I have no issue with any person who tries hard to learn the truth and seeks to educate themselves on the meanings and interpretaions of the Bible or any other of the moral codes that have withstood the tests of time. I personally believe that the very survival of our species depends to a great extent on our social values and mores. The Bible is a book of great wisdom. But there's a difference in a person who tries to help others reach a similar understanding as theirs and a person who claims to have a divine understanding that simply isn't available to others. That is what priests claim to be. A priest can remove you from God's list just easily as he can add you to it. That's just absurd. We may as well believe in shamans and visions of the witch doctors. And I mean priests and priestesses of any religion who claim to have recieved a divine calling. I just don't buy it.
I do believe there is a universal mind that knows when even the little sparrow falls. He knows it because he is the sparrow. He is everything. He is the atoms that make up the sparrow. And he is the laws of physics that causes the sparrow to fall. In other words, he is, in fact the universe itself. I don't understand much of it beyond that, but what I do think I know, I believe. And no, in all honesty I don't believe he listens ro or answers prayers, per se. But I do know that when people do pray, stuff happens. I ain't got that part figured out yet.
Maybe some day.
BKB