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I really didn't intend to turn this into a debate. My religious views are not like most. I believe there is a God but he has given us free will, so we do stupid crap all the time like hopping into a car drunk, sleeping around on our spouses or stealing. We might get into a wreck and kill ourselves or someone else, we might get an STD or go to jail. How much prayer is going to help with any of those, I really don't know.
Religion and God are two very different things IMO. Religion has been used as an excuse for killing people for thousands of years, but it has also been the source of feeding and caring for millions. I've always thought and wrote a paper on it in a philosophy class, that the roots of modern religion were created by men with good intentions to create order/law in a world filled with chaos and to try to understand creation. That, in and of itself, doesn't mean that there isn't a higher power.
To me it means that simple humans trying to understand something that is beyond their comprehension is an almost impossible effort but that doesn't make the "trying" a waste of time.
"Do good unto others" is a pretty simple code to live by and pretty much covers the intent of the 10 commandments. People spending money that they don't have to pay for the Jim Bakker's of the world infuriates me to no end. I recently heard that the pastor of a well known Assembly of God church in the area makes $750,000 a year. That's absurd by any count. How can a pastor stand before a congregation and ask them to give money to a church when he is the biggest expense that church has?
I don't believe that we have God or religion figured out, but I do believe he exists and I'd rather live my life knowing there is something more than death at the end of this journey.
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