So you believe that telling people they can’t force others to participate in a prayer to a god they don’t believe in or in the words of a faith to which they don’t belong means that your god has been kicked out of our public places? You believe that your god has sent natural disasters and acts of terrorism and violence to punish people because they don’t express sufficient worship and obeisance to your god? You believe that your god encourages you and will reward you for killing those whose beliefs are different from yours, or who look different, live differently, or love one another in ways you don’t approve of? You believe in a god with male genitalia?

Is this not a weak, petty, vengeful, angry, violent, vain, jealous and frightened god that you believe in.? Is not such a god almost human?

You say you believe in a god that is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient? Can such a god not be wherever god wants to be? Is such a god subject to the restrictions of human laws? But why would god go where god is not wanted? Why not believe in a god that goes where god is not wanted precisely because that is where god might most need to be?

You say you believe in a compassionate, loving god who weeps for every sparrow that falls from the tree? Why would such a god rain death on the innocent as punishment for the wicked? Would such a god not protect the weak against the powerful, rather than simply comfort the survivors afterwards? Would not a forgiving god seek to heal the wicked rather than to destroy them; for surely they are sick in their souls?

You say that we are all the children of god? Why does your god require the worship of god’s children? Do you require the worship of your children? Do you require that everyone else’s children should worship you, also? Why would your god require that all god’s children worship identically, rather than to worship as they will? What makes your worship superior? Do you think that you worship god for god? Why do you not worship god because your worship and your prayers connect you to all god’s children?

Do you believe there is only one god? Or do you believe that there is only one “true” god? If there are other gods besides yours, is your god afraid of them? Does your god require you to go to war against those who believe in other gods? Why does your god not want you, instead, to show them the compassion, the love, the forgiveness, and the healing power of your god; so that they will see that your god is a god worthy of admiration and respect? If you believe that there is only one god, then what is it to you if others do not believe? Will your god not love you if others do not love your god?

Do you believe that your god knows all and is all powerful? Then why does your god not know the truth that is in every person’s heart? And knowing, is your god powerless to heal, to change, to make right what is wrong? Are you more powerful than your god? Are you able to do what your god cannot? If your god has created the universe and all that is in it, who are you to question what has been created? Is your god an irrational god who has created an irrational universe? Is your god a trickster god who has given god’s human children the intelligence to see what god has created and seek to understand it, but made all that we observe an illusion? If we study god’s creation as it is, as god has presented it to us, if we seek to understand that god’s creation by making rational sense of the clues god has left for us, is that not the best way to understand our relationship to god?

Why do you give human form to your god? Do you really want your god to be human? Are we humans not flawed and limited? Can we not aspire to a god who transcends the human, who may have the power to lift us up to the very best that we can be; rather than envision a god who is less than god might be? Is it not true that definitions don’t just tell us what something is, they tell us also what it is not? If your god is a man, then is to be a woman to be not god?

Are you reading this and thinking that I am insulting your god? Do you think that it is your god I mean here? If so, then are you not confirming that the questions themselves are valid? And if you believe that I am not describing the god you believe in, then why are you insulted for your god? If you are nodding your head and thinking that I am absolutely right about someone else’s god, are you simultaneously congratulating yourself on not believing in such a god? How, exactly, are you acting in the world to serve that god who is not the god I have described? Are you congratulating yourself that you don’t believe in any god at all? Do you see that this, like everything I have described above is simply human?

Whether we believe in a god, or not, isn’t it foolish of us to use what we believe to separate us, to hurt each other and to destroy this impossibly vast and wonderful creation regardless of how it was created or what it means? Is that what you believe your god, or your science, requires?