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If that’s the case I spit your god’s eye just as I would spit in Osama’s eye.

I agree the reasoning you attack is not very good. Folks often see the hand of providence randomly.

But in response to what I think was the thrust of your post, if there is a God and those are His rules, what you think about it and whether it makes you spit doesn't really make much of a difference. That's the difference between God and man.

This is just a passionate version of the: "I could never accept a God who . . ." argument. If there is a God, it really doesn't matter whether you accept Him or not. Whether He accepts you is much more to the point.

Of course, if you are right and there is no God, I guess you win the best, correct, angry athiest of the day award. Not worth much. Because if there's no God, there is no meaning and no reason to choose one course of action over another aside from how you feel. ANY decision you make is as good as any other. If there is no personal God, Camus and the existentialists were right. We are Sysiphus carrying rocks up the hill, only to have them roll down again so we can carry them up again. So even if you are right, my FRiend, being an angry athiest spitting in God's eye is an utterly empty gesture, no more or less meaningful than blowing up the WTC. There's no reason to do, or not to do, either of them.

I'm a recovered angry athiest. Every word you write is something I could have written. But I assure you, He's out there knocking. All you have to do is open the door. Just because some of his followers get overzealous in thinking they understand His will doesn't change that one little bit.

I sincerely apologize to you and all others I may have offended by my angry remarks.

While a non-believer, I am not typically the stereotypical angry – anti-god, anti-religious zealot Atheist.

Even as a non-believer, I more often than not find myself sincerely defending Christians and their beliefs as there are a lot of good things in those teachings and a lot of good people practicing that faith.

After re-reading the article, I can see that, while it did hit one of my sore spots, I did over react. At the time of my post, I was in an emotional state to start with, but that is a poor excuse for lashing out. I should not have done that and I sincerely regret my comments in that they may have caused more anger and contention.

With that being said, I try to keep an open mind to everyone’s beliefs even if they are not my own. That’s not to say I accept the beliefs of the radical Muslim any more than I do some radical Christians (like the Westboro’s) or radical Jews or radical Atheist or radical whatevers. However when radicalism equals blanket irrational hatred toward others, then I reject that no matter who or where it comes from.

I’ve known some very good people of many various non-Christian faiths including some Muslims, who bear no resemblance to the radicals and in fact hate the Imams and terrorists for their actions as much as you or I do. On 9/11, a very kind beautiful young woman who I worked with who was Iranian and Muslim by her mother and father’s birth, but an American by her birth, sat and held me in her arms as we both cried together watching the Twin Towers fall live on TV and I remember her saying to me, “Why would someone do this to us?”

You see, I do have a problem when people try to rationalize the irrational behavior of other sub-humans as being “God’s” will like “Perhaps God is telling all of Europe to stop following humanistic and atheistic philosophies.”

In saying something like that, I interpret that to mean that all the victims and families of terror attacks are somehow responsible for their own deaths in that they were not following the same spiritual path as the author.

I also have a problem in bring up century old angers and resentments as justification for perpetuating more hatred today because that’s just what the terrorists do. I personally strive to rise above that.

If I were ever to believe in a supreme being, then that being would have to be one who judges us individually on our own merits and daily actions and how we treat one another in life and not what particular rituals we choose to follow, what language we speak or what race we belong to.

If I were ever to believe in a supreme being then that belief would have to allow that God has many faces and more than one name and that there is but more than one very narrow path that leads to God.

In my 46 years, I’ve known some very law abiding, compassionate, caring, self-sacrificing folks who were Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and even some Wiccans and Atheists along the way. And I’ve also known a few, narrow minded, angry, self obsessed, materialistic, hate filled so-called Christians who go to church every Sunday, give their Tilth and can quote from the Old and New Testimate on command, but treat their employees and fellow human beings, outside their own church like complete garbage. (I worked for one of these a-holes so I know first hand the hypocrisy)

So tell me, when standing in line at the Pearly Gates, who in your opinion, gets in?