AHHH shit.... I went and did it.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend to be an expert on religion or even try to act like I have the vocabulary to explain what I think of the whole god vs. No god argument. What I think is simple - you either believe or you don't. If you are a person that relies entirely on science to explain the world and life and everything else then that's fine. You not only have the right to feel that way, it is probably a good way to look at things. There is absolutely nothing wrong with believing in facts and facts alone. Anyone that would argue against setting your beliefs based on hard scientific evidence of how things came to be is simply scared of the truth. That's a big word that doesn't get used often enough in this argument. Science = Truth. There is no way around that. For that reason, I understand Atheism and respect those people. I think it is absolutely silly to right off someone who doesn't believe in God as someone who lacks passion or is lacking faith. They just put their faith in science.

But, and this is a big but, it is a bad idea and even a little wrong to tell someone that they are wrong for having faith in something that they can't see or prove exists. I personals think that religion is comparable to a gun - It can be used for good and usually it will be used for good, but, for the most part, it is the cause of so many problems.

See, here is where I am stuck in the middle of the road.

I hate religion, especially Christianity because there is no group, in my experience, that is more hypocritical...and I don't mean all Christian people...I mean the people that lead Christian churches and the people that go out into the world and try to push it onto everyone else.... but I love God and believe in him.

I think it is absolutely horrible to see someone take their kid that has some sort of terminal disease to sites where alleged miracles happened expecting their own miracle...and putting all of their faith and belief into the idea they will get one.......but at the same time I believe that miracles do happen.

I do think, though, that religion does serve a purpose. I think that it is wonderful that people can go to a place and feel like they belong...that they are sharing something special with people. And if that gives them the strength to make it through another day and be a productive person then I am all for it....The problem is that too often they use the word faith as a synonym for the word fact. I understand that in order to believe in God you have to have faith....but when someone is approaching life and the universe from a factual stand point you can't just say something like "it is because god said it is." well, ok, that's cool if you want to believe that, but seriously.... no one on this planet has ever really heard god's voice. no one has ever really gotten a hand written note from god. Again, I BELIEVE IN GOD. I have faith... but, I don't blame or condemn those that don't.

Was Jesus the only son of god? Well, in most churches we are taught that we are all god's children. So no, I don't believe that he was the literal son of god. In fact, if you want to use logic in decoding the whole story of Jesus it isn't as supernatural as it was made out to be. Was he put into Mary's womb by God? Probably not... He was probably the product of premarital sex and written off as an immaculate conception. Was he actually able to make blind people see? Well, if you are naive enough to take the bible literally, then yeah....but maybe that was just a prettier way of saying,"he made people who were lost and had no faith find their way and believe again."
Did he make people rise from the dead? Well, again, if you take the bible word for word as truth then yeah...but it was probably just a poetic way of saying that he brought people who felt there was nothing else to live for back to feeling like life was good. That there was something to believe in. The bible was written in a language that doesn't exist anymore (Aramaic), translated into another language that doesn't exist anymore (Latin), and into dialects that aren't used anymore up to modern English and all other languages. Men did the writing and the translating. You ever play that game telephonbe in elementary school where the teacher lines you all up at the front of the class in a straight line, whispers something into the first kids ear, that kids passes it on and so on until it gets to the last kid....It never ends up what it started as. I'm sorry, but if its like that over minutes in one language....2000 years......many languages.....c'mon.

I believe he existed. I believe he was every bit the amazing man the bible made him out to be - but I don't think he was a heavenly being. I don't think he was anything more than a man. The things he said and did were no different than Martin Luther King. MLK wanted his people to be treated equally. He was against violence and told his people to turn the other cheek. He went against what was accepted as just the way things were as far as segregation and other racist things. He made some white people understand....he also divided our government. Half thought he was crazy and dangerous and the other half were glad he was saying what no one else had the balls to say. They both knew that they would die one day for not only believing what they believed but for talking about it. I'm not saying that MLK was the second coming...but they were the same kind of people, they just lived at different times. You put MLK back in Jesus' time and vice versa, you will probably get the same result. They would probably both be killed. Now, if Christians don't think that MLK was the second coming, in fact, they probably think I am crazy for making the comparison....they can't say that Jesus was the "messiah".

If you think about it from a scientific point of view....people should have way more faith in MLK than Jesus. There was television, radio, and accurate records of his speeches and his actions. We know who he was and what he did. There is no disputing that.All we have to go by as far as Jesus goes is what someone wrote, I think, no fewer than fifty to one hundred years after Jesus had been crucified.

AGAIN, I BELIEVE in GOD. I am simply bringing up questions that I think are reasonable.

You can make the argument that Christianity isn't something you can do alone and I agree. Christianity is a religion and religions are celebrated in large groups...spirituality, on the other hand, is a different story. That is about as individual a concept as you can find. God is to YOU what he is to YOU and he is to ME what he is to ME. You can't get any closer to God than I can. I can't get any closer to God than you can. An atheist is no more wrong than you are right. You, ultimately, decide what is good for you. That is how God wanted it.