I'm quite impressed with this, your photo-editing has improved!

As for religion, there's a flaw in every religion, and I think it's really one of two things:
1. We're too open minded
or
2. We're too closed minded

1. We says 'Okay, this is what we believe but we -could- be wrong.' practically defeats the point of 'faith' considering it shows you don't have complete 'faith' in it? But there are so many out there, I don't see how any -one- can be right. Or maybe none of them are! This is where we get agnosticism. Some people edit their beliefs to fit their personal interest, I mean, we all have the things -we- believe, I don't believe any two people believe the -exact- same thing, there's too many open ended stuff left for us to fill in the spaces with whatever our mind can come up with. So what does this say for the original religion? Obviously people had different ideas, split up, or got fed up with one and made their own? Who knows. Maybe they're all right?
As I said, too open minded.

However

2. We're all too closed minded, we have little facts, little evidence that any of us are right, but so many people believe it, it can't be too wrong. Or we're born into it involuntarily, in which case sometimes it causes our mind to reject anything else. Also, religions tend to take on archetypes, there's always a God, whether one or many. Usually something about the soul. A Devil, or some form of Evil. Generally people who are 'chosen' to pass on or practice or worship or hold a closer position to the almighty. Generally there's always some sort of Heaven, and some sort of Hell (even if it's continuously being reborn). What if it's completely different than this? We don't know anything beyond it, because anything without some or most of these things just sounds preposterous, like Scientologists (don't tell me it doesn't sound completely ridiculous to you. XD)

I guess the true problem with religion is that we have the ability to question it.
Enough said.

--
"...but I believe errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrifice them is to lose the angles of personality, the riddle of a soul."
-Mark Z. Danielewski

Man, that was deep. I agree with all of it. You summed up the problems of religion pretty damn well!

Also, thanks for spending at least one sentence commenting on the actual image.

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I like to think that normality doesn't exist. It's simply a more acceptable form of 'wierd'."
"........ You're a freak"
"Thank you."

XD You're welcome.
Thanks for taking the time to read all of my comment.

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"...but I believe errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrifice them is to lose the angles of personality, the riddle of a soul."
-Mark Z. Danielewski

Now I do like the concept of this. I just saw Angels and Demons too, so it puts me in that kind of mindset.

To me, this almost seems like Lucifer (I know that you said it's not THE devil) reaching up to heaven as if he's saying sorry. Sorry for being such an arrogant moron, huh?
Anyway. "Apology accepted" seems like he's been forgiven (or whoever the hand belongs to) and he's finally won himself redemption with a sincere apology. Hence the glowing heaven portal opening up.

I'm not going to discuss the religious implications, but on an artistic note, I think you could have improved it greatly by blending the background and foreground colours a bit, paying more attention to how the lighting will hit the hand, and making the flames brighter! Try using a brush set at a low flow and opacity to the linear dodge function to make subtle glowy highlights!!

Nice work on this one!!

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I like the idea of chocolate cake better than the cake itself.