The message is what counts. But people have egos as well that want to be given the biggest stroke of them all -- "my religion is right".

The sentiment that belief in God doesn't hurt anybody is pretty far-fetched to me (but that's probably why you included "unless you're a dumb fuck", which is hardcore so rock it). I dunno if you've ever seen this documentary, but download "Jesus Camp". It's a look at evangelicalism in the U.S., and that shit is SCARY.

Believing doesn't hurt anyone unless you're a dumb fuck. True. But what have these hardcore religious idiots done? The Crusades. The Spanish Inquisition. And I think a lot of the wars in the Middle East today are driven by religion. There are the people who believe harmlessly and are better people for it, and there are others who think that they should punish everyone who doesn't share their devotion. So religion could have made the world a better place, but people who would kill or prosecute because of religion have ruined it.

Such a true statement. Fighting in the name of the same God... with different names, people took it as far as killing those who weren't the same. Kill the non-christian/kill the jews/ kill the infidels who are damned anyways because they won't convert to Allah. All that spawned from religion, so in a sense, religion made the world a bit more... worse.

Indirectly.

Or it was a planned method of oppression since the get go, depending on who you ask.

Indirectly? How so?

Yes, indirectly, depending on who you ask. Like I said, some people will tell you that religion was a planned way to brainwash/oppress people from the beginning but some people will tell you that that was never the goal of religion. Not much more to it than that, really.

Go ahead, ask me what I think.

I don't believe in God. If God really exists then where is God? Why can't I see God? Where is god when people die or get killed? Where is god when these murderers run killing people for fun or for money? Why doesn't god penalise them? And if god does, then why not before any innocent people dies? I know, I might sound a bit weird by saying all this but that is what I believe.

Well, as for the last few posts, I say to Obby that I believe that just about all religion is made to answer the question, "How the hell is all this here?" and since science tries to do the same thing but based on fact and not faith, they conflict. Since then I believe it has escalated in a lot of places. Buddhism started out as a man's philosophy about living a life happily. Don't allow yourself too much joy or too much worry and your life will be happy. Keep your conscience free. Now they have Buddha (the man who came up with the idea) as a god (a fat one at that) and they even have a devil and a hell. Maybe Jesus existed and told everyone that God told him to start a new church or whatever happened to spawn Christianity from Judaism .

As for James's post, much as I [sort of] agree on general terms, God is supposed to be invisible, sort of a "in everything and everywhere" thing. As for the part of your post that has a more powerful point about how terrible things are happening in the world, I would more easily believe that god would have just created all the science in the world then left everything alone. I doubt he would actually try to stop violence because of the whole balance thing. Or something. Anyway, I don't think the terrible conditions of the world prove or disprove any religion. If all the stuff about god is true, then he loved Jack the Ripper and Osama Bin Laden as much as any other person.

But thanks for bringing the thread back. It's always nice when that happens.

I believe in god, but I think that he has been slacking, and he has to do something fast before something bad happens to our planet.

What makes protecting the planet that he supposedly gave to us and we are f***ing up his responsibility? We can't rely on a hierarchy to solve our problems. It's up to us, and we all have to cooperate, which we won't. We can all say we should switch to electric cars, but we drive gas powered ones anyway. At least a good portion of us recycle. Even if recycling burns more energy it saves materials.