Angelina it is neither proven that god exists nor that he does not exist
Without wishing to "poke the bear" in this case, you are 100% correct. No one can argue this very simple point. The difficulty I have with religion is all of the other crap that comes with it.
The danger of religions is that they interfere with the very personal relationship between "god" and "self". The possibility that everyone is preying to the same god is absurd to people of faith, because they all believe in their own versions, written by people over the ages. And these fables are used to push their own agenda, control the population, start wars and so on.
Christians think Muslims turned against god, or chose the "wrong" one. Is it God, or Allah (or Buddha, or Shiva, or Brahma)? It's all just semantics. Even Christians can't get the name right. Is it Inri? Or Yahweh? Or Jehovah? Unless you read Arahmaic, your Bible isn't the word of God (and never was in my opinion). It's all just stories, written by men trying to make sense of the inexplicable.
Religions of all pursuasions do a very good job of telling you what you should believe, and do an even better job of putting the fear of God into you, lest you stray too far from the herd and use your own unfiltered thought processes. So it's very difficult trying to explain this to people who have been indoctrinated into a particular point of view. It's no different trying to explain to a Scientologist that they are in a cult.
So by all means, enjoy your relationship with a higher power if that is something important to you. But just be very, very wary of the self-serving institutions that tell you how you should go about this.
You can learn good things from all religions but at the end of the day they all say the same thing. Try to be nice and don't kill people. I just wish religious people would listen intently to that part rather than getting bogged down in all of the other bits.
Thankyou for coming to my TED talk. ❤️
