Thank you for a long and heartfelt argument. I read it all, and some parts twice.
If my article didn't make it clear why I "turned away" from the church, nothing will.
My mother would have been perfectly happy that I still believed in compassion, cooperation and human decency. It never bothered her at all that I was an atheist.
Trump is not supported by a majority of Americans and I never said that. What I said, and is true, is that a majority of American Christians support him, just like they supported George W. Bush. In America for the last 40 years or so, being a Christian tends to make you support the more evil political candidate.
Wouldn't you hope that God would be able to guide them to select more virtuous candidates?
Why are we not given hard evidence God exists? An omnipotent God could just speak in everyone's ear at once - "I exist". He could write in letters of fire a million miles high on the sky.
Or why are we not just born believing in Him? We could still have free will. Plenty of people believe in God and still commit sins.
But he is silent, and a majority of humanity have heard of God, and Christ, and choose instead to worship other gods, or no god at all, and go into the flames.
If God existed, he could at any moment reveal Himself to us in a tangible way, so all those five billion people who do not believe in Christ won't be cast into the flames for all eternity.
Five billion souls, screaming in Hell for all eternity! And it's their fault, not the God who created this system in the first place.
I spent considerable time and effort when I was young trying to believe in God. I read through the Bible, which was a terrible mistake as it's full of horrors and inconsistencies. I prayed. I tried a lot of things. Nothing.
When I read the Bible again, I thought, "Why would I worship this cruel and arbitrary God? Where's the compassion and love I was promised?"
Let me sum up your theology.
God is all-knowing and omnipotent, so he creates someone like me, knowing in advance that I will never believe in him without evidence.
Then at the end of my life, he tortures me with infinite pain for eternity.
And in your world view, it's somehow my fault that God tortures me. My only way out of this is to endlessly praise this God, or he'll torture me forever. So childish and petty!
In your worldview, he created and countless billions of other people, just to torture us for eternity. And you use words like Grace, Love and Compassion for this.
It's a truly horrible story and I have no idea how any compassionate person can accept this horror.
Whoever made this story up is some sadist who loves the idea of torture. It certainly has nothing to do with the creation of the universe, or any spiritual truth at all.
