I guess my question for you would be… What are you trying to get out of God/religion?

I wouldn’t consider myself to be an overly religious person, but I would consider myself a moral person. Are you looking to religion / God to be a guiding force? By that I mean, is your under-lying moral code derived from the Bible and/or organized religion? I think that might be Midgley’s under-lying point.

Our society / culture has a basis in the Bible and Roman law. We have been raised in this society to believe certain things are moral/ethical and other things aren’t. Do you need to be religious to be moral? I would say no, but the under-lying moral code does have Biblical ties.

What do I think? I think church has its place. It is a place where the kids can hear the message about good morals and how we should treat each other from a source other than their parents. Since we all know how well they listen to their parents.

Is there a God? I have no idea. But, I’m Ok with that. I subscribe to the philosophy that everything happens for a reason, just because I don’t know what the reason is, doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason. Lessons can be learned both through adversity and (whatever a good synonym for non-adversity would be – I can’t think of a good word right now).

Do I think God is active in my life? No, at least not in any overt way. Do I think God cares who wins the big game on Saturday? Nope.

Science and God don’t need to be separate issues, nor do they need to be at odds. Why couldn’t God have started the Big Bang and then just sat back and watched evolution happen? Scientists have theories about how things worked, but do they KNOW how everything started?

I made the suggestion to friend in college once that, for all we knew, Earth was an intergalactic zoo. The dinosaurs were the first occupants, there was a problem, so the planet got restocked with other species. (I was playing devil’s advocate a bit at the time – but for all we know, that’s what happened.) His response was “I am not a guppy!”

We don’t know. None of us KNOW. There is only faith. Either you believe or you don’t or you don’t care enough to look at it critically.

I commend you on your journey. It takes strength to question. The only problem is that there may not be any answers.

Think of it this way: if an entity had the power and intelligence to construct the whole of our reality, couldn’t it respond to your pleas in its own fashion, in ways you couldn’t possibly understand? As a poor analogy, consider a chess game: you might be looking only two or three moves ahead, whereas God would be able to see several thousand moves ahead (or, indeed, see every move in every game through all of time simultaneously). God may well be responding to our pleas, we just lack the capacity to see the intervention. Or God may have reasons we can’t fathom for not intervening.

My Catholic upbringing comes into play during these thought experiments. I was always taught that Faith would not necessarily be responded to directly. Faith in God requires a personal choice, and sometimes a lot of sacrifice. If God proves to you that he exists, then Faith is no longer a choice. If it’s no longer a choice, then (as I was taught) the value of belief is lost.

As the Catholics taught me, God loves us enough to allow us to make our own choices. One of those choices is whether to believe God exists, and whether or not to honor that belief in any way. If the existence of God is verifiable, then there’s not much choice.

Think of it from your own experiences as a parent. Do you want your kids to love you because they choose to do so, or do you want them to love you out of some formalized ritual or sense of obligation? Isn’t it much more satisfying to experience genuine love, rather than the motions of love through some sense of duty?