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But can you prove that God didn't create dinosaur fossils just to test our faith?

I think the thing for me with religion is that it ultimately seems to be a NoOp (i.e. sort of a dead end). In every culture, when science "runs out" people turn to religion. What is the Sun -- oh it's God. Why do the planets go around eachother? Oh, it's god. With each generation of scientific development, it seems that "God" gets pushed further and futher away as we continue to explain the universe scientifically. You can always take the argument of "God made it that way to test our faith", but when you continue that argument, it seems to me ultimately if God was so clever as to make everything He did be explained by science, then the God part doesn't really matter. By God not mattering, I mean if all his existence is is holding up science as it advances further and further, then what is the point? It doesn't seem to get you anywhere, and in fact it seems to me to be a bit of a crutch -- Why continue searching if it's just God back there? Sure you can say that the searching is "understanding God", but at that point, replace the word "God" for "science" and you have the exact same thing. It just becomes a linguistic game at that point.

When it comes down to it, I am not religious because religion has zero effect on my life. I can be a good person, and I can do good things without the fear of going to Hell if I don't. And the same goes for the part about not needing the carrot of Heaven either. Personally there's just no room for a God construct in my life -- seems to me there are more important things to attend to. And if one exists, I think He would agree with me

ms