**What seemed even crazier to me was a deity that needed me to not eat or drink certain things in order to run a universe, and who needed me to perform meaningless acts or utter certain words in order to assist in this task. I can fathom that being good to each other will make the world a better place, but ethical people do not need an ancient book of interpreted rules to do this.**
What ancient book are you referring to here? What deity? God?
God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is the only deity that I know of within the Catholic Church.
Please, I did not post on this thread to get into religious arguments with people, I just wanted to express that there are not a big bunch of people out there waiting to "come home", any more than the Heaven's Gate people's spaceships were coming from the other side of the sun to pick them up.
There are countless "ancient books", and there are also many names for the deities found in their pages. You reject all of them except one, I add that one to my list. That's all.