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One of the things that started to eat away at me was the whole problem of special pleading. I started to ask myself, "Why did the religion I was born and raised up in and which dominated my culture and even national identity to a great extent, have any more validity or truthfulness behind it than any of the other religions being practiced on the planet?" It is hard to get past without a great deal of mental gymnastics, rationalization, and religious faith. Religious faith here being a belief held despite the lack of evidence or in the face of contrary evidence based on the perceived veracity of the source. God X is real but gods A,B, and C are all not because the believer holds a religious faith in god X but not A,B, or C. To declare god X the one and only true god all gods must be evaluated with equal rigor. Just attempting to engage in that exercise led me to conclusion that all gods (supernatural non-human beings who require worship, obedience, and claim to be our creators) by virtue of their alleged natures (essentially transcendent) are restricted to the realm of the human imagination.

<blockquote data-quote="trainedobserver" data-source="post: 134803" data-attributes="member: 2192">One of the things that started to eat away at me was the whole problem of special pleading. I started to ask myself, &quot;Why did the religion I was born and raised up in and which dominated my culture and even national identity to a great extent, have any more validity or truthfulness behind it than any of the other religions being practiced on the planet?&quot; It is hard to get past without a great deal of mental gymnastics, rationalization, and religious faith. Religious faith here being a belief held despite the lack of evidence or in the face of contrary evidence based on the perceived veracity of the source. God X is real but gods A,B, and C are all not because the believer holds a religious faith in god X but not A,B, or C. To declare god X the one and only true god all gods must be evaluated with equal rigor. Just attempting to engage in that exercise led me to conclusion that <a href="http://www.godchecker.com/" target="_blank">all gods </a>(supernatural non-human beings who require worship, obedience, and claim to be our creators) by virtue of their alleged natures (essentially transcendent)&nbsp; are restricted to the realm of the human imagination.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="trainedobserver, post: 134803, member: 2192"] One of the things that started to eat away at me was the whole problem of [I]special pleading[/I]. I started to ask myself, "Why did the religion I was born and raised up in and which dominated my culture and even national identity to a great extent, have any more validity or truthfulness behind it than any of the other religions being practiced on the planet?" It is hard to get past without a great deal of mental gymnastics, rationalization, and religious faith. Religious faith here being a belief held despite the lack of evidence or in the face of contrary evidence based on the [I]perceived[/I] veracity of the source. God X is real but gods A,B, and C are all not because the believer holds a religious faith in god X but not A,B, or C. To declare god X the one and only true god all gods must be evaluated with equal rigor. Just [I]attempting to engage[/I] in that exercise led me to conclusion that [URL='http://www.godchecker.com/']all gods [/URL](supernatural non-human beings who require worship, obedience, and claim to be our creators) by virtue of their alleged natures (essentially transcendent) are restricted to the realm of the human imagination. [/QUOTE]

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