We have all heard stories of how people who were afflicted with serious diseases prayed to God and were healed Despite the fact that many times prayer does not help, in those cases where it was effective this strengthens the faith of those who prayed and further seals their belief that God exists

Since the religious terrorism of 9/11 a number of books have appeared by atheists that are staunchly anti-faith and anti-religion, placing many of the evils of modern society at the feet of religion These include Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion, Sam Harris' The End of Faith, Daniel Dennet's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, and Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great

The idea that man needs God to tell us how to behave morally, to be kind and thoughtful toward our fellow man, to aid others without any promise of benefit to ourselves, is a central tenet of most of the major religions To emphasize the point, we are told that if we do not obey God's Moral Law we will spend an eternity in hell while if we do obey the Moral Law we will spend an eternity of bliss in heaven

One of the most difficult questions for priests, ministers, and theologians to answer is – Why does a kind, compassionate, personal God that answers prayers and looks out for our personal welfare, allow so much evil to occur in the world This is often called "the problem of evil

In an era when politicians must prove they are religious to get elected and the proclamations of their ministers can get them into trouble, when schools are urged to teach creationism, when presidents and main stream movies proclaim the virtues of Intelligent Design, when fundamentalists want to destroy Western civilization in the name of religion, and when ninety-five percent of the people in the world believe that God created man, we need to ask the question, do they have it all backward - Did Man Create God

The evolution of all life on earth from a single primitive life form is straight forward and fairly easy to understand on the basis of Darwinian principles of mutation and natural selection However, the question of where the first primitive life form came from is not so easy