I'm thinking it's a puppet hole. Shaped just right for the "Right Hand Of God"

Word!

I have no God-shaped hole. If I ever accepted god it would create a bible shaped chasm that used to be filled my self respect, my feelings of worth as a female, my thirst for scientific knowledge and my love for my gay friends.

Danikajaye, I think this is very apt.

Think what happens, though, if your education deliberately robbed you of all these things - self-respect, feelings of worth (especially as a female), scientific curiosity and the tools to satisfy it, and love for ordinary people who do not conform to your educated views of "godliness." That, surely, is how you mass-produce "god(nonsense)-shaped holes" in large numbers of people, so they are ready to fill it with any nonsense(god) you wish to put there.

There's more a kind of gentle thoughtfulness running through this thread, which, if you were paying attention, without your preconceptions, no doubt you would have noticed.

You are so right that ignorance is a sad thing. When you find anger here, it is generally aimed at ignorance and stupidity and the damage that they do to people, including many that each of us knows and loves.

It's been a long time since I've read this one, but your comment prompted me to read it again. Having done so, I completely fail to see any anger or bitterness in it at all, let alone anger or bitterness overflowing from it! Can you clarify where you are seeing it?

Jim,

Thanks! I was looking for statistics to make the same point, but the ones I had were from 1991...

The least religious countries are the ones that do best in terms of such things as low homicide rates, low infant mortality rate, high life expectancy, and several other measures how well people do a good job of living.

Shame.

I suppose that is what happens when you live without God. You get swallowed up by your black god shaped hole. It is very evident that human beings don't do such a great job living without God, if you look at the injustice we inflict on one another and the general downward slide of the planet and all that is good.

Good luck to you. Ignorance is a sad thing.

Nobody ever describes the "God" in specific terms that anyone can observe and confirm. Nobody says how the "God" operates, what's it made of, how it creates entire solar systems and galaxies. It's never explicated. We never SEE the God before neutral observers; it's always some ancient mystic or somebody on Times Square holding a brown paper bag, or some cartoon character in a really big rich mansion wearing a mitre that tells us ABOUT the God, but we never get to see any part of it. Now they resort to calling it a hole. an empty hole. This is actually as close to what God has been all along then any thing they have produced so far.