Dear Mankind

Dear Mankind,

     I have many labels, but my name is beyond your ken. I come to you to propose a few questions of religion.
     For millennia, I have sewn or allowed to be sewn into religious texts and beliefs not only the concepts of unconditional love, and justice, but also the direct contradiction of those concepts - hatred and ignorance.
     I gave the world the story of the Garden of Eden, a metaphor for mankind's own God given propensity to desire knowledge of the world over stability and peace, and followed it up with countless years of religion to promote ignorance over free thought.
     I have called you all to be loving brothers and sisters to all mankind, and then created rules to set you apart. I have proclaimed that those who do not believe as I command are the enemy and must be changed to believe, looked down upon, or otherwise subjugated or enslaved.
     I have commandeered the gift of sexuality, the most personal beauty - the ability to share oneself wholly with another - and paralleled it immediately with rules to diminish such a marvelous act and ensconce it in the trappings of sin.
     I have declared that a woman's physical form, the beauty of her creator's work, is an evil thing and she must cover it, and she may not speak in church, and that somehow she is less of a person physically than a man.
     I have not limited the religious persecution to gender or belief. I have proclaimed the infirm, the scarred, those born with birth defects, and others to be not holy enough for the most sacred parts of churches.
     Many of the rules I have set are not only contradictions, but clearly injustices. The injustices I have demanded of humanity are much higher in number than these few listed here, but to those who would bow to my requests, I offer the promise of paradise and eternal happiness. To those who would not, I proclaim damnation.

With the information I have just laid before you, my questions to you are as follows:

After pondering the contradictive nature of my works, do you believe that I have given religion to you to blindly follow as a path to salvation, or as a challenge to do what is right and just in the face of eternal damnation?

If your deity is loving and just, which of those two options would it prefer?

Would you love and follow an unjust deity in exchange for salvation?

If you did so, would you feel worthy of salvation?

Given the nature of my actions, what do you suppose I am?