Thank you.

Religion is a construct of men – It's men trying to contain and limit, to control that "something far too grand to be understood" or controlled. God didn't tell anyone to start a religion. God told people how to be better within themselves and how to treat other people with compassion and justice. But, God speaks to people and people can't help putting their own spin on what they've heard when the tell other people.

It's like that old game were you start with a simple statement, whispered into the ear of the person next to you. They whisper what they think they heard to the next person, and on and on around the circle. When you get to the last person, what they repeat back is barely recognizable from the original statement.

But, the one thing all those ancient texts have in common – the one discernable core identity of God in all of them – is that God love and God is love, and that God wants us to love God and to love each other as we love God. The magical sky daddy stuff isn't in that core identity of God. God never told us we would not have troubles, God only promised to be with us in those troubles – that's what prayer does, it centers us with God as we ourselves act to address our needs and the needs of our community. That is what free will is about as well – and what Dominionists and theocratic evangelicals miss entirely with their prosperity gospels and authoritarianism.