"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion."

The title from this post was taken from "The Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig I think it explains how I see religion very well.

I was going to avoid writing about religion on this blog but its an issue that appears to be affecting my everyday life more and more these days. This could be age or it could be the current climate, with extremist terrorists committing there violent crimes in the name of religion it is getting more attention than maybe it deserves.

From the out set I should say I am an atheist and have been from a very young age (about 9 or 10) its not that I was brought up without religion, I was baptised as a baby and I went to a Church of England primary school - This is where I found religion was clearly false. To me it was as clear as day that religion was a bit of a false.

My theory is this - When religion's such as Christianity, Judaism or Islam was a method to explain how the earth was created, why people shouldn't kill and rape others, cheat on your wife, kind of thing that in our modern society is considered wrong. Religion was needed to explain to a simpler society in those years how things like the earth was created.

However, as the human race got more intelligent and the science community grew and did more research. People such as the naturalist Charles Darwin who while on his travels around the world discovered the theory of evolution and how we came to be. More and more scientists found answers to questions like how the animals, plants and us became to be like we are, why the sun sets and rises, why the sky is blue. Question that were previously answered with the ignorant answer of "God created it - That is why".

So you'd think as the human race got smarter and managed to answer the question that religion previously answered would be answered by Science and rational thought, religion would eventually become obsolete and just be rendered to the history books. But religion is bigger than ever, with huge mega churches and mega mosques dominating cities around the world. Men, Women and Children blowing themselves up in markets, or on buses, tube trains, flying aircraft into buildings, killing doctors, attacking young women on there way to abortion clinics, attacking homosexuals, the list goes on. Never think that its just certain religions that commit these crimes - All religions are as bad as each other.

My dispute with religion is that it teaches people inaccurate fact. Lets take the homosexual example, I'm straight but I have no issues with homosexuals, however religious people do, according to both Islam and Christianity claim homosexuality is a sin and is unnatural - But Why? There is no evidence on either way that says early man or women had a fondness for the same sex. So how can it be unnatural if maybe, its been going on from the start of the human race but it has been made taboo by the invention of religion.

However I do believe that religion is on its last legs, as Science answers more questions on how we became to be, and as religious myth is proven wrong less and less people are been convinced by Science. The age of religion is coming to an end, this may be why the delusional people are so desperate to hold onto it. So much that they'd take there lives in the belief of an after life.