now i don't want to kick someone in the nuts with this but i once read a very nice statement about religion. Dunno it exaclty anymore but it more or less came down to the following.
Religion is in essence the same thing as the roman thought of bread and games.
Karl Marx said: "Die Religion ist wie Opium fur das Volk." Religion is like Opium for the people.
I believe this to be very much the truth. I say this because most religions (i dare not say all cause i don't know most religions anyway) have been founded in an era of turmoil. An era of war and death or in something else that caused a lot of trouble. In moments like those people think (and often hope) that there is something watching over them. Take christianity for instance (hope i wrote that correct). The whole idea sprung somewhere during the later years of the roman empire. Some would claim it started the day jezus was born but from official records it is to be concluded that is was quiet a few years later.
Another part that makes it easy to believe that religion is founded under similair conditions is that every religion has more then 1 thing in commen.
Most have a person that has been sent to the earth as a messenger from God.
Most make you believe in something after death. Be it reincarnation or Heaven (and Hell offcourse).
Most (heck with this one i can say all) dictate a way of life. And coincidentaly if this way of life is led by all then the poor will remain poor... The rich will remain rich and nothing ever changes. Which is good for rulers in said time periods.
Most religions can be interpreted in more then 1 way. There are no absolutes. When holy scripture says that if you do it in the name of god then you can do anything then some people will see this as a reason to fight wars while others believe that if they try and help people in the name of their god that they can do impossible things.
Most religions claim that theirs is the one and only true religion and that all the others are fake.
As too the part in which i said that it would be useless to teach something that has been proven to be wrong (with which i hurt MrFelony which was NOT my intention). The Holy Bible says that the first human was Adam. That he was created by god soon after he had created the earth. Adam is said to have been created in the year 4004 before the birth of Christ (
picture of timeline). It has been scientifically proven that the first humans were much older (currently some 65000 years ago i believe). At the same note the earth. The earth would have been created not to long before Adam according to the bible. It has also already been proven that the earth is far older. How else can we have remains of creatures that lived several billion years ago. Life started about 3.6 billion years ago...
Now there are parts that HAVE BEEN PROVEN WRONG. I can't say that for everything but I still think i bullshit to teach things that we KNOW are not correct.