Don't forget that most of religions are escapist fantasies at its base. Like science nowadays, it was used to understand the world around people. What we can now explain with lightning formation in the clouds, they understood as god's (or gods') wrath.

Gods - as opposed to mere spirits of things - exist in religion because human beings are flock animals, however unwilling we might be to admit both of those qualities. We like to be told what to do, to relinquish ourselves of responsibility, and god/gods is a perfect excuse for that - right alongside fate, destiny and other determenistic/oppressive concepts. Gods may start as spirits of things - spirit of the lake (or, later, of all lakes and, even later, of all visible outside water), for example - but grow in power with time if left unchecked (and most are).

Some people also enjoy abusing the power a religion often grants. Thus, come priests (who, let's face it, aren't always the benevolent wisemen we see in fiction); thus, come bishops; thus, comes Pope and other such figures - the "representatives of God on Earth", those who can "hear God's will" and so forth. If a lightning strikes a tree and everyone's terrified, it's the easiest of opportunities to seize their attention and wield their minds: come forth and declare "Lo! The All-Capable One spoke to me! He declared us wrong-doers! We must now repent! Chastize, brothers and sisters!". Case solved; flock organized.

Lastly, keep in mind how religion often circumvents attempts at logical explanation. I'm now going to overly simplify human nature for the sake of an example. Those affected deeply by the religious outlook (God made things, God takes things, I am a servant of His, I shall earn for good and be punished for bad etc.) will hardly if ever admit that there's often a more logical, reasonable explanation to whatever happened. A child murdered? Two options are most prominent in such situations: either the child fucking deserved it (sinner of high order and, coincidentally, people never liked the kid) or the murderer is a fucking monster. At no point will there be a place for a proper explanation: that the child was a manipulative little bastard at their young age and that they've been blackmailing the future-murderer into submitting to their petty wishes... and so on. It's not a solely religious thing for people to coward behind a brickwall of a simple non-explanation, but religions often give more solid, more opaque walls to hide behind in their fundamentalist conviction.

Hey man, this is a bit of an open letter here, because I feel like this is an important issue to me. I just wanted to say that your comment here first had me a bit flabbergasted, then a bit angry, and now I'm feeling a bit sad here. Hell, it's been about half an hour since I've read it and I still don't know how best to respond. I find worrying fault in pretty much everything you said and I don't know how to address it without you feeling attacked or lectured.

I think the best way to say it is that I find your views on religion are a bit unhealthy at best. You're taking a very deep and complex issue that has spanned almost the whole of known human history and oversimplifying it to a great degree. Religion isn't a "this or that" kind of concept. There are probably as many belief systems in the world as there are languages, if not more, and they are just as diverse and colorful as any other cultural aspect be it food, language, music, or art. For many people, religion plays a strong, positive, central role in their lives.

It's the people that I really want to focus on here. From what you wrote, I feel like in your mind you paint religious people as fearful, ignorant, and unable to make informed decisions for themselves. To put it bluntly, you're wrong. The fact that there are billions of religious people that have zero problems navigating day to day life is self evident enough. That's not what worries me though. What worries me, what honestly and truly worries me, is that you speak about religion and religious people with such dehumanizing contempt. That kind of mentality is genuinely dangerous for so many reasons. On a personal level, it can lead you to treat others unfairly, hurting both them and you as a result. On a more global scale, such mentality is what leads to issues such as persecution, poverty, genocide, and war. It is really important to remember, religious or not, intelligent or not, even moral or not, every last person on this earth needs to be treated with love and compassion you can't truly be loving if you're not respectful.

You're a decent guy. You're smart. You love to share things about yourself. You're proud of your country and your neighbors, your culture and your values. You have a fire in you and it drives you. That's awesome. You gotta watch it though, because sometimes it's easy to let that fire get out of control and more often than not you don't even see it happening.

With that said, I encourage you to go back and re-read what you wrote. Think about it for a while. Think about how it might what you said is not only unfair, but unhealthy. Sometime later on, when you're feeling a little less fiery, get with me. We can talk about religion a bit.