Larry,
I say this with the understanding that I won't persuade you, nor do I particularly want to, so I will add the caveat of this is just how I see things from my point of view. I just wanted to share my thinking on this since you are one of my favorite people to talk to.
I think that religion, being almost universal among humans, is an evolutionary trait that allowed primitive humans to cope with 30 year life spans, and also a survival mechanism to justify the killing of competing groups in the name of the religion.
I think that all official religions are a product of the human tendency to manipulate others humans. We already know that roughly 1 out of 26 people are sociopaths and I think that these people are attracted to positions of power like the government which is probably filled with sociopaths. Even people with good intentions will be attracted to positions of power because of the natural human tendency to promote our own self interest.
A rational person, therefore, would not believe in religion because he would realize that we have been manipulated (bamboozled).
We have roughly 200,000 years of modern human existence where I am sure humans believed in all sorts of false religions and did all sorts of nasty evil things to each other. Modern religion would have us believe that God waited roughly 198,000 years before actually deciding to do something about this.
Best wishes,
John Coffey
