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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have been reading DCUM for a while now, and I feel steeped in broken marriages, angry/depressed/overwhelmed parents, misbehaving children, and general snarkiness.  Almost never do I see a reference to a deep and profound faith, or even a thought about a Creator.  I do see plenty of snide comments about faith being only for the stupid, the weak, the unthinking, but I can't recall a single specific reason as to why belief in a Creator is so obviously dumb.

So now is your chance:  if you do not believe in God, why not?  Have you wrestled with this question and constructed a tight argument, or do you just not particularly care?[/quote]

In my depressed/angsty teen years, following 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina and clashes in my high school between LGBT groups and Christian anti-gay groups, I left religion. To be fair, I had never really liked the religion in which I was raised (conservative Protestantism) and my dad is agnostic, so the leap to agnosticism myself was not such a far jump. When I was agnostic, I felt there was no other way to be. How could a god exist when all these horrible things happened in the world? I could not find solace or meaning in a god that allowed the world to be so unjust, or in a religion (Christianity, both my own brand and the evangelical politicized version on the news) that focused on the sins of others.

I spent a good part of my younger life thinking that religion was for the weak and unthinking, that it was illogical and irrational, full of judgement and hypocrisy. It wasn't until I was older that I began to see more gray areas in life and in religion. So often, we allow a narrow and narrow-minded subset of religious people to claim to represent all religious people, when, in fact, there are plenty of good people doing good work in the name of religion, and people who find deep meaning and comfort in God and their religious community. I only thought of vague other religious people as unthinking, but never my grandparents or the Red Cross blood drive volunteers or the church group running the soup kitchen, etc.

I totally understand why people don't believe in God. I also respect people who have faith.[/quote]

A feel just like pp about people with religious faith, and like pp,  I don't respect ALL people who have faith -- just the ones who use their faith to do good works, or find comfort and peace for themselves and don't use their Fatih to judge others.  I know some religious people like that and unfortunately, know others who are not like that.[/quote]

I guess some people need someone else to tell them to “do good works”. 
[/quote]
How do you know the motivation of the person doing good works? Just because someone is volunteering with their church/synagogue/mosque doesn't mean they are only doing so because their religion told them to. What's wrong with a religion acting as an organizing body for good? Is it somehow lesser if "Joe Somebody" donates blood at a blood drive hosted by his church, rather than walking into a blood drive at a community center?[/quote]

PP said “the ones who use their faith to do good works”.

It’s not “lesser”. And I guess it’s good we have religion if there are people who need it to “do good works”.  Well at least [b]when they aren’t “doing good works” with ulterior motive[/b]s. 
[/quote]

You mean like trying to secure a place in heaven?  I suspect there are a lot of good religious people who would do good works just because they are good people and their church provides an outlet for their goodness.  They may not know themselves that they'd be just as kind without heaven as a motivation.[/quote]

Yes. “Doing good works” because they think they will somehow be rewarded for it is self-serving.
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