A brief note on faith

Many people with chronic illnesses turn to faith to support them. Others find that the church that has always been a "home" to them abandons them in times of most need. It has been said often that religion is a "crutch," but we are the sick and the lame, and sometimes we need something to prop us up--that is not a sin or a crime.

Nevertheless, there are many of us in chronic pain who have lost faith, who believe that a loving God could not create our bodies to break down and suffer so, would not make an infant ill and weak and in pain for all its short life only to be whisked away to heaven just as it seemed he would grow, would not make children so angry and sad that they think of doing violence to themselves. Seeing what people do to each other in the name of God, trying to enforce their version of faith on others when almost any modern version of faith would, if strictly true, have condemned most of humanity for all of time, has taken my faith in the church. Seeing that there were clearly men before belief in any God known to man today existed takes my faith. An article covering research that says that when Moses had his great visions, he was high on drugs, takes my faith. The fact that most of what the churches teach and believe is based on the teachings and words of Paul of Tarsus, not the great man he was purported to follow or the words of a God on High, takes my faith.

Might the Universe have a spirit? Might we all have souls that live on in some sense? I would like to believe that. But to me, God as we know God cannot be.

If faith comforts you and gives you hope, then keep God in your heart. But please do not judge the rationalists or try to enforce religious tenets as laws.

That said, I would like to share this awesome poster: The Golden Rule for Atheists

Edit: Which is based on this also-awesome poster, which makes some of my point: judge not, lest ye be judged has a similar basis (as does the Rule of Three).