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LOLOL! That’s what happens when you leave a door open. Seriously, as much as I'm interested in this conversation, I'll be out of town from tomorrow morning till next Wednesday, so I'll just "sum up" my view and say adios!

You are antropomorphising the universe without sufficient compelling evidence to overcome the skepticism of the unpursuaded, or, at least me.

IMHO, this conversation has always centered on faith. Morality looks entirely different to an atheist. And it appears you are in the agnostic corner because you are unpersuaded and skeptic and continue to challenge us believers to prove to you that God is and perhaps, who He is – and to justify to you the prior actions of the Catholic church.

As long as you retain such prejudice and skepticism, there is no way I can convince you of anything, and I don't think anyone else here could convince you either.

Only the Holy Spirit can convict someone (which usually results in bringing one to his knees) --– and He doesn’t convict just anybody:

And because I tell [you] the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear [them] not, because ye are not of God. – John 8:45-47

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate [to be] conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. – Romans 8:28-30

Truly, donh, I don’t know if you don’t have ‘ears to hear’ or whether you do hear but are being defiant. Either way, all I can do to help you is to pray for you and to love you – both of which I gladly do. So until next time, adios!

And it appears you are in the agnostic corner because you are unpersuaded and skeptic and continue to challenge us believers to prove to you that God is and perhaps, who He is – and to justify to you the prior actions of the Catholic church.

I believe I am less of an agnostic than most. I think there are, in fact, some good reasons for postulating that a motive intelligence informs the universe. However, I am not confused by that into thinking that I shouldn't struggle to understand as much as I can about the universe that can be discerned in a critical manner, by mundane reasoning about tangible evidence.

American christians could have stopped the murder by herbicide of nearly a million viet nam peasants, and nearly a million genocide victims of the Pol Pot regime, and many more since then, had they taken their moral precepts, as given in the bible seriously, and taken a principled stand. There are too many of them for our government to ignore. It made me angry then, it makes me angry now. I apologize if my response to this is discomforting. According to people like exmarine, our country is utterly christian since it's founding, so I see scant excuse for this. Unless all those overseas-slanteyes have Mideanite blood, of course.