Starting To Feel A Lot Like Xmas

So I'm reading the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and... well he's very persuasive isn't he? I've always been somewhat agnostic, perhaps even beating on the door of atheism but - ah there is always a but - I have tried to imagine a world with a God, a world where a beneficent being watches over us and provides guidance and love. Silly hippy shit when you get down to the bare bones but I've gone there, believe me. I was raised in the CofE, morphed to Quakerism, dabbled with Bhuddism, fell in and out of love with the Jesuits, procrastinated over New Age deism and finally shoved off the rock and let it all go... now, I understand that no matter what religion one endures they are all capable of turning good men into bloody pulps for no other reason than to serve the ones who presume to benefit from that flesh extortion. We have so diluted the words of our wise men, so polluted the messages from our forebears that we struggle to understand the very basic tenets that came down, apparently from on high... heavy with purpose and intent, laden with wisdom and brevity. It's all a pile of codswallop essentially, why? Because we never really live it, we never really embrace the ethos, it is a fight to be a spiritual being, it's bloody hard and ultimately unrewarding because no one else is playing by the same rules... to paraphrase Python here and, I think I can, " They're making it up as they go along". Each religion, be it Christian, Islam, Judaism, Hindu, Bhuddism, Hale-Bopp, they are all amorphous, continually adjusting to the currents of conventional wisdom and changing their message to suit the herd mentality they seek to control. I'm done with them all, if there is a God, he would never have let it get this stupid, he would never have allowed his so called Intelligent Design to become so fucked up, so grossly unGodly. If we can't live by a few simple rules laid down only a few thousand years ago, what does that say about the relevance of religion and the relevance of our God. If we continue to twist and manipulate the words of God for our own self interest then how committed are we to the original intent. The problem is... we have never been committed continually falling off and rehitching ourselves to the spiritual wagon but a few saw religion as a chance to lead and many saw it as a chance to conform, to be a part of something that provided safety and a reason to not have to think, they, in a sense, have resigned from the human race allowing themselves to become vessels and vassals for those who seek only to promote themselves. And that, ultimately, is what drove me away and finally led to my present state... I no longer believe in a God or those who purport to represent it on this good Earth... I am free and if there was a God he would be happy.