Yes, religion is very much a case of "buyer beware, this product comes with no guarantees or warnings" One can never ascertain if one is getting the genuine article or a cheap phoney imitation. Would you buy a used car under those conditions? Me thinks not, but millions buy religion with no conditions, just a promise of a hereafter.

Dear Paul,

«Would you buy a used car under those conditions?»

At the end of the day, if you need a used car, what else can you do?

You check around and make the observations to the best of your ability, but eventually you have got to buy from someone.

If this is any consolation, the most common reason for being defrauded is that you defrauded others in the past.

And the most common reason for being swindled with a cheap phoney imitation of a religion, is that you have similarly swindled others in past lifetimes.

But if you truly want God badly and sincerely enough, then you will detect some alarming signs when approaching something fishy that would lead you the other way.

«but millions buy religion with no conditions»

The ones who go out to buy a religion (whether or not they find one) are a minority.

As I mentioned in my previous post, most are not even interested in religion, thus are not disappointed: they just wanted to belong to a big and powerful organisation and they got just what they wanted!

Dear Yuyutsu,

Why do you think there is a God or god?

Dear David,

«Why do you think there is a God or god?»

I am happy to respond, though this is a change of topic: you actually just introduced two different new topics because God is not a god.

So first about gods (with a small 'g'), that's the easy part:

I don't have a particular opinion about their existence - maybe they exist, maybe not: for all I care, thinking of them makes a good devotional tool (as an analogy, counting sheep is a good tool for falling asleep: does anybody care whether these sheep exist or otherwise?).

Now for the more difficult part: God.

Just first, a grammatical remark: since you worded your question with the 'a' article ("why do you think there is A God"), the strict answer is that I do not think so at all, because 'a' must precede an object and God is not an object.

Never mind, let's proceed without being so strict with grammar, ignoring that 'a':

My difficulty is in understanding what you mean by "there is".
I must assume that you were not merely referring in your question to God's existence, a trivial question which I already answered in the negative neither once nor twice (and I do hope that your memory at 97 is still sharp as ever), making it perfectly clear that God cannot exist.

Thus I am perplexed what exactly you mean by "there is".

As far as my own understanding of "there is" goes, "there is God" is a nonsensical and recursive construct, because is-ness itself (and likewise am-ness and are-ness) depends on God.

Anyway, I could go on and on, speculating over what I believe you mean, but it will be more helpful if instead you can explain yourself what exactly do you mean by "there is".

Dear Yuyutsu,

I expected that I would get more verbiage without an answer, and that's what I got. Everything that exists is either a form of energy or an object. If God exists God is an object or a form of energy. Since you state God is not an object it must be a form of energy. To me God is neither a form of energy nor an object. It is a human fantasy and does not exist. The Greek, Roman and Norse gods were Greek, Roman and Norse fantasies, and God is a current fantasy. Eventually humans will disappear with all their fantasies.

I hope humans can discard that fantasy as they have discarded the Greek, Roman and Norse fantasies.

More to the point.

Is there God(s)