• Like Charles Schultz, creator of the Peanuts Cartoons, Charlie Brown and Snoopy et al (Schultz was once an evangelist until he served in the war): I cannot understand an omnipotent, omniscient being who wants to be worshipped.
• I cannot understand any being who would rather be obeyed than loved.
• I cannot understand how love can be generated through fear.
• The idea of a being that is Omnipotent, Omniscient and supposedly ‘all loving’ becomes utterly contradictory and eventually repugnant in the face of the suffering that appears to be part of the Human condition. (This metaphysical paradox never more eloquently posed than in The Brothers Karamazov – where the tears of a single child outweigh any ‘eternal plan’ etc).
• Most of the ideas associated with ‘God’ in scriptures  and books seem to be macho-centric, and only too evocative of the worst qualities we can and do find in human beings; especially sadly and profoundly, in men. I want to reverse the saying that “Man was made in God’s image” into “God seems to be made by Man (literally) in his own image”.
• All religions seems to have deeply unhealthy attitudes to sex and sexuality; so when I want to try to say something about ‘love’ I want it to embrace wholeheartedly the deepest, most intimate physical expression of love between human beings. With no mental reservation about ‘higher’ forms of love.  I want to think of love as indivisible and embracing body, mind and spirit.  Which is why Martin Scorcese’s  notorious film The Last Temptation of Christ widely vilified, was valuable in imagining Jesus as being susceptible to physical desire. As this force influences most of humanity most of the time and lies at the core of our art and culture; it is hard to imagine how he could understand what it is to be human without experiencing it.
• The doctrines of ‘original sin’ and a ‘just war’ seem to me to be simply blasphemous within the meaning of those terms as used in the various Religions that embrace them. War may in extremis sometimes be necessary – but never just.
• The capacity for Love in all its forms and richness seems to me to be the paradigmatic Human quality – beyond faith, belief, certainly beyond obedience and fear.  I’m not a brave man nor I hope a coward; just a man who would aspire to the one and try to avoid the other – with no guarantees either way.
• The nearest I get to a ‘faith’ I suppose is expressed in the idea in Existentialism – that in the final analysis, even in the face of suffering and death we can always choose – not what happens to us, necessity rules the world – but how we respond to it, however impossible that sometimes seems.   But I’m not at all sure I’m strong enough to live up to that way of seeing life.
• I don’t have any quarrel with ‘God’ whatever that means. I have no idea whether He/he exists. But like my fellow Thetfordian Thomas Paine, I have a profound problem and sometimes quarrel, with organised religions; some more than others.
• It seems to me that if every human being on the planet in the past and now, believed, beyond a doubt, that this life is the only life; that there is no heaven or hell or future reward; then truly would life as we know it, this life, be what religious people call sacred – indeed along with love – the only true absolutes I could ever, wholeheartedly accept.

Love freely gives up power
a willing sacrifice
not to an important singer
but to the beauty of her song

In all the complexity of your discourse this is the part I can relate to and feels most human.

Jane

That starts getting hopelessly tangled which raises my philosophical hackles with avengeance.  For all the dreadful stuff in the bible it is striking I think that just as Wittgenstein offered no theories or metaphysics in Philosophy; Jesus offerered no doctrines; only parables and example.  For all else it has always seemed to me that the most impressive and thought-provoking 7 words in the bible are "My God why hast thou forsaken me?"

On a day when unpeakable Republican politicians crow with pride and triumph at reversing the first ever humane effort to offer health care to 20 million of their fellow Americans previously unable to afford it (Obamacare) - none of the above seems remotely important.  That most of these men and women who shame themselves and their country call themselves 'Christian' is a blasphemy as absurd as awarding KIssinger the Nobel Peace Prize. And once the racist 'brickie' who takes over the Presidency next week starts building his wall of hate, I think I'll hide away and listen to Tom Lehrer records in the name of sanity.

Happy New Year.

Z