If you want help, assess what I am trying to tell you with honesty - if you truly have a caring bone in your body for your own cause, you will greatly benefit from reading this.  I only wish to help you - I do not think I am better then any of you, but I do believe that I see more clearly in the regards to religion.  Some may call it awful pretentious that I come in here and spout my own perceptions, but I came here not to spout, but out of compassion towards a common cause that we both have, the dissolution of Evangelical america.  I came here because I see a group of dedicated people that are intelligent and determined, and I want to offer my own personal advice.  Yes, I am under the full understanding that what I am about to say came from me, and is no ones opinion but my own - but look honestly into what I am going to tell you, without getting offended or without just immediately dismissing my conjectures. 

Is this about the longest thread ever posted?  lol.  I spent like 30 minutes on this thing.  Please, take the 5 minutes it takes to read.  Also  - some tool claimed I was "copping out" of a debate, so here we go.  Please, lets not make this a competing debate, lets make this an honest discussion....

"God" doesn’t exist.  I absolutely agree with you on that, for all the concepts you have of god, are certainly absurd ones.  To find a modern American Christian with a good sound concept of "god" is looking for the needle in the haystack.  So indeed, all thoughts and presentations of "god" you have been exposed to, DO have their paradoxes and their loopholes and their supernatural expressions, for one example Jesus Christ being a uniquely divine son of god is supernatural to God's capability, this is an absurd and paradoxical expression of god.  But to look deeper into it, seeing Jesus Christ as a mortal man and a son of god, you can see that he has never been better then any of us, he has only seen more clearly then most of us have.  He realizes he is the son of god, only in the same way we all are, this is why he says "When you can see me as the son of man and the son of god, then you will enter into the Kingdom", not to be achieved in an after life, but to be seen during life.  He never proclaimed himself to be better then anybody else, he only expressed what came out of pure conscious clarity, and in the contexts of his teachings, you can see that pure conscious clarity.  Though much of what was pure conscious clarity at that time, had to have been expressed in parables, as per the limitations of human language, he created riddles to dive deeper into consciousness, further then words can get you.   This is the same of all the great leaders, who taught of "god" or consciousness, realizing the conscious host that exists amongst us, but not independent of us.

To see god, to believe in god does not take a leap of blind faith, but an honest inquiry into ones own sense of self, sense of being, and ones own personal conceptualizations towards achieving this understanding.  But, you do not need to call it "god", you can call it whatever the fuck you want.  You can call it your flying spaghetti monster, words cannot contain the truth, they can only express the truth.  To see god is to see the pure conscious clarity that exists within you, when you come to this realization, you will believe, because you will see, and all things that have been hidden from you will now become manifest, and all things that have been misunderstood will now be understood.  but only, with pure conscious clarity.  There is a deep truth into the Garden of Eden parable; the fruit of knowledge is what casts us from the Garden.  However, this forbidden fruit is nothing more then a hallucinogenic of mind - it is your own mental thought coverings that shelter you from reality and experiencing the truth depths of consciousness.  To dissolute ones self form ones mind, one must first dissolute ones self FROM ones self.

If I were to draw a small curved line on a piece of paper, have I drawn a concave one or a convex line?  Indeed, to say that something exists as fact, is to take position of it being EITHER concave line, or the convex, when in reality, they are only concepts and exist dependent of each other, what I drew is not factually one thing or another in reality, its factually one thing or another only within the confines of the relative concept used to express it.  Conscious expression can not contain truth, in any shape or form, unless it dismisses itself as well, for example, a factual statement can be "I am typing on the computer, and I am not typing on the computer."  Now, if this were a "reality" assessment, first of all, I would have to find out who this I is, what the concept of "am" is, the concept of "typing", and how one can do it on a computer and so on.  To be rational, is to explore each and every little word and see to it the depths of its meanings, not to see a single phrase and to dismiss all its authority based on your blind refusal to embrace any other thought outside of your own.  This is not self-authority, this is blind authority to the ego of ones self, which usually is dependent upon an indoctrinating higher truth such as what you guys do with science.

Another thing that Science is short of doing as addressing the deeper side of the universe, it is not a space-time continuum, it is a space-time-consciousness continuum, and they can do their hypothesis to assess this conjecture, all actions must arise from conscious control, or a conscious host, and all that is is manifest of consciousness, is the perpetuant to even their own theories of flux, and their own laws of thermodynamics, and aerodynamics.  Many of you simply cannot see past these laws of science and into the grandness of things.  Thinking that "consciousness" is existent dependent on the brain is an intensely absurd notion, consciousness isn’t the thoughts in ones brain, its what gives rise to the thoughts in ones brain, as it gives a flower the ability to react to music, or to lean towards the sun, these too are examples of a conscious host, reacting consciously to its conditionings.

To become aware of these realities is to see the Garden of Eden, to see the reality of no reality, is to become "one with god", but becoming "one with god" is not any more then becoming one with reality, and all of its conditionings, and all of its environments.  Right now, most Christians are under the toxic effects of the Fruit of Knowledge, because "knowledge" is tangible, knowledge is bondage, knowledge exists in no plane of reality, knowledge exists in the conceptions of reality, nothing more - and to believe that a concept can hold high truth over reality is disgustingly short-sighted, and is exemplary of a person who is deeply afflicted by the toxins of the Fruit of Knowledge.  Once your, as some masters have said "intellect commits suicide" you remove the toxicity of the fruit.  This is not to forget and leave behind the "knowledge" you have thus attained, this is to see the cause and effect to all the knowledge one has attained, and to see deeper beyond the concepts.  This is the transformation of turning knowledge into wisdom.

Knowledge is not power

Knowledge is bondage

Wisdom is freedom,

Wisdom is power, because its power over ones self, through ones self.

This is the practice of the perfection of wisdom, the wisdom of nothingness, or the parallel to Christianity, Christ’s expressions of "the eyes of a child".   

Seeing into this, however, one must transcend their own fear of death, many of you may boldly say that "pshhh, I don’t fear death", but with deeper introspection, you just may find that you do.  How many have even thought of it?  For once in your life, you may truly be completely alone, or you simply cease to be.  How many have tried to wrap their heads around it?  How many of you really looked that deeply into the phenomenology of life and death?  If you look deep into yourself, you will find all that you are, and all that you have been, and all that you can be, when you see through your self to death, you have conquered your self, through conquering death.  Once you have mastered death, all things hidden from your understanding will now become manifest, all that has been foreign to you will then become understood by you.  But if you cannot see into your selves what it is that so drives you to do something like this, which is in honest and good intentions I have seen, then how can you help others when you cannot help your selves? 

Religion is not a cool club that you take a part in, it is not a place where people do what they are told to run a business, its about honesty, integrity, and the pursuit of wisdom, the only true knowing, is in dismissing knowledge, and embracing wisdom.  How can religion do this when they demand their own authority?  It cant, an organized religion that imposes authoritative doctrine over its followers, only dismisses itself as a religion, and instead becomes a cult-like following with figureheads manipulating their people like puppets - their dogma isn’t religious practice, their dogma is political practice, a broad scope of selfish practice.

every time you say "all religions are hocus pocus" or "mythological" or "absurd" or whatever other degrading labels you give it, you do not do anything but to make yourselves look foolish, narrow minded, and short sighted.  I am telling you this not out of condescent, but I am telling you this so you can perhaps see the errors in your ways, and realize that you cannot fight fire with fire, but you must fight it with water.  Do not attack a person for believing in god, if they believe in god, ask them "why?" and seek first to understand them, before you are quick to jump down them with your own self proclaimed "better" understanding.  There are very many sound reasons to believe in "god", by all the definitions expressed world wide, but you know that divisiveness that Dawkins was bitching about?  What do you think you’re doing when you divide the entire world into two groups, people who do and don’t believe in god?  If you ask many Buddhists, you may get the response that they both do, and they don’t, or they will ask you back "I don’t know, do I?", this is not their absurd mysticism, this is them looking into deeper truths then the typical superficial Kingdom of Americana.

Instead, I submit to you that change the word "god" to "hell", and first attack the book of revelations, this is addressing the very source of the problems, and not dabbling its head in the superficial differences.

I do believe in god, and I don’t believe in god.  If an atheist asked me if I believed in god, I would not, but if a theist asked me if I believed in god, I would, because that is the essential importance to find common ground, not to be dabbled in the superficialities of the concept, but to embrace all for their own beliefs and concepts.

So long as you maintain this kind of behavior, and by that I mean your militant refusal of all concepts of "god" - you are not a part of the solution, you are part of the problem; you have gained a decent following, if it can so be called, but you are leading them on a path of self destruction with "Does God Exist" being your staple argument.  If you change this whole movement to focusing on simply the book of revelations and its own incongruence with the message of Christ, you will be successful beyond your imagination.

To me, practicing religion, is practicing mind, a Buddhist monk was once asked "If you could define Buddhism into two words, what would they be?" and the monk responded with "Practice mindfulness".  Where, truly, is the absurdity in this?  To become mindful and practice ones own mind is "supernatural" and pixie dust in the sky?

I tell you this because many of you had been up to know falsely lead by an idiot.  Richard Dawkins may see and know a lot of the universe, but he doesn’t have the balls to see past himself, and he is a being of darkness that casts more darkness.  I commend him for giving the community atheists a feeling of empowerment, but his reverse condemnation is his own undoing, and he is what I would call a hypocrite.  Does this mean I disagree with everything he says?  No, of course not, I agree with a lot of, if not most of what he says, but some of his most empowering words to you guys are words of reverse condemnation, hes leading a cult-like following by creating his divisive reality and implanting it into our culture.  He says “Religion is divisive”, but he categorizes all of the world into those who do believe in god and those who don’t, so who the flying fuck is he to talk about divisiveness, a great teacher once said that “A person must take the timber out of their own eye before they can see clearly enough to remove the sliver in others”, Dawkins has a very deep intellect but it still cannot see past his own ego – and thus his ego grows and is spread in the contexts of his divisive books.  He is not the authority over you, he does not know better then anybody else, take authority over your self, and look into everything with self-honesty, and serious inquiry, and stop taking sides and picking superficial battles that only increase the problem in America.  With the way things are headed a civil war is likely to be the result, quite literally, these superficial differences seem calm and relaxed now, but give it 20 years of continued hatred, and conditions will have made themselves significantly worse.  Right now youre just shouting across the room "No!  You guys are wrong!  Were the right ones!" and they say "Fuck you assholes, weve got christ bitches, he'll dominate your ass, gods on our side", and then you say "fuck you truth is on our side bitches!  We'll fucking kill you!".  do you see the absurdity in this?

I have said really all that can be said to you guys, if you continue to refuse to see your own undoings, then I cannot help you save your selves.  You so boldly go by the name "free thinker", so use your free thinking.

and congratulations to anybody whom actually read any and especially all of that.