I agree with this, mostly, although I would put a less negative spin on it. I would even go so far as to say that religion offers perspectives that can give people hope, comfort, happiness, and confidence that can't be shaken because it isn't rooted in anything that can disappear, even if they aren't true. Perhaps that's the real secret to its power and pervasiveness. The benefits that can be derived from how people respond to religion (such as being cooperative, less selfish, and feeling like they have a purpose) might be the point, rather whether what it depicts is true. What the depiction evokes in people (that is, a more community-oriented, long-term focus, and more charitable mindset) because they believe it's true might well be more important than the depiction itself. Ironically, one has to accept it as truth in order to benefit from the depiction, and this is why it pressures you to do so. If you see through it, it doesn't work anymore.
This dynamic is definitely at work in some part.
I think the hardest thing about any in-depth discussion with most religious people is this: They wholeheartedly believe in the values of their faith, even if they don't truly understand the logical (in)consistency within it or any scientific or historical (lack of) basis for it.
So if you challenge the beliefs on a logical or scientific or historical basis, this is read not as an attack on those particular aspects of their belief system (an intellectual thing) but as an attack on the values they already have experienced the benefit of and have come to identify with their religion.
Because those positive values have been so incredibly attached to the value system, rather than existing outside of it, they feel like your criticisms are (1) lies and/or (2) an attack on the values, and if you would attack those good values, you must be a bad person... and thus someone who should be ignored or even assembled against.
NTs would do well to remember this when they engage in discussion with non-NT believers in non-ambiguous faiths.
I think the problem with religion in general is that there are too many beliefs out there, and so many of them claim to be the true one. Then they start splitting off into the thousands of protestant varieties of christianity versus the entirely different catholicism. not to mention muhammad basically telling people to convert to islam or be murdered, but in islam he's considered a saint and then people say the islamic god and christian god are one and the same. the jews are still waiting for the christ and claim jesus a delusional prophet who did many great miracles.
then there are many different religions, preaching reincarnation, heaven and hell, no existence after death, among other things.
Believing that only ONE of these religions could be the absolute almighty law of the chosen creator, or creators (polytheism), and that 80% (estimate) of the population of the world doesn't believe in that ONE true religion and are sentenced to damnation is retarded in my opinion.
True. That's a problem, since none can be proven.
I think diversity of faith exists because human understanding is imperfect and incomplete.
Religious people would do well to remember that.
I was reading, though, of polls of Christianity (to pick the most obvious example) in the US over the last few years. A good half of the Christians in this country or more actually believe that other faiths have the ability to get one into heaven; they're actually into diversity, they think (like CS Lewis and others have over the years) that God has shown facets of himself through other faiths in ways that allow one to know him. Including Judaism, Islam, and other of the "enemy" faiths that some conservatives rail against.
It's the evangelical and fundamentalist communities (who are often more vocal) that have a 65% chunk or so of their own congregations that are exclusionary.