I realise this is leading us extremely far away off-topic, but what the hell...
Forget about me being a zealot (thanks for learning me a new word in English btw
), I do respect other people's beliefs. But what I do like to do is to debate with people who believe in God. It's just such a fascinating matter.
The thing with a God-person, or God-like entity, that I don't understand is this:
How can 1 person/being/entity/... create the entire universe (if there is only one, even that isn't sure) with it's billions and billions of galaxies, even more stars in it, countless planets, and
at least one of those planets inhabited with countless billions of life-forms.
How did he do it, and why? For his amusement? Because he was bored?
I cannot grasp the fact. The scientist in me just cannot grasp that...
What do I think has caused this? I have to support Rich on this one, I do believe in the Big Bang. For me this means: An infinite amount of matter, pulled together by it's gigantic mass to an infinitely small amount of space (i.e. black holes) exploded in a never-before seen burst of pure energy. Out of that primal energy the first stars formed, rocks colliding with each other formed the first planets. This went on for billions of years.
Then, by pure coincidence, a fluke of nature let's say, one of those planets formed in an orbit around a young star called Sol. The conditions on this planet turned out to be ideal for life to develop. At first as a fragile, very simple organism in the oceans. Later after millions of years of evolution life moved to the land on that planet we call Earth. The rest of the story we know I think...
So that's why I'm having difficulties to believe in a God... In my opinion, religion was created by humans to explain the things they couldn't understand, like thunder, lightning, fire, death, and so on. Later, religion was abused by people with power to control the masses. They started making commandments, laws as you might call them (thy shalt not...).
Everyone is free to believe what they want. But this is my belief. One thing is for sure, when we die, we'll know the answer and know who was right!