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Most people who consider themselves faithful have questions that will forever remain unanswered. Some of these are questions our very membership in a faith community make unaskable, like "Does God REALLY exist?" Many of them, though, are questions that test the very premises of a religion, and these questions OUGHT to be asked.

I am the product of a Christian upbringing, so most of my questions revolve around the Judeo-Christian faith tradition. Here they are, in no particular order:

If God is everywhere, doesn't that mean that God is EVERYWHERE? Listening to your every thought? Knowing your every secret ("from You no secrets are hid")?

If God is EVERYWHERE, why did God need to become incarnate? God is inside every atom of your body. Couldn't God experience what it's like to be human by looking out your eyes, listening to your thoughts, and feeling you smile and hiccup and sneeze and grieve? If God can do it today, doesn't that mean God could have done it 2,000 years ago?

If "God is love" (1 John 4:8), how could Hell possibly exist? What does Love have to do with eternal torment? If God is EVERYWHERE, wouldn't that include Hell too? If anyone is suffering in Hell, wouldn't God suffer just as much, being inside the sufferer? How could ANYONE be happy in Heaven, knowing that someone they loved was suffering in agony for all eternity? Especially for "crimes" like eating a beef jerky on Friday, October 12, 1962 (the day before Vatican II started)?

If Islam is a religion of peace, why are there no Amish terrorists, or Buddhist terrorists, or Confucian terrorists, or Quaker terrorists? If Christians worship the "Prince of Peace," who went to his death rather than cause suffering to any of his enemies (the ultimate "turn the other cheek"!), why are there so many Christians who believe in war, killing, and vengeance in the name of the Prince of Peace?

If Roman Catholic priests are meant to be vicarious images of Christ, why are so many of them pedophiles or rapists? Why are ANY of them pedophiles or rapists? Why does the Magisterium protect criminal priests? Why doesn't it address and fix the root cause(s) of the problem?

Pope Benedict XVI recently dis-excommunicated a priest who denies the Holocaust ever happened and who says 9/11 was a plot of the Bush administration so the U.S. would go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Is Pope Benedict XVI really "the Stand-In (Vicar) of Christ"? (Does anyone REALLY think George W. Bush was smart enough to be the mastermind behind 9/11

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