h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

God is a super intergalactic being with amazing powers and persuasion. Put simply, he is everything you're not. So, if your fat he's thin, if your thin, he's fat. And if you have blue eyes, he has brown eyes, if any eyes at all.
God, put simply, so simply in fact that you could tell your chemist and he would understand, is something for the common man to believe in and not identify with, because if they did identify with God then they would be God, and that would make no sense.
That's all, see you later

That super intergalactic being with amazing powers and persuasion did quite a bad work to my skin: it has pimples (I believe from eating vanilin, by the way). If it couldn't have done such things right as creating people not slaughtering each other for false believes, it could at least have done my skin better.

God is not Santa Claus.

Pray to Clearasil for better skin.

Pray to God for tolerance and understanding, and watch vast changes begin, within you.

Peace,

-Joe G.

And what about the slaughtering? Did you know that during the crusades the "christians" killed every single woman, man and child in Jerusalem, 90000 of them, knie deep in blood, and prayed afterwards?

Read the bible again. More possibly: the first time. There's blood all over the place.


It is a book full of blood.

Sure it is. History is very bloody -- not just Biblical history.

Mankind will always find an excuse to bash each others' brains in, religion happens to be convenient. For students of history, skin color, political belief, love, lust, and grass-is-greenerism are also popular themes for war.

War is not a function of religion, but of mankind. We'll make all sorts of excuses, but basically war boils down to a desire to brandish large weaponry to exert one's power.

I think you will find that very few who choose to seek higher spiritual meaning are going to come down with a sudden fit of Crusaderism and go off to convert the Heathen Hoards by sword blade.

For what it is worth, although the Holocaust was possibly religious, the overwhelming majority of deaths of the 20th century were not caused by religion but by politics. World Wars I and II, not to mention Stalin's purges, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and the Cultural Revolution had nothing to do with religion, and make the Crusades, the Biblical wars, and the current religious conflicts in Northern Ireland and the Middle East *combined* look like upper-crust tea parties by comparison.

So let's also decry the evil of politics.

-Joe G.

And nowhere in my reply did I question your grasp of either religion or history.

Imagine that.

-Joe G.

All: don't get god confused with religion.

God is very, very good.

Religion has a somewhat worse track record.

However, Joe has it right, supposedly religiously motivated war and mayhem usually has much stonger economic and political motives.

The human race is far from perfect. Accept that imperfections can be improved on and most religions will provide some guidance.

Proves just how good god is.

His infinite capacity for love extends to all creatures. What is 90000 of us compared with the millions of happy and fulfilled bluebottles, woodlice, nematodes and fungal and bacterial decomposers?

And did he not give us religion so that even the piffling 90000 slaughtered humans died happy in the knowledge that they were to be united with him in his heaven.

Praise the lord.

So life isn't perfect?
Now I wonder why God would have done that?

Geez, I think I got it! Life isn't perfect because pefection is beyond this life. Try drawing a perfect circle... when you have that right we'll continue with a discussion on neoplatonic theology

If there are imperfections in the universe doesn't that suggest a balls-up on God's part? If He is unable to make something that's perfect how can He possibly be perfect Himself?

And if He isn't perfect then what makes Him any better than us? Why do people worship Him?

Religion is the major cause for wars, see http://www.h2g2.com/F58051?thread=91429&post=749399