Before you condemn all religion just remember this....
 

Religion brought us out of the stone age and into the space age.

If not for religion we may still be hunter gatherers.

Religion lead to temple building,large communities and farming.

This twelve thousand year old temple at Gobekli Tepe proves it.

The idea of resurrection was also born here thousands of years before Christianity

People are always pointing out the cultural and scientific ventures religion has furthered, the communities religion inspires, the art, the (occasional) morals...

... ... ... my issue, as always, as that it doesn't make any of it actually true. People aren't non-religious because they think it's "bad" or "can't see the good it's done"... but because it is just simply false.

But you can't deny that religion lead to stone masonry and building.

All the earliest large human made structures were either temples or tombs.

Christianity raised 100s of billions for the worlds poorest and sickest every year around the blobe....tens of thousands work voluntarily to cloth and feed the poorest and supply them medicines. Im not saying a religious person is better or worse than an atheist. I am saying the organization of Christianity does enormous good on a massive scale. And unlike atheists I do fifferentiate this religoon from Islam and judaism and consider Christianity to be vastly superior. It has also brought us many of our strongest principles and laws upon which european civilization has been built. It has been a force for good in many ways. I believe most wars which are easily blamed on religion, though where did Christ encourage war or discrimination? He simply didnt. Wars are nearly always over wealth, money, resources, land, greed and monarchy. ALways of course to make the elite 1% even richer.

True

Yes. And a lot of what truth is saying is also correct.

It still doesn't make any of it true.

some of it has been factually proven, pontius pilot, the many romans the king etc the more important powerful people have records of their existance. the great floods happened etc The carpenter, well alas they didnt keep records of peasant carpenters 2017 years ago....But you cant measure or quantity everything in terms power or wealth, he left his impact more than any other human in history.

Oh I'm sure plenty of bible tales have their basis in real historical events. Let me be clearer;

It doesn't make any of the supernatural garbage about Gods and miracles true.

Yeah, 'cause if people hadn't built temples and churches it would never have occured to them to build anything else, right ?

There are also plenty of ancient tombs, palaces and civic buildings that have nothing to do with religion.

It's undeniably still and always has been the biggest cause of violence, conflict and persecution that the World has ever known.

They're all just a bunch of cults!

Are you suggesting there were no farmers before the organised religions as we know them or are you referring to gods/godesses of the earth, moon and seasons?

I agree with a lot of what NM says. I have always believed religion was put in place to civilize the masses and it did to a great extent. The problem with us humans is, we are tribal in nature and so our religion became our tribe.

If it wasn't for religion, Trump would never of become president of America. 40% of Americans don't see the point in spending money on global warming because Jesus is coming.

Extremely worrying times!

Religion gave the world human sacrifice, more people have been killed in holy wars than all other wars put together.

Oh right,I get you.

Yeah I don't find religion interesting because I believe the ideology.

I just find interesting as a part of history because it's played such a big role in shaping humanity to where we are now.Be that good or bad.

It could be that without religion we may not have advanced the way we have.

I'm talking ancient religion.The discovery in the above documentary shows evidence of religion long long before we knew it existed.This was almost twelve thousand years ago.This was about seven thousand years before the Giza pyramids.I'm talking stone age hunter gatherer times.

This

Well of course they prayed to gods of the earth and skies for good hunting and what have you, if you think that what we have now is due to that it's a stretch ... it's a bastardisation at best :/

I agree that may have been a motive for 'modern religion'.Although I don't think it was the original motive even in modern religion.
I think people in power took hold of religion and used it for their own ends.

However these ancient religions which lead to modern religion were a natural process of our brains because we couldn't explain anything.We looked at the world in wonder and amazement and the only logical conclusion we could muster up was a higher power or magic,gods etc.
Early humans worshipped animals and the sun and moon as gods.

Modern religion seems to have evolved from these ancient religions and taken some concepts from them.

We may now see religion as a force for instability,violence,oppression but that wasn't the original intention of religion per se.Infact there probably wasn't any "intention" it was just a total lack of knowledge.

It all had to start somewhere.

As a footnote.This isn't intended as pitting one religion against another or saying 'x' religion is better than 'y' religion or arguments.

You just hear so many people saying how religion in general is so bad.This is to show that religion as a concept is not bad or evil.It has many positives.It helped to shape who we are as a species and was a natural and inevitable outcome of our evolution.

It could be that without the constraints and judgements of religion we could be far more advanced than we are now.

Religion is not bad ,it's the way people are with it that's bad

War and hatred in the name of religion is bad, not all of it Kaz.
I believe more in good than God, but faith can be a wonderful thing, be it in God, yourself, or the teddy at the end of your bed.

I believe in God Smudgie,but I am not devout ,i just try and live a s good a life as I can,I go to church sometimes it's not a regular thing and I would never force my beliefs on someone else.

Nothing wrong in that Kaz.