After all... "God" suposedly destroyed his creation several times over now. We must FEAR him and keep in step!

Say a sweet little prayer for our own selfish needs at bed-time and all is forgiven. Don't worry about taking any responsibility for yourself, and never to ever think or bat an eye at the sufferings of those other than we in this realm.

After all, you gave us everything from the birds in the skys, the fish in the seas, and the animals walking the Earth.

I cause you to suffer, so you can cause them to suffer. It all evens out that way. Let's keep this thing going because it is good. I love the way MY CREATION smells, especially when raised in a high-intensity feed lot, disemoweled (sometimes while live) thrown into a hot BBQ pit and drowned in Catsup. Do what ever the fuck you want, for I give it all to you. Because I said so... and it is good. I should know... I wrote it in the Book of Genesis.

And never, ever explore anything outside of my 'little' book of contradictions! For I will smite thee!

God... your faithful have failed you and every living being in your creation. To this very day your plebians are killing indiscriminately around the world in YOUR NAME and their own vanity. Good thing you are not 'eternal'.

You must be so proud.

Amen

Even as an atheist I disagree, in part. Humans have control over much of the suffering. Humans cause much unneeded suffering and ignore what we choose to ignore. Our religious counterparts claim that prayer works to ease suffering while ignoring that action is the only answer.

No, we can't control natural disasters, plagues, or famine...but we Humanists should be the first to aid the victims of such, without asking for conversion.

Not sure if this was meant to ask the classic question of theodicy, or just to lampoon most of the major Western religions for not being Jains.

I'm not sure which.

Theodicy is an interesting subject for me. In Western religions, the theodicy problem has usually led to dualism, the idea that evil and suffering are essentially created by a guy with a pitchfork and horns, an anti-deity that works against the guy upstairs. This goes back to Zoroastrianism.... if not for the pitchfork guy, there would only be sweetness, light, and health. In Christianity, original sin has even taken on cosmological overtones, so now everything wrong in the universe is blamed on Adam's mistake.

Judaism is a bit like the Eastern religions in one respect: Biblical Judaism has no Devil. Satan is an employee in the book of Job, not an adversary. That's it. Therefore, their view of Yhvh is monistic; It is the source of good AND evil, pleasure AND suffering, light AND darkness. I would argue Judaism acquired a dualistic view from exposure to the Iranians. And that's a fascinating subject in itself, when you look at current geopolitics.

Then there is Zurvanism, which has fallen into disuse, which is basically the same principle. It's considered heretical by the few Zoroastrians who are left on the planet, but I've seen it referenced here and there.

Perhaps the question should be - does Suffering Create God?

To quote a Dead Poet:

QUOTE

God is a concept by which we can measure our pain,
I'll say it again,
God is a concept by which we can measure our pain,

The dream is over, what can I say?
The dream is over,Yesterday,
I was dreamweaver but now I'm reborn,
I was the walrus but now I'm John,
And so dear friends,you just have to carry on. The dream is over.

Is all suffering bad? Is some suffering beneficial? Does all suffering have a silver lining?

Philosophy is generally a harmless recreation, and theodicy is an aspect of theological speculation.

Our WikiFriends offer:


This pursuit is clearly a line of thought which will not yield any definitive answers, as it is the next step after one posits a God and His/Her/Its nature. It assumes the incomprehensible, and goes one step further. However, it is a benign pursuit, and far more likely to contribute to the development of one's character than watching Network Television.

If one takes a more simple, a more fundamentalist literalism to the Gospels - a level of fundamentalism that is not to be confused with Fundamentalism, which is a more robust demonstration that there is Evil in the world, than just considering human suffering - well, if one follows the literal text of the Gospels, the message is simple - human perception of suffering is merely a perception of where God needs to Be, and thus serves as an absolute impetus to Be, in the Name of God. The parable of the Samaritan is only this. There is little speculation on the character of the robbers, or of the Samaritan's foolishness in not carry a lethal weapon to extinguish the robbers, nor of God as having a failing in theodicean performance. It is rather the conceptual couple of "Here is suffering - here I need to be."

Of obscure philological note, the only time when one may capitalize the self-referential pronoun, and use it in the same form as God does, is "I." Whether the "I" in the previous paragraph refers to myself, or to God, is a necessary conflation of concepts. If I am there to relieve suffering, it matters not to the Samaritan whether it is God, or simply myself. Here is a place where suffering must be remedied.

In my posting previously, I wanted to tease away at the idea that our times of searching for God are often only when we are suffering. Irrespective of ontology - whether there IS a God, or there is NOT - we often seek only a comforting illusion to explain suffering, rather than search for God as/if He/She/It exists.

We are often contemptuous of the Fire Department, unless there is a fire.

IMO, there is no necessary contradiction between the existence of an omnipotent loving God and the existence of (even substantial) pain and suffering.

You can look at it as a contradiction of course - from one vantage point it looks like a paradox.

But from another vantage point, it no more seems a paradox that the "problem" of a child's pain when disciplined by a loving parent. From the child's perspective, it is a paradox; from the parent's it is not.

When a kid is killed in a house fire, or when thousands of people are wiped out in an earthquake or a tsunami, how is this a loving parent disciplining a child? Much, maybe most, of what we die early from is not our fault or our doing. One more reason to see god as a either a monster or non-existent. I vote for the latter.

I like talking about the theodicy problem.

The Greeks never had that problem. For them it was easy to explain suffering and evil; their gods were neither all-benevolent nor all-powerful nor all-knowing.

The problem is the Western religions posit a Deity (Theity) that is omni-benevolent and omni-potent. Well, if there are tsunamis that wipe out thousands of innocent lives in a heartbeat, it surely cannot be because all of THOSE people were evil or "deserved it". So: either the Deity is NOT all-powerful (and could not have stopped the tsunami) or maybe It is NOT all-benevolent (in which case It simply didn't want to). Or my favorite answer, the one the minister sometimes gives to a little girl who cannot understand why her parents and her entire family were dragged off into the sea: "He works in mysterious ways."

Deists, BTW, have no problem: they would simply say the Deity established the natural laws that enable life to flourish on this planet, and then those laws occasionally cause things like tsunamis. It isn't possible to have a liveable planet without tsunamis (or tornados or earthquakes or cyclones). The natural laws were established and then the Deity took a siesta; it is our responsibility to understand those laws and their consequences including the phenomena they can generate that endanger us.

The problem is for Western theism. And the answer of the West, at least the Christian answer, has been dualism. Bad stuff, suffering and evil, happens due to the Bad Guy down there, Lucifer, Satan, Al Pacino, the wicked George Burns, the dude in Ghost Rider. Why is the universe imperfect, with tsunamis and earthquakes? Adam's disobedience is responsible, and gives the Evil One the power to use them on us. But even dualism raises its own questions. Why does the Father not just eliminate the Devil? Unless the Devil is as powerful as He is. But that seems not to make sense... given that one is a creature that rebelled against the other.

Well you could read when bad things happen to good people. Or you could ask God yourself but that would be impractical to you since you have no belief in God. Being self taught at one time, I reached a conclusion that "Shit Happens". I will not offer an explanation myself here because that explanation would be beyond my understanding because I am in fact stupid, like stupid me.

I could conjecture, but I doubt that my conjectures would be convincing to you. It's not my goal to convince you, anyhow. But offhand, I can think of lots of "explanations".

My main point is that just because we feel pain, and think something is "bad" or "evil", doesn't mean it is in a broader sense. Is dying evil? Some might say no, cause the planet would be in a mess otherwise. Maybe dying is necessary at some level. Is dying "early" evil? I don't know. What's early? When is it "fair" to die, so that dying before then is "unfair"? But even if dying early is "bad" from our perspective, does that mean that God is either a monster or non-existent? No. The same logic would lead the child (even teen) to reason that because he doesn't get what he wants that his parent is either a monster or non-existent. Since the parent is there, it can't be non-existent, so the parent must be a monster. And to be hated, or destroyed. And some teens do get caught up in that "logic" and even kill the monster parent. Understandable, but it is an error in logic. Oftentimes, it is the child who does not (yet) understand.

"God works in mysterious ways" is shorthand for "maybe you aren't as smart as you think you are". If there really were an omnipotent God, then I, at least, think it is just a wee bit presumptive of human beings to think that we are able to interpret his motives, or even understand a thought. And yet that element of intellectual humility never seems to be present in our arguments. Do we think it is possible that another being could be 10 times as smart as the smartest of us? 100 times as smart? could think 100 times as fast? Could remember 100 times as much? 1000 for all of those? Heck, most of us have an ego problem when we're around someone who is TWICE as smart. Well, there is a lot of distance between zero and omnipotent-infinity, and 1000 times hardly makes a dent in it. I saw an article once entitled "Is Google God?" - NY Times. The earth is quite small in the scheme of things, and yet we are willing to believe in the Google Oracle. But we assume that we should be able to interpret the motives of God?

So there are lots of answers possible back to the early Greeks in the spirit of intellectual humility. Can it really be that those people didn't deserve it? Or more likely, if God is omni-benevolent, does that mean he administers "justice" as we all understand it with our little brains for each one of us? Or maybe God is like a physician, and the humanity is like the body he treats, with each of us like a "cell". Is chemotherapy evil, since it takes good cells with bad? What about aversion therapy for people who can't stay away from drugs? The Greek's dichotomy omits a third possibility, which is that we don't see the bigger picture yet. Not to mention the fact that their argument requires the use of "reductio ad absurdum" inference rule, which some logicians don't even accept. Which "logic" shall we use when disproving the existence of the God which legitimatized that logic? Again, where is our intellectual humility. The argument is sophist, IMO.


Same general comment, with proper intellectual humility, the problem becomes less a paradox and more just an unknown. It's not a problem to ask "Why is the universe imperfect?" Trying to answer that question can be instructive if one tries to answer it without a hidden agenda. As small as we are, if we imagine ourselves as God-for-a-day, can we imagine any reason at all why we might choose to have evil in the world? Why bother with commandments? Why bother with free will? Why not just limit what humans are capable of doing to "approved" actions and junk their ability to transgress? Then the world would be "perfect", no? Unless, of course, there is some unintended consequence in the large. But why not just design humans to be little goodie-goodie automatons? Why wouldn't God do that, if he existed? Even as limited as I am, I can imagine that it might be quite important to allow evil in the world, by design, for very good reasons.

Yes, the silver lining of suffering is when suffering ends. Ask anyone who's ever been in pain, they feel great after it's over.

Is something that's beyond our comprehension worthy of worship? You tell me whether or not that's sophist.

See, your parent analogy is interesting. I agree children usually don't understand their parents' motivations - until they become adults and they look back at some of them in hindsight. But the point is, they are capable of at least some point grasping them, right? You're saying the Heavenly Father is a different kind of parent, one whose motivations we will never be capable of understanding.

Again, tell me if this is sophist; would you obey a parent, if you realized you would never be capable of understanding why s/he does what they do, or why they punish you?

Honest question: why would something so many zillions of times smarter and more powerful even want to be worshipped? I would think It could care less how beings so many zillions of times dumber and weaker think of it and its actions.

Cowboy Steve (style) question: seems like an entity busy keeping galaxies going would not care much about where one being sticks their private parts into another being's. I actually would find it amazing it cares whether or not people eat shellfish. I sure as hell would find it pointless to listen to tiny specks of dust asking for this or that like a game of cosmic telephone.

I like this discussion, because it cuts into the heart of my fundamental agnosticism.



I think there are interesting answers to the question of the existence of human evil. For me, that's not the real central theodicy problem.

The more difficult theodicy problem remains; why does the omni-benevolent and omni-powerful creator allow tsunamis, earthquakes, cyclones, and other events that clearly do not discriminate between the "just" and the "wicked" when they kill thousands and thousands? Can there really be a "just" reason to kill a 3 or 4 year old child in a natural disaster, before they've even had time to "sin"?

I understand your answer is to posit its inscrutability, but you can see why humans throughout history have had a problem with that answer.

Honestly, for me at least, to keep the Deity concept, the only thing that seems rationally sensible to me is some form of Deism - not Theism. Then the answer is that it made the natural laws, but we were left to deal with the consequences of those laws, and the same laws that make our life possible also occasionally generate phenomena that can end them.

I don't think any QUESTIONS are sophist (or at least none come to mind). But I think some arguments are. I was taking issue with the reductio argument that you ascribed to the Greeks, arguing that if God exists, he is omnipotent, and benificent, but because bad things happen, he must either be not good, or not powerful. I just don't buy that logic on a lot of levels. The question you ask is much deeper, and I don't know the landscape of that question. I've never considered it. But certainly, out of self interest, if you believed that there were such a being and he could make your life hell if you didnt' worship him, you'd probably do so, irrespective of whether you comprehended his motives or not. That would be rational, no?


I understand your point, but don't find it compelling. If God charges us to "love each other as well as I love you" - saying, "that is your job." - then it seems a worthy end, which could consume several lifetimes in the trying, then the fact that he is going to always do it better than we doesn't bother me, at least. I already accept that I'll never be a great musician, or writer, or many other things (even on human only scale), yet strive for some because it's worth trying sometimes, or enjoyable.


Again I don't think questions are sophist. But to your question, I'd ask "If you were in the military, would you obey your superior if you had no hope of fully understanding their motives?"


I don't know. Doesn't make sense to me, either. So it's not part of my personal belief system either. The most I can make of it, is that worship is what the parent asks the child to do before he is old enough to understand. The parent says "do X", the child asks "why", the parent responds "because I say so". The child is trained to address parent as "sir" or "ma'am" (I know, archaic, but you get my point). What is the parent doing? Does he want to be worshipped? Not really. But it might be a good way to get started.

Not part of my concept of God, either. I'm not ready to accept the notion that such a cosmic entity would be disinterested or incapable of intervention on a microscale, but I tend to think of a more hands off manager, but maybe whose attention one can get by petition/prayer. I don't do that, but who knows?

Again, I'm not going to defend the necessity of God micromanaging the universe so that each person's localized sense of "justice" is satisfied. That just seems silly. But even if disasters are intentional acts of God, they also sometimes have larger beneficial purpose. Disasters do get our attention, and get us thinking.


Well, that is pretty much where I end up, personally. But in my view, I think he sets the natural laws, and I also happen to think he sets human purpose in the large (and that is to try to love as well as he). As an older person, I see the the parent metaphor as helping to understanding that what is right or effective might not always be so. I don't pray, but I don't dismiss it. I see evil as more in the eye of the beholder, like beauty.

As I read this thread, I found myself thinking about labor...you know...the kind that, if all goes well, results in the birth of a child. I doubt that it could ever be described as uniformly pleasant. And sometimes, the physical and emotional discomfort involved approach levels that it would be difficult for a skilled torturer to elicit. And sometimes, in fact, the net result is not a new life, but two deaths. Yet, until the twentieth century, motherhood was pretty much impossible without it. And even in this century, most new mammalian life is separated from its female parent by this process, a process which involves considerable suffering, certainly for the mother and very likely for the baby (or babies) as well.

I wonder how much of the rest of the suffering we observe in the world is like the suffering we observe (or experience) in labor, a necessary part of the process of creation.

I regard the Genesis explanation of labor as an after-the-fact rationalization of an observed phenomenon. And I cannot regard the suffering associated with labor as evil, which leads me to a question. Is suffering always evil? And, if it is not, how do we determine when it is and when it isn't?

It seems to me those questions need to be answered before we begin debating whether or not God's relationship to human suffering has a bearing upon whether or not it is possible for a particular "god" to exist.

"When you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!" - Lin Chi

The answer is simple if you take ceiling-cat out of the equation.

Suffering exists so we know what not to do.

The "necessary suffering" (like childbirth) only exists because it isn't bad enough to stop reproduction and end our species.

Hmmm so we should avoid suffering? I know that we tend to do just that, except inasmuch as our cortex guides us otherwise. But is it good for us? Should that be the guide? Pursuit of happiness as the raison d'etre?

How does short term gratification balance against long-term suffering? When is immediate gratification a bad thing? Is avoidance of immediate gratification ever suffering? What about addiction withdrawal? Is that suffering? Is it painful? Is it bad? Can it be painful, but not bad? Wonder how many other things are painful, but not bad? Is bad the same as evil? Etc.

It's the same for all animals. It's called conditioning. You shock a monkey when it touches a red button you better believe it won't touch that button again or it will at least be very reluctant to. It will probably be terrified of the color red if the shock is intense enough.

Also, I didn't say pursuit of happiness is the raise d'etre. If anything it's pain avoidance.

Please don't make it sound like I've laid down some divine universal law. Pain tells us something is bad -- then we don't do it again. Of course if we have a choice between more pain or less pain, we're likely to choose less pain.

It is actually much more complex than that, and at the same time, it is sooo simple. First off, if you put all of the blame on the maker, we have no responsibility. We have free will to run this world as we see fit, yet we kill for many reasons. The money we spend on war, could be spent on helping the nations having food shortages, disease, ect. No one has all of the answers, so please don't act as if you do, I can only claim a child like understanding of the situation.

It is a free for all down here in this linear reality, look at it like eternal boot camp. The training will kill ya eventually, but only temporarily.

I know there are more like me, I have met them. You can find their stories on the net if you look. People who have had their doubt removed to experience the maker in their presence.

Make all the fun out of it you want, Christ was a Carpenter, I am a construction worker, he hung out with hard people, so do I.

He is there, and is not going to interfere with what is going on. If we want to clean things up, it is up to us. There is all of eternity for the maker to play dictator to us, for now, its a free for all.

So shake your fist and curse. I know what it is like to lose everything, and look up, and realize it was all on loan anyway.

Sooooo.... god is lazy and a poor craftsman who likes to hang out with a tough crowd. Don't like his work? Deal.

Got it.

I'm responding to the part of your post that said "Suffering exists so that we know what not to do," which sounded like a universal.

I agree that avoidance of pain has survival value, and that alone is probably enough to explain its existence. Burn yourself, avoid things like that in the future. Etc. Definite survival value.

But I don't think "physical pain" of the sort that jeoparizes survival is all there is. I think (roughly) that "suffering" is a generalization of "(physical) pain". A teen may "suffer" if he can't get the right cool brand of clothing. An addict "suffers" during withdrawal; in that case the world is backwards - suffering signals increased odds of survival. I think pain in the reptilian brain might be tightly correlated with survival; emotional pain stemming from the mammalian brain perhaps also; but the pain and suffering the cortex is capable of generating is really sometimes pretty weird and avoidance of that "suffering" might not be so correlated with survival.

But that doesn't mean we don't do it anyhow. I do think that people tend to try to avoid pain/suffering/discomfort, of all kinds. In the extreme, avoidance of discomfort can produce laziness, obesity, self-medication, and actually may hinder survival. But I still think people tend to work that way.

So the next question is "Is it wise, or just reflex?" I don't think the avoidance of suffering, generally, leads to increased survival odds, or increased well-being.

Periodically, I encounter someone who tells me that we cause our own suffering through our "attachments." I have found an element of truth in that pronouncement, but have never found it to be completely satisfying.

But, on the other hand, I have found the explanation of suffering as an early warning system to be similarly wanting. It clearly applies in some situations, but not in others. And in fact, there are many situations where acting on the desire to avoid suffering actually results in damaging oneself or others far beyond what would have resulted from a decision to endure a limited period of suffering.
What do you say to people with cancer who are being asked to endure chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy? That they will suffer less with treatment than without treatment? That is not always the case.

Perhaps the most useful word about suffering that I have ever received is this: "It it doesn't kill you, it will make you stronger." But, of course, one still has to live with the "if."

Unless you're a sadist, there is no situation where a person would actively seek suffering.

I agree that most people don't seek suffering for suffering's sake. But I think there are many cases where people tolerate suffering because of some notion they hold like "no pain, no gain". Some higher level understanding convinces them they need to accept the pain/suffering/discomfort for a benefit they value. TeeVee is full of it. Fear Factor. Biggest Loser. Survivor. So is real life. Staying married "for the kids". Getting clean. Getting a degree, even, for some people. Religious life. Etc.

Right. "No pain, no gain". "Gain" being the end point.

The end they want is better than their current situation, so they endure something that they deem worthwhile cost for that gain.

If you offered someone 10 million dollars to shave their head most would probably take it; less would accept to sever a finger; less still to sever a hand; less still for an arm etc.

It's completely sensible and economical. If the end is better than the start and the cost to reach the end does not exceed the net benefit, a person would very likely go for it.

Wouldn't you consider the things you listed as challenges rather than suffering?

I would consider things like starvation, famine, incurable illnesses, etc. as suffering. Suffering due to things beyond our control.

I could be wrong.

Well, like I said earlier, suffering is in the eye of the beholder. I suspect most people have had the experience of being in a situation which seemed unthinkable, unbearable and found to to be bearable only because of a shift in their own perspective. One man's suffering is another man's challenge. Walking on fire? Waterboarding? As for me, the 4 year old I care for says "Hey Poppa" about 12000 times a day. I vacillate between thinking it's suffering vs challenging. I guess that is within my control.

But even those who live in what we might think of horrible conditions, can sometimes reduce their own suffering by finding a different perspective, rendering it more of a challenge.

So I don't know .. it's very grey to me.

To me, suffering is not only my own physical and mental pain; but it is also the physical and mental pain of all other sentient beings. Yes, this includes the animal realm too.

This was my intention of showing that 'suffering' exists for every living being and is universal. It is not something an Omnimpotent Being causes to make you tremble and 'bow in prostration' to fear. It is something we create in our own minds. Whether we realise it or not, we experience and cause suffering on all levels.

We should awaken to it... and bring it to realisation.

For posterity I do not believe in a 'Creator'. However I do believe that there are inumerable ascended beings.

OMG, this is like talking to a rock.

I think it's similar to why I like to start fires when I play Sims. Or build houses with no toilets.

Some perverse need to watch and see how bad it can get.

Ok then, explain your god to me. A god who can do everything, but doesn't; can end suffering, but lets it happen; can make us all eternally happy, but chooses not to -- but is all powerful and loves us.

Your god either can't do anything, doesn't care or doesn't exist. Take your pick.

If you were to think of God as an infinite Divine being, then there is no way humans could understand events. For example, tetonic plattes shift causing earthquakes and damage, destruction and death. But what would happen if those plattes did not shift ? Would the entire planet be act risk if those plattes did not shift on occasion ? Do hurricanes through salt ions into the upper atmosphere to replenish protective layers ? Do sunspot cycles actually determine hurricane activities ? Is global warming designed to increase temperatures allowing more growth of foods feeding a growing population ?

I don't know the answers to those questions because, I ain't God.

Let me give you a head's up here. I went to sunday school, attended church, studied philosphy of Religion at a college level. Have had great teachers and elders all of my life. Sometimes I did not listen to my elders. But the bottomline is that I know some things I am talking about. I am not self taught, I am not pretending to be a preacher, priest or Buddist monk. In fact, I am a layman and to pretend otherwise would be deception and a discredit to any faith that I would pretend to represent.

Shit, I bumped myself, band me.

Wow, I have to pick, why don't I actually try to make some sense out of this... ok. Not that I know everything, I have a child like understanding of the reasons we are here. That is the best anyone here can obtain.

Imagine a dimension where there are beings, they were created to what we would call perfect. Some of these beings wanted more, the maker said no. There was a battle, they lost, and were banished to this dimension. To prove throughout all of time once and for all that the maker is right after all, and to prove that his creations are capable of unconditional love, this free for all was setup.

It is a hands off deal, these creatures are allowed to mess with us to some extent, there is a loop hole.

If you are pure of heart, and you provide faith in a logical fashion, you will most likely interact with this maker. You cannot force this, it has to be of his or her choosing.

I didn't make these rules up, I have simply extrapolated the data that I have acquired in my life time. Some came from the bible, some from practical experience.

Seems to me like the best way to explain god is to assume that he is a human creation. If you go on that assumption then his behavior makes sense. At least it makes as much sense as our own behavior does.

Unpredictable, arbitrary, capricious, absent, noble, kind, vengeful, bloodthirsty, justice-seeking, involved, distant, jealous, loving, all very human. You want to see god? Look at the faces of people on the street. Look at your lover. Look in the mirror. We created god and then we had god create us.

Yep, you're a Buddhist alright.
It's kind of like being a "sermon on the mount" Christian but without the pressure

Hey Mr X wasup! Wow, very cool link. #6 really hits home. I cant claim that all of my thought are pure, I really like my toys. But I understand why a little more why he has walked with me through my life. I have always tried to be honest in my thoughts, even when I wanted revenge. I turned my enemies over to him once, I was soooo damn mad and hurt. A few years later I had them delivered to my hands. I let them go. The real evil behind the situation was revealed to me, and they did pay. They still are, and it is not over. So I am very careful for what I wish for now.

I can appreciate that RL. However, I am not a Catholic priest so there's no need to bear your soul to me unless that makes you feel good. I'm a retired Catholic. I've chosen Buddhism as a personal path.
I'm not as advanced as some others in that I tend to get very cranky some times. I hope you continue to be honest with yourself and kind to others. That way if it turns out that the Christians and the Muslims and the Jews aren't completely delusional I'm sure you'll end up in good stead with the Father.

Goodness is it's own reward.

Who can actually state which religion is correct? I "Believe" that it is how we treat each other that actually counts.

You might be a Buddhist.
Or at least a Unitarian Universalist
Doen't matter what you call yourself. What counts is how you behave

I agree with this.

Me too.

Thank you.

(I tend to stay out of the Religion threads. But I always feel safe in a "Myoho thread".
I've got a lot of G-d baggage left over from Catholic School. )

And thank you too!