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Yeah, I suppose if my religion was anything like the stuff being talked about here I wouldn't be religious either.
Fortunately for me, it isn't. And I'm going to be a priest. I also grew up on the discovery channel... and the magazine! Still love it. And science in general. And I believe in evolution. And the big bang. I also don't believe in a big guy in the sky watching me all the time. I'm for the strict separation of church and state. I'm for gay marriage. I think that goes for just about everyone at my church, too.
My girlfriend is also planning on becoming a priest. We spend a great deal of time working with non-profits working towards social justice, the poor, kids, etc. We plan on spending our lives doing that. We're both college graduates, both pretty smart and could have done just about anything with our lives but we both felt that we should spend our lives trying to make the world a better place for everyone in it: Christian and Atheist, Jew and Buddhist, poor and rich, black and white. We work besides a lot of people who are religious in a variety of ways following many creeds, and a few who aren't. We do a pretty good job not denigrating each others beliefs, we focus on what people do. For some people their faith helps them, for others their faith hinders them. For some they are motivated by a strong desire just to do good, and God may or may not be part of that issue.
But clearly, like so many other people for most of human history who've believed in God or something similar and somehow lived good lives despite that terrible lapse of reason, we're just complete idjits. Silly us.
Personally, I don't care if a person believes in God or not. I don't think God cares, either. But I also don't believe that God, or the existence of God, is something that can be decided by an argument or set of propositions. If God does exist, we're talking about something that is totally beyond human understanding or experience in our ability to comprehend. If he doesn't.. well, it doesn't really matter.
What is clear is that people are capable of all the heights of saintliness and all the monstrousness we can conceive with or without religion. The most brilliant of people and the stupidest. Whatever religion is, whatever God is, it is more than a simple set of propositions that one can acquiesce or disagree with.
I'm not trying to convince everyone, but I would suggest that the issue is complicated. It's in the realm of economics and politics - a nearly universal human activity that varies enormously and effects us all greatly and has for all of human history. You can just dismiss it as human silliness, but you might as well be dismissing economics. The basics might be wrong, but that doesn't stop it and its believers from shaping the world. A response of "you're a bunch of idiots" isn't terribly useful or helpful. Religion is subtle, and it's more complicated than simply believing in Zombie Jesus or fearing for your immortal soul.
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