Okay, this is why Agnostics have a hard time with God...

This year has sucked bad. I have been homeless, divorced, robbed by my ex. I finally get a job and a place to live, my father dies, all my money went to his funeral. I get diagnosed with a chronic spinal disease, and I just got fired today.

And they wonder why we doubt that there is some big blob on another plain of existense making all the moves. BECAUSE LIFE SUCKS!!!

If God were all knowing and all loving his 'PLAN' would not kill people or make people so miserable they 'wanted' to kill people. He/she/it-thing would not make people get hope and then make them suffer even harder for attempting to hope.

Thoughts anyone?

The standard answer is "god works in mysterious ways". Not very helpful, is it?

I've been hearing from people about the suffering they have had to endure in recent times. I fell bad for all of you. My problems pale in comparison.

Understatement of the year my friend. I can understand how it does put things into perspective. I have to remember that my situation could always be worse. It sounds trite, but it does help me pick up and keep going.

i have a hard time with god for many reasons but none of them have a thing to do with any bad year that i might have had.

There's an atheist on youtube with a great channel who talks about this at length... her name is zomgitscriss.

The world is full of savage brutality. What kind of God would deliberately create this world?

What if you didn't really exist, but you just "thought" you did, and all of the ugliness in the world was here to teach you things through a form of "virtual reality?"

Let's say you were really a spirit but were given many lessons as if in a dream, and if you didn't learn your lesson this time round, you would have to go round after round of new situations of that horrid virtual reality until finally you learned that your own contributions (as well as the contributions of others to this world (or lack of), were indeed part of the cause of pretty well all ugly things you see in this world?

I think there for I am. Identity is that easy to prove. What I am, how I have come to be may not be what I think, but that I think proves I am.

And for the reason given in bold, "I think therefore I am" is pretty much useless and meaningless to me as a statement of logical consequence. Its not only "I" that is ill defined, but also "think" that is ill defined. That "thoughts" (whatever they are) occur proves only that thoughts occur - it says nothing at all about the nature of the system that allows or causes them to occur. If you say 'it proves that the system exists', that still meaningless and useless when nothing about the nature of the system has been shown to be true. It doesn't show anything at all about any kind of connection between that system and the perceptual faculties of an organism, or any relation between that system and the material universe, or even any kind of localization in space. It doesn't necessarily, logically justify the belief that 'an identity' of any kind exists - only that the thoughts occur.

It answers the question of existence. Nothing else. That was the question, what If I do not REALLY exist.

Not a valid question in that asking the question requires the existence. It says only one thing about that existence, that the thing extant can think and ask questions.