I was at a wedding yesterday when I started to think of this thread. It was a Baptist Church wedding. It scared me on a purely emotional level. One thing is to understand the Christian God theory on paper and have intellectual discussions about it. But I see myself as a fairly open minded kind of guy... but that really freaked me out.
The freakiest thing was that the priest was talking about God like a person. Not like the creator of the universe and creator of all rules and boundaries. It was as if God was going to come and help them over-come difficulties, as if those difficulties weren't put in place by God to begin with. An omnipotent being is responsible for everything... Anyhoo. He wasn't talking about the Christian God... he was talking about Superman.
It got better since I was placed right next to the priest at the dinner and we had a great time. He was a great guy and a super sport. We got him to wear his neck thingy as a head-band. He did remove it the second a camera came up. He "didn't want his congregation to see that picture on the Internet". I thought it was funny. Anyway... I established that this guy was totally anti-intellectual. He had no fucking clue. He didn't give a rats ass about logical consistency. He just didn't worry about it. He just wanted to feel good and find meaning in life. Now that is scary. If we replace reason with pure emotional satisfaction, we've removed all morality. We can justify anything with our faith.
But this being a Baptist wedding didn't prevent it from being a kick-ass party. One of the best parties I've ever been to. Now I'm a bit hung overand resting will commence.