I Really Hope You Accept The Beauty Of The Christian Message Someday.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

33. There are several kind ones in Hinduism.

And in Buddhism, which has no dieties unless you want to believe in them, has some that are all goodness, like Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, and the Taras.

The historical Buddha himself is NOT worshiped as a God. Christians don't understand the concept of a philosophy that is based on the sayings of a real person that actually lived, who is not a god.

It's perfectly fine to be an atheist and a Buddhist. Prince Siddhartha, Gautama the Buddha, basically kept the concepts of dharma, karma and reincarnation and threw out the dieties from Hinduism, so his is a distilled version.

Hindus have kind dieties and wrathful dieties. Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer are the main ones.

There are many others: Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, Hanuman the perfect devoted servant; Lakshmi, goddess of wealth; Saraswati, goddess of learning and music(holding a sitar) and Kali Durga, goddess of kicking ass and taking names. Metes out divine revenge.

You can have your favorite diety, called an Ishta Devata, much like Catholics have a patron saint.

I find the Asian religions much more interesting than the Abrahamic ones. I think of the Hindu dieties as archetypes representing specific qualities in people.

There are many good books by native English speakers now on Buddhism.

I "froth at the mouth" because I had to get up and walk out of church and leave Christianity completely. Every time I heard one of those sermons about how we are all filthy sinners, I just wanted to crawl in a hole and die. My first mistake was taking the hateful controlling bastards clothed in righteousness and having the title of "Reverend" seriously.

They stood around and congratulated themselves on their fine, uplifting sermons, while I was feeling like my soul was being destroyed by their lecturing. It was a stark choice: Get the hell out or go crazy. I decided that if Christians were helping god do his work on earth, then god didn't give a shit whether I starved to death or not. I don't mean charity or free handouts, either.

I don't let anyone else's uninformed opinion control my opinion of myself anymore. Yet most people let a minister define and defile them on Sundays, and they never think to ask questions or leave. You're right; there's no logical or consistent morality in the Bible. It's a huge mess put together and edited under the orders of the Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicaea.