On irritability...

Ok, I've been thinking some. I've always been fascinated by this quote:
"A God that made the world and allowed evil to exist is incompetent. A God that knows there is evil in the world and cannot destroy it is impotent. A God that can destroy evil but still allows it to exist is purely malevolent."
There are quite a number of people this quote is attributed to, in various translations. This is one of the things I look at when examining religion and shudder. There are a lot of people who say that if you do not believe in God, you are going straight to Hell. If there is a God that will damn me forever, based on a belief instead of an act, I don't want anything to do with It. I also don't really want anything to do with a God that both created evil and still allows it to exist. (We are talking in big, highfalutin concepts here. "Evil" can be awfully hard to define when all of the facts and humanity and messiness of the thing is brought in to it.)
In many ways, I am sick to death of defending my beliefs. I rarely talk about them to anyone anymore. The prejudice attached to it, however, is a real sticking point for me. Its infuriating. Also the continuing feeling of "Christianity is under siege!" abundant across the US is getting old. Seriously. You make up, what, 80% of the population of the country? If this was an election, it would be a landslide. You are far from being a minority. Very, very far. You aren't victims, you aren't all alone, you are, in fact, a super majority of the citizenry of the country. So stop it. Go and read something other than a religious text for once. Get informed. Shut off the TV, turn off the radio. Stop taking someone elses word for it and find out for yourself.
People are really starting to tick me off anymore.