Why you don't believe.

Your right, I should not have said that. and that is not what I really believe. When i said that I was thinking about my mother.

But how I really feel is that, if you hate or judge someone who doesn't believe in god, I would consider you shallow minded.

I Apologize for falsely expressing the way I see anyone who does believe, as I have so many friends and family that do, and have great respect for all of them.

 

Extremism is never good, it always ends in debate/war.

To each man, his own.

 

It helps to settle the score of conflicting opinion and look for common denominator, mutually defined terms. Every word that we speak represents an embodied sensation. The word God in it's most reliable sense means that which is invoked.

 

Very good..

 

Have to say, that I am glad you didn't mean it the other way

There are people do believe in God who are some of the most intelligent and worldly people. I don't judge someone on their faith, but on whether they are a good person.

Hope, I didn't come off too abrupt!

 

For some who have a problem staying on-topic of the post, including the evolution of the OP, please stay on-topic.

Off-topic posts will be deleted.

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I grew up in strange times. My family can be classified as several different sub-groups of Christian so I was exposed to various, sometimes conflicting messages about the nature of God. Apart from having some personal experiences that made me seriously question the "goodness," "omnipotence," and "omniscience" of the Christian God, like the OP, I've seen so many variations in the way people express faith, differences that more often than not bewilder and/or offend others while simultaneously sustaining the indivdual, that I can never imagine myself taking the organized faiths seriously because I just know that someone somewhere has reached another conclusion through wildly different means that's just as valid to him or her. And I haven't seen any messengers from above intercede as arbiters, maybe it amuses them to watch us run in circles.

The one experience in my youth I remember most about the subject, was one that I still hold dearest in my heart and makes the most sense to me. My uncle once drew a crude-looking elephant on a piece of paper; he told me the elephant was God. Then he drew little circles on the elephant's body, on the rump, leg, ear, trunk, etc. The circles represented all the major faiths; they all have a tiny sliver of understanding about true nature of the beast, but to say that any one of them is better in its understanding is ridiculous.

The Christians love to stress the importance of a "personal relationship with God" and really that's what I do. I don't presume to know what the Divine is or is not, I choose to go with my instincts. At the end of the day that's all I have

 

As one of those shallow thinkers who finds God and Jesus central to his life, I reluctantly have to take issue with the idea that religion isn't dangerous or that a live & let live attitude is the best way to peace and harmony. We live in an era where particuarly fanatical, mean-spirited religons (i.e., Christian fundamentalists, Muslim fundamentalists, Jewish fundamentalists, Hindu fundamentalists, etc.) are gaining power and followers at an alarming rate all over the world. In the United States, these are essentially Pharisees in Christian clothing. They constitute the base of the Republican Party, hog all the media attention, and get treated with too much respect even by the Democrats, who are afraid of them. These are not 'live and let live" people. In my state, they're into trying to put the Ten Commandments in every public space they can, imposing all kinds of burdens on a woman's right to an abortion, and restricting gays from marriage, adopting kids, etc. I don't know what can be done, but sitting on our hands and looking the other way ain't gonna cut it.