God. Whew. Let's take a breather. In, out. In, out. I don't know where to start. There's so much. Let's define. GOD! I hereby will call what I feel is the divine force that holds us together, "god". I will refer to him as a he because that's how I see him. I'm aware it would technically be an "it". But I'm calling him 'he' because that is how I and general society feel. Let me start off by saying I'm not Christian. I should first say why I'm not. I used to be, you know, Christian. Catholic technically, but I realized something. I was in high school, and I sat at my lunch table one day, and I realized... if I am to be Christian, I have to feel these people are all going to Hell unless I convert them. I'm not pushing my religion upon my friends, but my religion says I should. So all these people are going to Hell. Wow, that sure sounds like a great religion to me. It wasn't until short after I decided to quit Christianity. I to this day, and I'm sorry if you feel this way, feel that any religion that has a god which damns his own people for not believing in a possibly fictional character named "Jesus" is quite frankly, an evil religion. In a way, it's almost as if Christians are practicing Satanism. There, now Christianity is taken out of the picture. This however, may cause a problem. If I'm not supporting Creationism, then what am I supporting? Nothing. Not nothing nothing, but I am supporting that we know nothing. I see stupid people on TV arguing that God just PLOPPED us onto the Earth, and then scientists claiming there is absolutely no god because THIS IS HOW SCIENCE WORKS, and it just seems to me like these people are being swallowed up by the naturally human condition in the brain that drives some people to always seek "the truth". What these people fail to realize is that both sides can be chosen. They'd much rather argue their stupid point than think of what the actual answer could be, or perhaps seeing it from the other party's point of view. So the answer to this problem is that there is no answer. Nothing. You have to meet up in the middle and decide for yourself. It is childish to think you can really grab the spiritual essence of god and fight for or against it. I'm saying it is childish to say you know for a fact a spiritual being did or didn't make us. Ever played Spore? I'm in love with people who say that some alien just went and planted some "human seeds" down and watched us for a bit. Of course that still begs the question of what made the alien, but I like that some people are still at least open to some form of creator. Some atheists like to pretend they know god does or doesn't exist. This stems from the idea that faith has always been made primarily of parables. (god makes the sun rise, it rains because angels are crying) So it only seems obvious that the more we learn about the world, the less likely it is that god exists. Unfortunately this walks itself right into a bit of trouble. So science "knows" that god doesn't make the sun rise because it's just our planet revolving around the sun. Well that's great, but really it hasn't actually done anything to prove god still isn't doing it. There is no proof available anywhere (nor will there ever be) that god is not doing everything. Just because we've logically weetled down the process of how god is moving the sun doesn't mean god itself does not exist; all we've done is explain how god has done it. I'd just like to clarify that the above paragraph is never at once claiming it has proof there is or is not god. The paragraph is saying it's foolish to think you can prove it, because you ultimately have no proof that what you call "nature" is not the hand of god. And in that logic there should never be a theist that says there is a god based on the fact you can call everything happening in the universe "a part of god". The ultimate point of this whole Reality Check is to check your reality - as much as it pains you, you know nothing about god. Get over your pride. Not everything in the universe has an explanation, and just because a book was written claiming to be from god, or just because you feel science has proven that book ridiculous, does not mean we will at any point know the answer to the question of if there is a god in existence. All that's left is to believe a hypothesis, or a theory. Belief, atheists, is not a bad thing. You are believers. You are not religious believers, you are scientific believers, placing your beliefs in scientific logic. There's many things science has to believe to get other things done. If you don't believe me, check all your science books (or science websites, nowadays) for anything beginning in "The Theory of". As far as I'm concerned, god is just another "theory of". You look at facts placed down on a table - some people are satisfied with a book telling them how to live, and some people are satisfied with science saying "there is probably not a god". (not that science does say it, thankfully, ever) And though those are extremes, those are not the only paths of belief. Atheism, until you can prove the theory of Atheism, of course, is a belief. The reason I said my beliefs were "nothing" is because every form of belief I've found other than agnostic and its little branching-outs claim to be "right". Really the only way to be right is to never actually claim you're right, because as the paragraphs above state, that is childish. Kudos to the agnostics. You either believe in God or you don't. You either believe that there was divine intervention involved in our evolution, or you believe we just happened to evolve this way over the billions of years the universe has been in existence. It's impossible to prove the existence of god and it's impossible to disprove. A problem here I find for those who believe in god is that much like believing in magic, people think it's a childish view. God is basically magic; the supernatural, the paranormal. This is how I personally see religion. Imagine a disco ball. God is the light in the middle. And through the colored plastic glass, the light changes. That is much like our good ol' buddy god. Among the purple light is Wicca, which for the most part focuses on self-improvement and rituals. Buddhism can blue, which has a lack of rituals but still has self-improvement. Christianity can be red to reflect the fires of Hell we'll all ultimately burn in. For atheism, the light is simply turned off. So no, I do not personally feel if there was a god that it would be any specific facet. I don't think humans have gotten it "right" so far. Saints, spirits, all that. I really cannot imagine a god being up there saying "Oh well you didn't believe in this exact facet of me, now you will burn in hell for your ignorance!". Finishing up... "In general, religion is a good thing. People are nice all around their churches and nice Buddhism can teach you how to be relaxed and mellow." Do you know who said that? Vael Victus did. And as I am looking through this article again, as a final revision before it goes all across the internets, I have decided religion is actually not a good thing. You might be wondering as to why, and I shall explain below. Religion amongst a group of 100 villagers is great. Everyone is devout, they maybe throw some livestock to god, or say a prayer before a meal, and everyone feels better about dying because you'll at least live forever in the afterlife. This is when religion is good. What happens, however, is that when this village reaches 1,000 people, someone is bound to have the idea of, "You know, I don't think god exists!", and they might even be vocal about it! And since by typical human nature/conditioning, we simply don't accept other points of view too easily, and this person is shunned/killed/re-educated. You must understand when your son says that he believes there is no god, and by your religion, that means he will burn for eternity, (that's a very long time, folks!) of course you're going to be upset! Of course you'll try to convert him, which will make the potential for fights even higher, and higher, as his passion vs. yours stack up against each other and - ah! Replace mother and son with country and country. Religious war. Why? They're killing for their god, boy will he be happy. And this is when religion becomes its worst. It goes from being the nice guy who brought fireworks for the kids on the 4th of July, to the guy who's responsible for accidently burning the house down. And it is there that religion is bad, and it goes to show you that we simply cannot, in our current form, understand or handle religion. And it's a shame, I'd love it. I have nothing more to say. I hope I taught you something. Just be nice to people, and don't let people get you down about religion. There's so many more things to care about in this world than arguing over something no one can even prove, however hard it may be for either party to admit it. In the name of Lucifer, Vael Victus