What is true is, mankind has created a humanly image of God. This has nothing to do with whether or not a God actually exists. I believe mankind created organized religions because they sought a way to understand and comprehend a spiritual entity. We developed these depictions of God with human attributes, because human attributes are something we can relate to and comprehend. If there had been a way for man to have made a spiritual connection without the need for comprehending it in a human way, then maybe we would worship spiritually without religion? And maybe the world would have been a better place for it? Perhaps organized religion is mankind's biggest error in understanding and comprehending spirituality? I have no problem with any of these debates, but the bottom line remains, religion does exist, and isn't going away; And humans have always had a profound connection to spirituality.
I agree with much of what you've said here .. however, if you travel to the deepest, darkest corners of the earth and soughout people who have been disconnected from the rest of the world .. do you know what you'd find? Religion. Religion is dogma, doctrine, a belief system. It exists, but that is no proof that their deity does. That only exists in the mind of the believer .. no different than Bigfoot.
Well, that would be a piece of religious dogma, some people need to believe that God is a jealous God. Because some people choose to believe this, doesn't mean this is how God must exist.
That's what the Bible tells them. God is depicted as a human throughout the Bible.
Again, a humanistic requirement we placed on God, it has nothing to do with whether or not a God exists. For the record, the Christian religion does not believe that "God needs to be praised" but rather; You are so grateful to God, you willingly give your praise. They do not teach he needs or requires praise.
Yes, they do. "Praise God." You should spend a Sunday at a black church good sister. :0)
Again, you are speaking of man-made criteria, developed so they could better understand a spiritual entity. Whether they are correct, is certainly debatable, but again... has no bearing on whether or not a God actually exists.
I agree .. facts have everything to do with whether God exists .. and the
belief in God has nothing whatsoever to do with facts. I has everything to do with faith .. which does not require fact.
I don't think it's not being comfortable. We find that whenever people experience a spiritual connection for the first time, it is a profound experience. Imagine a whole new world you never realized existed, and you have just been enlightened to it... Your natural reaction is going to be excitement, and enthusiasm for telling others about it. "Hey, I used to be just like you, I didn't believe..." I know this is difficult for a non-believer to understand, it's kind of like those picture patters you stare at and 'see' an image... some people just don't 'see' the image, no matter how hard they try. You haven't tapped into your spiritual energy, so you have no basis for which to believe in it. Other people can tell you about it and explain it, but like the picture pattern, you don't see a thing. Now.... If suddenly, you saw the image, and some guy standing next to you says; "I don't think there really is an image, I think they are just making that up!" You can't ever convince him that you saw the image, he either believes there is an image that people are able to see, or it's all a lie.
Again, I don't disagree.
All of the founders HAD to believe that we are a nation "endowed by our Creator" because that is what they based the nation on. The entire "Deism" argument is rejected when we examine history and how things were in that time. Tell me, if you were a founding father hoping to forge a new nation which guaranteed freedom of religion, would you want to be known by the public as some big wig Baptist or Methodist? Do you think people would trust such folks to establish freedom of religious beliefs? Wouldn't it be much more diplomatic and helpful to your argument, if your personal religious convictions were kept private? That if any public record of your involvement with churches, be at a minimum... while at the same time, holding a 'universal' understanding we all believe differently? Isn't that where the Deist philosophy rested? Deism was simply a way the founders had of distancing themselves from "the church" for the express purposes of impartiality.
First, you have a misunderstanding of "Deism" and "Creator."
Deism is the absence and the rejection of superstitious dogma and teachings. Are you aware that Jefferson wrote his own Bible? What do you think he left out of it? Deism is the acceptance of wisdom and reason. Perhaps you forget the the age the Founders lived in was called the "Age of Enlightenment .. the Age of Reason."
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes."
"Priests...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live."
"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors."
"What is it men cannot be made to believe!"
-- Thomas Jefferson
“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religion than it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism.”
“I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”
“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”
-- Albert Einstein
"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies."
"Lighthouses are more helpful then churches."
-- Benjamin Franklin
Deists see the Creator as Nature .. as I do. They did not refer to the Crhristian God.
Washington's Farewell Address: He says, "It is foolish to believe man can govern without God." ....doesn't sound like someone who supposedly believed the opposite, does it?
Are you aware of the Treaty of Tripoli?
Article 11:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp
Wriiten by George Washington.
Ratified unanimously by the United States June 10, 1797
"Every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience."
