g o d and his minion.

this debate is so old to me now that it seems silly to think about it. but i realize that for you who have not traveled the road i walk upon it still seems fresh and relevant. i was in your shoes once and so i will say a few words on it.

there is no magical being up in the sky, in the earth, in the trees, or anywhere. these things were thought up by primitive peoples long ago to help explain how life worked. these are the same type of people that thought the earth was flat, that god's wrath caused disease, and that heaven rested upon the clouds. science taught us that the earth is round, that germs cause disease, and above the clouds there is mere empty space. so why are you still holding on to this antiquated idea of some magical being?

for one reason, science is not valued by your society and hence by you. if it were valued, you would be seeking rational and logical reasons for why things happen. if an idea could not be substantiated, it would be rejected. you can live your life by the rule of rationality and valid reasoning or by mysticism and fantasy but not both. if you choose to live not by valid reasoning then you accept every premise that is offered on whim alone. that an easter bunny exists may be just as valid to you as whether a god does or not. you do not care whether something can be proven so anything and everything may be valid to you.

you really must live your life based on provable ideas otherwise much chaos would ensue where anything and everything would be thought of as true based on whim. if you "believe" that jumping off a 500ft peak onto a rocky floor won't kill you then you are mistaken. not only are you incorrect in your assumption but your belief is not valid because it was based on whim and not on evidence. a belief is not valid unless it has quality evidence. your whim is meaningless. an opinion based on whim does not equal one based on evidence. with what little proof there is, you can not validly say a magical being exists. even if in 100 years it turns out that there is one, you'd be more correct to not believe in one today due to lack of current evidence.

what is the proof that there is a magical being? the bible was written by monks long after the stories in it took place. no one says the Aeneid or the Iliad are direct testaments of god so why is the bible any different? all three concern ancient magical stories involving gods that can be traced back to coincide with real events and real people and real places. a story book is not proof of the existence of a magical being. the Chronicles of Narnia do not prove that Narnia or Aslan exist do they? London is a real place mentioned in the series so does that prove that the whole thing must be true?

does the fact that a lot of people believe in a magical being prove the existence of one? at one time most people believed the world was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth. this did not make it so.

tradition is why you have your beliefs and traditions are just ideas that some ancestor long ago developed. they may have been valid at the time but you are following them blindly without testing whether they are still valid ideas or if they were ever valid at all.

another thing to consider is how corrupt religion is. it has been used from its beginning to manipulate people and to control them and to squeeze labor or money out of them. for goodness sakes look at all the jewelry and ornamentation and gold and gigantic buildings involved in religion. talk about *bling* *bling*. isn't a vow of poverty part of some religions? to think that all that money and labor is used on extravagance instead of helping the parishioners or anyone in need. that alone should make you think twice. and the molestations by priests and their subsequent coverups speak for themselves. there is nothing holy or godly about religion unless your god likes fondling children and has platinum plated teeth. and yes i am focusing on the catholic church here. it is definitely the worst offender of the bunch in terms of scandal, extravagance, corruption, and maybe even mass murder. many people have been killed in the name of the catholic church. the crusades were bloody, the native peoples of south america and mexico were wiped out in the name of god for being godless savages by the spanish explorers, etc. but do not think the other religions are all peaches and roses. most have corrupt parts and have in some way been used to manipulate the masses. even modern buddhism in a lot of countries has been mutated from its original message. you know the buddha would not want statues of himself around or to be worshipped like a god. people just form religion around their own local customs.

another consideration is that we are mere animals with active imaginations. we have the ability to fantasize and conjure up all this nonsense about magical beings. what sounds more reasonable to you... that a magical being created us and rules our lives and deaths or that we have active imaginations and pretend all this magic is true? we love rituals and feeling comforted. we create imaginary friends as children to fulfill the need for comfort. we even pretend that our pets and stuffed animals and dolls communicate with us on magical levels. so of course we are going to invent some story about a magical being that created us and watches over us. if you took a baby and dropped it alone on an island you can guarantee that he will make up some sort of simplistic religion complete with rituals.

many people have many different images of what that magical being is and what it can do. what makes you right? why is your image better or more correct than theirs? if everyone has a different idea then doesn't it seem like they all made it up? shouldn't there be exact similarities? does that "being" love one people more than another in order to give them the correct view? it just doesn't fit.

haven't you seen that almost everything we now know has a scientific explanation? more things than you even know have been readily explained. you don't know about them because your people do not value science to the degree that they should. just look at how many people in a semi-educated society believe in a magical being and to what degree compared to those living in a more primitive society. the trend is that the more educated you are, the less likely you believe in a magical being and to a lesser degree if you do. once you find out more about how the world works and where you as a human came from you will confidently see that there is no magic.