Here's a complete curveball for this whole discussion. What if "God" is something extraterrestrial beyond our understanding? I know traditional Christians believe that the Bible is the true word of God, but then again, who knows what was discarded or translated with a slant when the King James Version was commissioned in the 1600's? (Before that, it was a capital crime to speak or print "the word of God" in anything but Latin... in a society where only 5% were literate, and only the wealthy nobles and priests understood it.)I check up from time to time on a late nite televangelist who currently is the chairperson for linguisticts at Stanford (http://www.drgenescott.com); he and his wife get into some seriously arch-conservatism, but even they run across differences in translation from Greek, Latin, Arameic, and other tongues that fly in the face of institutionalized "mainstream" christianity that they quickly dismiss because it's not in-line with the social tradition.

Hypocrisy. Makes me giggle, even when I'm not lifted.

The Vatican has miles and miles of written material that they refuse to release to the general public, under high security enforced by the Vatican Guard (who are, in fact, Swiss mercenaries... provided for by papal edict during the mid-1800s). A lot of institutionalized Christian tradition is, in fact, co-opted from pagan rituals that Constantine deemed necessary to ease the adoption of the faith as the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire; I can't break them all down ad nauseam, but check out NoBeliefs.com (Freethinkers) and Disinformation :: The gateway to the underground - news, politics, conspiracy and weirdness. for some solid breakdowns... and prepare to sacrifice some herb to the fire gods. Joe Rogan (Welcome to JoeRogan.net: Official Site of Comedian Joe Rogan, the former host of Fear Factor, has a great posting on his site about monkeys and psychoactive fungus that's worth a read.

I've had some miraculous things happen in my life. I walked away from 2 car wrecks that should have killed me, and my late stepfather came out of brain surgery where he only had a 10% chance of survival (the cancer took him 14 months later when it kicked back into overdrive.) I think that science will always trump religion, no matter what; the "wrath of God" can be explained by our study of thunderstorms, agricultural science, and medicine in general. We know more about our world than ever before, and there's still a lot of shit that's unexplicable that we may never understand. As far as we know, we could very well be an abandoned scientific experiment up for review in 2012 if the Mayans are correct. I don't waste time trying to prove if there's a God in any form, and it's beyond my understanding; I have a hard enough time trying to follow two conversations at the same time, and we're talking about something that's omniscient. I just try to do the best that I can by everyone I come into contact with, and I always seem to get what I give. That translates across every single religion and faith I've ever studied.

Slainte,
thewriterandthemuse (or at least, thewriter half)

PS - Sorry if I offened any traditional Christians out there, but if you're a true follower of Jesus, you'll forgive me.