Gopher, yes, I totally agree it is irrational and rather unreasonable to expect people to ingratiate and kowtow to a higher being who hasn't interacted with his creation for so long. That makes absolute sense to me too, hence why I am no longer interested in organised religion. But having said that, just because that being has not interacted for so long simply doesn't itself mean that this being doesn't exist. For all we know, this being does indeed have some good reason for not interacting and will do so again in the future, who knows when. Actually, a reasonable conclusion from seeing so many millennia of human suffering without any intervention from 'God' is that while he exists, he must be an uncaring, uncompassionate, being, for we cannot comprehend a justifiable reason for why an all-powerful being would tolerate so much suffering and wickedness for so very long.
For the simple reason alone that the alternative explanation, ie, blind chance and evolution is so incredibly mathematically improbable and unproveable and hence requires a leap of faith in the same way belief in 'God' does, logically we must therefore remain open to the possibility that such a being still exists, despite it's long-time aloofness. Thats if we are capable of being totally unbiased on the matter. An analogy might be: a child came upon an ancient castle that had existed for millennia but no one could ever remember who the maker or owner of the castle was & in the meantime the occupants for many centuries had engaged in all sorts of cruel and vile activities and no one was taking any responsibility to turf them out of the castle or intervene to control the occupants...all traces of ownership and responsibility for the castle were long lost in the mists of time...it would be absurd for the child to insist that the lack of visitation by anyone to take responsibility for it and sort the occupants out for their abuses for so many centuries must mean that the castle was never made or built by anyone in the first place. Similarly the universe and all life..we intuitively sense some great mystery behind it all and rather than arrogantly deny that there is any creator just because of all the abuse by earths occupants for so long, it seems more reasonable and objective to say that a better position seems to be that while there are good reasons for believing in a creative power behind it all, we throw our hands up in frustration, ignorance, and even anger as to why this creative force seems so distant and unknowable, and leave it at that.
Ciao.
