This right here, the reduction of religion and the belief in a higher power to on par with a bearded old man who uses pixie dust blah blah blah. Religion is a deep and personal experience, and no it doesn't make logical sense, but if you've ever felt it, then you KNOW it can't be replaced by anything else. Religion defies all logic and explanation, and is one of the most meaningful experiences a person can have. To reduce it to a child with an imaginary friend is not only insulting to those who have real faith, but shows exactly how immature and intolerant you are. And while the flying spaghetti monster can be a good laugh from time to time, the people who actually believe that it is representative of religion piss me off like none other.Happyninja42 said:without your magical, invisible sky god.
While on this topic, the whole notion of "Atheism is the logical alternative to religion". NO. Atheism is even less logical than religion. From an evidence standpoint, the religious have what amounts to hearsay ("I heard the almighty creator say..."), whereas Atheists lack that. Atheism amounts to the notion that there's no evidence for a religion, ergo, there is no higher power. This logic is faulty. Go back in time 600 years and tell physicians there that diseases are caused by tiny critters too small to see. You'll get laughed at and made a mockery of if not burned for blasphemy, because obviously there's nothing that small in existence, you can't see it! And yet it's true. Lack of evidence is not evidence of lacking; Atheism is based on a faulty principle.
The true "logical" alternative to religion is Agnosticism. Which most people write off today as people being lazy and indecisive.
What gets worse is when people who profess to be atheists then start making claims that we're in a "Plato's Cave" type of situation, meaning that we're just a smaller reality within a larger one (which, SHOCK!, modern science suggests could be true, from a certain point of view). The belief in a higher power of any kind is not Atheism. In fact, Atheism is the exact opposite of that.