution versus creation" thing always angers me so much. You mean to seriously tell me that the faith of the very scientist who is discussing evolution and its mechanisms, isn't "as good as" your faith, despite the fact that you BOTH PRACTICE THE SAME GODDAMN RELIGION, because the scientist admits that God might just have created evolution too, and you - by "you" I mean creationists, I'm not singling anyone out here - think that the skeletons of dinosaurs were put here 5000 years ago just to fool us?
Avoid needless multiplication of entities - Occam's razor. The simplest explanation that fits the available facts is most likely the correct one.
Either God created life, endowed it with the means to change itself - which it demonstrably does, even in laboratory environments - and let it take its course, or God created a world, and a process that LOOKS like evolution, ACTS like evolution, produces the same RESULTS as evolution, but ISN'T, and supplied the world with tremendous quantities of fake "clues" just to throw us off and dick with us.
Seriously, use your mind. If it quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, water rolls off its feathers, it eats fish and aquatic plants like a duck, it waddles when it walks and flies in a v-formation, it's a fucking duck, ok?
Evolution exists.
No advocate of evolution has EVER claimed that mankind evolved from a monkey; saying "a man didn't come from a monkey because God didn't make it that way" is an irrelevant argument because it argues a point the scientists have never tried to make.
Have they said there was a common ancestor? Sure; that's not the same thing at all.
But see, this is the thing with religion.
I believe what I believe. My beliefs are different from yours.
...I would NEVER - not EVER - tell you that you have to convert to my way of thinking, or suffer in eternal torment. You, on the other hand, DID just tell me that, didn't you?
...Whose God seems to be the one that teaches love, huh? Try answering that question honestly; and if you can manage that, I'll throw a mirror up in front of you.
Ask yourself - really steel your guts, and ask yourself - if you honestly believe that your God is love, how can you believe that that love, and a place at his table, is reserved only for people with your special club card?
If God truly is love - and I believe that this is so - why would he be so sadistic as to create people who will never even hear your version of his word, in your theology dooming them to hell and eternal damnation? MY God would never do such a thing - in fact the only condemnation my God offers is that if you are so immured in hatred that you cannot hear Him, He waits for you to listen again. (Or knocks louder, which you may have experienced.)
A God of love would never create people for the purpose of torturing them, and that is PRECISELY what your theology says your God does.
I like mine better.
Your theology, frankly, can piss up a rope. I think you're a really sweet person, but my experience with your religion has pretty universally been negative, with few exceptions indeed; you telling me that I'm going to hell despite my faith because it's not the same as yours - and, I'll note, you don't even know what it is - is not one of those exceptions.
