Welcome to Gaia! ::

wow. where have I heard this whole bickering over religious beliefs before? ...hmm...
Silly attempts to ascribe the occurrences of the universe to external forces such as deities, devils and spirits. They may or may not be there, but the ones who have the power are us, here and now. Past traditions are obsolete and they enslave the mind and insult the intellect. "God" is useless, banal, sterile... it spells dog backwards and that is what ''he'' has become to everyone... a scapegoat, a hound that persecutes minorities in the name of those who choose to feel threatened and afraid like cowering infants before the big bad monster.
Please cease the idiocy and seek your truth outside of such nonsense. The devil is in your mind and your actions.

Religion and churches are perpetuators of death and hopelessness.

"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul. "
-William Ernest Henley.

. this being said, I do not mean to attack or come off as hostile, but to enlighten.

your a fool to think such things,you'll see when it comes.

the doubters will be taught

Agreed, it is rather amusing.
Especially how many people claim their set path holds the Absolute Truth. Nothing is absolute,people.

I often think of it as half-truths, shades of grey. Neither totally black or totally white. Not entirely 'right' or 'wrong' , amongst other examples. One's perception of a thing may be skewed merely because one wants it to appear in a certain manner, ergo fitting one's interpretation alone( or that of a group of people, a cult, a political party, etc).In absoluteness there is no place for doubt, because the boundaries are already set, the lines are solid and rock-hard.Whereas if there are to be possibilities and unique stories, a single standard must be done away with... or made flexible and malleable. The standard should be human standard, not supposedly divine, or controlled by social institutions.
There is my argument.

"The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual". --Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State

i believe in god but i totally agree with you on what you said

It is my choice, thank you.
What do your scriptures prove, Alexis?... What do they dictate?
Higher moral ground based on some words alone?
And all those who are "driven and tossed by the wind" deserve your pity and your prayers?

-If I cannot lean on my own understanding, am I just supposed to leave everything to chance and to an external force that may not be there at all ... or not at all interested in aiding me?
-If there is an all-knowing, all powerful being, then , must he not also contain this so called 'evil' within himself to be whole?
Otherwise, all things applicable to life in him cannot be, and therefore, the creator is outside of life-- ergo, sterile as the coldness of space. If there is a creator.

-If these are the uber-extremist standards of yours... what is there left for you to learn if you think your book will tell you everything there is to know here?

@A Peezy-thb: thank you.

...what?