I respect a lot of what you are saying.... It just saddens me that beautiful books with wonderful stories that tell people to do good things are being used to spread hate and cause such animosity on both sides.

It is sad. It truly is. If people could just have their beliefs and respect when people agree with them or not, things would be wonderful. But people are ass holes sometimes, and it doesn't always work out that way... Unfortunate, indeed.

I agree, in all fairness, the kind of people that you are talking about would find anything to make them believe their hate has a higher purpose.... Ignorant, hateful people don't want to feel alone in their thoughts and heads any more than anyone else.... If the world is against you, it's easier to think that your God is behind you

Yes, I suppose. Still....

A fanatic is a bad thing, no matter what banner they wave.

True story.

All very good examples of the feelings I have. Hit'em hard and hit them with truth, they only deny us with lies anyway.

This is one of the reasons I am such a gamer. You don't see a lot of "religious" games. Probably the main reason so many Xtians are against all games.

I've been playing a Witch Doctor in Diablo III ever since it launched. One of the conversations she has with a village blacksmith is strikingly moving for a dungeon crawler game. Spiritual, but not religious. The conversation takes place shortly after the witch doctor had to help the blacksmith put some villagers out of their misery. They had been bitten by zombies and nothing could be done. They were turning into mindless undead that would add to the numbers pouring out of their graves to attack the town. The blacksmith's wife was among those doomed.

The witch doctor, dressed in her tribal garb and totems, walks up to the town's blacksmith. "The rest of the town weep over their dead, but you do not. Tell me, how do you alone know of the Unformed Land?"

Blacksmith: "I don't know what you're talking about. My wife is dead and that is that. I don't wanna talk about it."

Witch doctor: "Ah, you bury your tears. Believe me when I say that I understand. Long ago, before I became a warrior, my sister died of a terrible illness. I did not sleep for days, I did not eat. The spirits, they sang to me until my tears dried and I was strong again. They sing to me still. And I smile when I hear my sister singing among them."

Blacksmith: "With all due respect, I don't care about your beliefs or your spirits. If you don't have any business for me then leave me be."

Some might say the witch doctor was trying to force her beliefs on the blacksmith but I think it was just a matter of her being from a far off, foreign land. She did not know the ways of these people; she only knew the spirits had whispered to her about a great evil in this town, an evil that must not be. When she saw the blacksmith being strong and not shedding tears over the loss of his wife, she mistook his strength for something else.

Anyway, going to stop babbling now =)

That makes sense. See, that kind of thing doesn't bother me. If you want to share your religion with me, share it! If you genuinely want to help me with spiritual talk, go ahead! But do NOT tell me how evil, doomed, damned, or destined for hell I am because I do not follow your beliefs and religion. Because I will hit you in the face.

:)

<puts paws over his nose> Getting hit in the face by Xena would HURT!

I guess the best word to describe my beliefs would be agnostic. If there is a being that created the entire multiverse, any label or name we applied to it would be meaningless. It would be so far beyond our comprehension that trying to restrict it by defining it with any of our words would be insulting at best. I do believe there is a whole spectrum of beings of various level of power, however. Spirits, demons, gods, call them what you will. Could any one of them or even all of them combined have created the multiverse? No way. Would they like us to believe they are that powerful? Of course. Many such beings are egotistical <cough>Ares<cough>. But they are simply higher evolved than we are and/or dwell in a different plane of existence.

I don't really believe in a Heaven or a Hell. As much as I would like to see some people suffer for all eternity due to their acts of mass murder and terrorism, I believe each lifetime is a learning experience for our spirits. We don't typically remember past lives because such knowledge would contaminate our current one and interfere with what our spirit is trying to learn this time around. But the spirit does have all its accumulated knowledge between lifetimes. Those of us who do recall previous lifetimes do so for a reason. There's something our spirit wishes to learn but in order to learn it, it must have access to past memories while in a mortal shell. What are our souls hoping to ultimately learn? We may never know.

And I'm babbling again xD