God and his place in our world

For those who don’t know me, I come from a long line of Christian preachers. My father, his father, his father, and so on. I was literally supposed to be the next great preacher in the line. I think it’s safe to say that will never happen.

For some time when I was making my switch from devout Christian to strict non-believer I had more than a few discussions with my parents.
One of the argument techniques my father has used for some time is that he simply bombards you with information. He shows you how much he knows about the bible and dares you to defy. He does this because he knows that 99.9% of people don’t have near the biblical knowledge that he does.
He’s a studier, he doesn’t just read the bible, he studies the translations of words, what the original Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic texts say. And I will give him credit, he knows his stuff very well.
But one day I flipped the tables, for as much as he did know about the bible and his faith, there was plenty of history about that book and that faith that he didn’t know. So I used his own trick on him… needless to say he didn’t care for my tactic too much, no one wants to be beaten by their own signature move.
It was nice to be able to “win” one, as though winning is actually possible in these instances but it still felt good. But to be honest, I regret it now.

Now people won’t talk to me about faith and religion if they disagree with me, the reason is simple, they know they do not know the history like I do, they know I can rip apart a bible verse with little problem or effort. Basically, people have become intimidated by how much I’ve studied.
I’m not bragging by any stretch, for every person that makes me feel smart there are plenty that I listen to and realize how much I don’t know.
But the thing I hate is that people always tell me how I need to “get back to god” and when I go to tell them that won’t be happening they immediately begin to back off saying “Well I can’t debate it with you from an academic stand point so I’m not even going to try.”
That’s the coward’s way out. God has never rested anywhere other than the imagination, he is an idea, a philosophical metaphor. The easiest way to tell that is to go to a local church on Sunday morning and ask as many people in the service to define god to you. Not one answer will be the same.

How is that possible? This God allegedly is the founder of the three not so great monotheistic religions. Yet no one defines him the same. Even with thousands of pages of texts to describe the mysterious diety, the interpretations are all different.

Of course it’s not possible, and that’s one of the very reasons that Christianity and every other religion are a bunch of bunk.

The sooner people realize that God is an idea to be discussed in realm of philosophy and not the author of existence, the better off all people will be.

Fight the good fight, don’t stoop to their level, and cover the world with reason.