First of all, welcome back. And don't worry, you will always be welcome here if posts of this quality are typical. We may disagree with each and every point, but at least you aren't tossing out biblical verses and assuming that they, on their own, make your argument for you. You are intelligent, literate and capable of stating your ideas/opinions/beliefs well. We want to hear more.
2) Mankind evolved from something imperfect and stayed imperfect
… at least a couple of people in this forum seemed to think #2 might be true, while another expressed opinion suggested that an underlying question as to why mankind is imperfect, is irrelevant.
Of the four, #2 is the closes to how I look at things, but only if this question is given in a multiple choice quiz. Mankind evolved from something, the perfection of which is not important. And we are less than perfect, but that is both because we're dumb sh*ts some of the time, but also because we are able to easily imagine a world that is better in all sorts of ways. The imagined better defines the present as less than perfect.
Perfect sucks as a goal, but is a pretty nice ideal.
Just so we don’t lose focus on the original topic:
You go on to say that you will be posting more on the original topic soon, and I look forward to reading what you have to say.
Unfortunately, mankind is also at the forefront of all the ugliness you mention that occurs in the name of religion.
We here at WWGHA will argue over the cause/effect part of that statement. Most of us probably agree that it is the concept of religion that causes many of the squabbles history has had to contend with. Not the only cause, but it is a biggie. Whether localized, like the occasional blow-ups in Northern Ireland, or global, like the current problems the world has with Muslim terrorism, if we lacked religion, things might be better. And if we were still fighting each other, at least the reasons would be clearer, because we would have fewer issues to fight over. And the actual problems would be easier to discern.
Al Qaida has said over and over that the reason they initially attacked the US is because of our military presence in their region. Their quarrel was not religion. However, their religious beliefs did allow them to take extraordinary steps to kill thousands, and our religious differences became the central theme for most who supported the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A world without religion would still be at fisticuffs with itself, but we might be dying for better reasons, At least sometimes.
Kaziglu’s questions along with many others, once fully hashed out seem to always lead back to 1) Does God exist?, and 2) If God exists, is it relevant to my/anybody’s life?
We've answered #1 to our satisfaction. We're busy trying to get the word out. If your biblical god does exist, then of course #2 becomes a relevant question. But if he is real, his own perfection lacks competence, because he's not very good at getting any of his story across to most of us on this planet. At least not your specific version. Whichever one that may be.
He was pretty good at making conditions ripe for Buddism to rise in the Far East. Quite competent at getting animistic religions formed throughout Africa and the Americas and Europe and Australia. Quite competent at nurturing the rise of Hinduism in India. But he was unable to turn his concentrated efforts in the holy lands into One True Religion™.
His insistence upon being "believed in" and wanting us to have "faith" is exactly the same requirement all the false religions have. That is, of course, because they don't have any real gods to believe in. So I ask this of you as I have of many other christians: Why does your god use the same strategy that all false religions require too? I assume that you agree with me that the Hindu god Shiva doesn't exist, but literally millions of people would argue with that assessment. Hence a belief system is clearly capable of being entirely false and yet entirely believable. How is Christianity any different?
I assume you will want to mention the Bible in your answer. But be forewarned. Hindus have old books too. Older than yours. But you know they are false. And you use the same reasoning that I use to assume that your Bible is false.
So you're got your work cut out for you.
And I, for one, am looking forward to hearing more from you.
