Well, marjoriemoon got upset with me in the thread for the Scientology post just for asking some questions. Such as:

1. Are there really any religious “revelations,” laws, practices, doctrines, so profound and unique that human beings could not possibly have come up with them on their own? Is even “love your enemies” something that could only have come from God, something that no “mere” human beings could ever have conceived of? I mean, we seem like a pretty ingenious and imaginative bunch.

2. Why is a “non-human” source of love, wisdom, etc. better or more authoritative than human sources?

3. Why has God never revealed to any believer some piece of information not currently known to science, which can be tested and verified? Of course scientists would be skeptical the first few times this happened, but after a couple of hundred such cases, they would have to admit something strange is going on.

I could hardly be described as some kind of “committed” atheist or agnostic…in fact I work for a religious organization (although obviously one of the more “liberal” ones). I don’t have any overweening hostility toward religion (except the ones that have earned it). I’ve just never been able to stop asking questions, even when I wasn’t sure I’d like the answers. And unlike religious folks who claim to understand atheists and agnostics, I really do, and I respect them. I understand how weak the arguments believers use to try to convince them are. I understand that it’s really kind of nuts to fault a person for not believing in something they’ve never seen, heard, touched, or even felt as a “presence” near or inside them (“But if you’d just believe, you’d feel it!”).

One argument goes, “Well, you can’t see love, but it exists, doesn’t it?” Sure, for most of us who can feel it. (There are some human beings who can’t feel emotions—do they exist for those people? To a degree I suppose they do, since they can still experience the effects of love or hatred.) What if a strong and powerful “feeling” of God is simply an outgrowth of our emotions—an evolutionary adaption that helped us carry on our genes?

I think these are good questions. Why should believers get angry and upset with me and belittle and attack me just for asking them? Hey, the questions I ask, the possible answers and their possible implications, sometimes disturb me too. I’m not asking these questions to attack or ridicule anyone. If religious people find them offensive or upsetting, perhaps they need to examine just how secure in their beliefs they really are.