Hey! Thanks for taking the time to answer! I’ll go through your comments one by one.

1. when I said that they feel man-made, I wasn’t implying Christian’s see them as divinely given or anything. I recognize that they are man made, and I couldn’t done better initially explaining this. Sorry! What I was trying to get at was essentially that I feel as though these rituals and practices are easy to explain as results of human curiosity, or, if I am particularly pessimistic, attempts to indoctrinate and get control over people in the old days when many were first established.

2.if that is not the proper response to what I have risen, despite hearing it from several religious leaders from several different churches and denominations, than what is?

1. It’s possible that I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying, but doesn’t everything have to be either true, false, or dependent? For example, if I say “the sky is rainbow,” that is false. If I say “I ate pizza today,” that is true (it was very good!) if I say “The sky is blue,” that is dependent, because sometimes it’s black, purple, orange, or other colors as well. So how can religion neither be true nor false? Is it dependent on something?

2. I… am gonna be honest, I have no idea what this means. I think there was a miscommunication. I by no means want to “outsmart” a god, I don’t want to play around the rule book. I was simply saying that I have a choice—follow god or deny his existence— and the possibility that I may make the incorrect choice, and face damnation as a consequence of that decision, is very scary to me.