Religion can not be ignored

Can we afford to ignore religion and its impact on humanity any longer?

Most religions say that they are in a search for the truth but then why are we expected to accept everything on faith and faith alone?

Two thousand years have transpired since the birth of Christ and approximately 1400 years since Mohammad. We have spent the last two thousand years without questioning the validity of religion or a god or gods. What concerns me is that Christianity, Islam and Judaism are all on a collision path. Isn't it about time that we took a more critical look at all religion and did some analytical thinking about it?

We could begin by asking why do we have a religion, what is the value of participating in a religion and why do we look to a god or gods? We tend to accept our individual religions and our gods based on pure faith and faith alone. We don't ask for fact or data to support an existence of a god or anything else relating to religion. Why do we not ask for factual data to support the existence of a god and/or the stories in the Bible, New Testament and the Qur'an? Christian's even use the term "You can accept it as the Gospel" or the word of god. But why should we accept it as the "Gospel". The "Gospel" has no basis in fact nor can it in any way be supported by fact.

To accept something as important as a god and religion solely on faith with no basis of fact is just not rational. The problem is we don't have the luxury of ignoring the subject any longer or to just say "let everyone do their own thing as long as they don't bother me". We can't afford to ignore religion any longer. We must address the subject. Religion has been a major cause of conflict around the world for centuries and is still the primary source of conflict today.

Just think about it. How can we accept a god and religion on faith alone? If someone told a wife or husband that their spouse was running around on them the husband or wife would ask for proof but most people don't ask for or expect proof when someone mentions a god, an immaculate conception, angels floating around with wings or being taken away to a heaven on a horse with wings.

For two thousand years we have had religious conflict and we still look to fables or stories written over 1400 years ago in the case of the Koran and two thousand years ago with the new testament. Many continue to accept these stories without question. Many still believe in a "divine creation" even though science has proven the theory of "evolution". Why does religion refuse to accept fact? Have we not learned anything about the pitfalls of religion over the last two thousand years? We have learned many other things over the centuries such as the earth is not flat and that we no longer have to burn women at the stake for being witches because they caused storms; yet we have failed to question the same fairy tales, myths and beliefs in the Qur'an and Bible that are thousands of years old.

We must address the subject and soon because we are fast approaching world wide religious conflict of a magnitude not previously seen. We all must question the validity of our gods and religion or we may find ourselves living with the disastrous consequences of our failure to ask the necessary questions. We should also stop the conditioning our children starting at a very young age through "religious instruction". All religions "indoctrinate" the young before they have a chance to think and reason on their own. Let them study religion at a more mature age and study it as a philosophy as they would study evolution as a science.

The world may yet be destroyed using nuclear weapons in a religious war. We can no longer afford to ignore the numerous conflicts around the world among different religious groups and the radical thinking associated with so many religions. We, the people of all the religions on earth, had better wake up to the dangers of religious thinking and question the very nature of religion and its beliefs before it is too late.

But then again it may already be too late.