Building Spirituality - Part Five

As I have mentioned before there is a friend with whom I have been engaged for about three months in debates about religion and the Bible. He is a decent man, we like each other personally, and in essence I believe we are more alike than we are different. But it's the Realities that we seem to have trouble with. He is a Fundamentalist pastor and counsellor and clings tenaciously to the beliefs of "old time religion": that Jesus died for my sins, that God allows bad things to happen to good people, etc., and that only God knows why [He] does what [He] does. A typical exchange;
P: Jesus died for my sins. G: Who decided that was necessary? P: God. G: Why? P: Because God loves me, and [He] loves you too. G:Would you do the same thing if you were God? P: No. G: Why not? P: Because I'm not God. G: In view of all the billions of galaxies in the universe, each containing billions of stars, are you telling me you're THAT important? P: Yes. G: So this God of yours sends "the perfect man" to die for the sins of "lowly worms in the dust"? At this point my friend smiles but has no answer. This happens frequently: when I pose a question, the answer to which will directly contradict something he just said, he smiles knowingly and after a moment or so tells me that God loves me, and that one say I will know the "truth". "And that is...?" "That God loves you and Jesus died for your sins."G: How do I know it's the truch?P: The Bible says so. When I point out to him that my arguments are also rooted in the Bible, some direct quotes, my pastor friend then does a little verbal tap dance. "That's the wrong version," he tells me. "There are many versions of the Bible...all the others are wrong...you can only understand the truth if you read it in the original Greek."G: How do you know which one is right?P: I just know.G: How do you know???P: The Bible tells me so. So go these circular arguments that ultimately go nowhere; then a week or so later it starts again. The man is evidently quite shaky in his belief systems as I continue to point out the illogic and contradictions of his positions and he keeps coming back to the same arguments that I have already demolished. But he still professes to believe in them! "The Lord works in foolish ways to confound the wise," he rejoins. Why? I ask. (All together now): GOD ONLY KNOWS!It is this mindset that the website http://timeoftheend-faithandreason.net addresses. The epitome of ignorance and superstition, this crock of Medieval mumbo-jumbo is more than just fantasy: It's dangerous. The ideas this friend espouses were cooked up during the Dark Ages, when the flat earth was the center of a very small universe in which the sun, moon and stars revolved around it. The sky was a crystal canopy, studded with precious jewels that covered the flat earth like the lid on a cake dish. The [God] that lived "up there" was patterned after the Greek god Zeus and demonstrated some serious character defects, but since [He] was ]God] that was alright. Nobody could explain it. "Only God knows," they still say, and that's that. And this travesty of the spirit and of baseline intelligence has, through a relentless campaign of fear-based indoctrination beginning with youngest children, has persisted through seventeen centuries. And where has this trend led us?
Wake up and look around!
The world is more chaotic than ever before. Wars are still being waged, only there are more devastating than any in our six-thousand years of organized violence. There are countless religious movements, denominations, sects, and cults, all of which only serve to divide mankind. Our politics are in turmoil, our economy is in shambles.

There has to be a better way! There is.