"I said there were things in this film that I agreed with. I personally think that religion is the cause of way too many problems culturally..."
Religions don't cause problems. People cause problems. Most Abrahamic relgions (this includes Christianity and Islam) preach peace, fortitude under duress, and forgiveness. If the majority of people who are religious practiced those tenets, the majority of people would experience a much happier, more peaceful, less stressful existence. Religion does not cause anyone to stress, freak out, or make life worse for others. People do that without any help from what's written in the books that guide their various faiths.
"...(wars being the obvious - but not *nearly* the only - example), and I also believe that, if a god exists, it just isn't possible to know what that god is saying to you,"...
What God is saying to you is whatever your faith says he is saying to you. Christians have the Bible for that, Muslims the Koran, etc. Really. It's all in there. What you choose to do with what you're told is another thing, subject to your own free will, which most Abrahamic religions will grant you.
"...because when people 'know' what their god is saying to them, it invariably conflicts with something that someone else's god has told them."
So what? There is no reason various faiths can't live in peace in spite of that - people simply need to make the effort, but often enough to cause grief, they don't.
"How would we know what the truth is? We don't, plain and simple - that's the nature of faith. And it's the conflicts in this sort of thing that drove me away from religion."
Faith - not knowing but trusting in a certain fact or belief - is indeed the backbone of most Abrahamic religions. And yeah, just believing that you can't *know* what to believe is its own kind of frustration. So I get your point, but the only other choice is to say that nothing unknown can ever be believed, and somehow that doesn't seem like the right choice to me, either.
Deconstruction...
Religions don't cause problems. People cause problems. Most Abrahamic relgions (this includes Christianity and Islam) preach peace, fortitude under duress, and forgiveness. If the majority of people who are religious practiced those tenets, the majority of people would experience a much happier, more peaceful, less stressful existence. Religion does not cause anyone to stress, freak out, or make life worse for others. People do that without any help from what's written in the books that guide their various faiths.
"...(wars being the obvious - but not *nearly* the only - example), and I also believe that, if a god exists, it just isn't possible to know what that god is saying to you,"...
What God is saying to you is whatever your faith says he is saying to you. Christians have the Bible for that, Muslims the Koran, etc. Really. It's all in there. What you choose to do with what you're told is another thing, subject to your own free will, which most Abrahamic religions will grant you.
"...because when people 'know' what their god is saying to them, it invariably conflicts with something that someone else's god has told them."
So what? There is no reason various faiths can't live in peace in spite of that - people simply need to make the effort, but often enough to cause grief, they don't.
"How would we know what the truth is? We don't, plain and simple - that's the nature of faith. And it's the conflicts in this sort of thing that drove me away from religion."
Faith - not knowing but trusting in a certain fact or belief - is indeed the backbone of most Abrahamic religions. And yeah, just believing that you can't *know* what to believe is its own kind of frustration. So I get your point, but the only other choice is to say that nothing unknown can ever be believed, and somehow that doesn't seem like the right choice to me, either.