I grew up in a muslim household (same god as Christianity, Judaism). Parents made me go to the mosque almost everyday in elementary though middle school where I had to learn to read the quran, pray, etc. Honestly I was pretty sick of it, had to miss out on several activities with school friends, miss out on gaming time, etc. It was an exhausting lifestyle where I would I would have to finish all my school homework on the bus ride home, chill for 30 min to an hour, and then go to the mosque for the next 3 hours. By the time I came home it was already 9pm and the next hour would be spent finishing up homework/watching tv.
That experience sort of actually turned me away from religion, it was a bit much and even my parents weren't all that religious, they were just following what every other middle eastern/south asian family were doing at the time.
But as I've grown older I've learned to appreciate that experience/religion more and my belief in god to give me peace is growing over time.
People should not just look at religion in a basic low hanging fruit way i.e. "am i going to heaven?" "if there is a god why did he cause this" "no proof of god" etc.
Rather religion is more about a lifestyle that instills basic core value/routine. The community aspect of religion is underrated, the world ironically is becoming less and less connected over time - we are all so busy have other things going on (at least that's what we all say) - but a religious event be it christmas, ramadan, eid, brings everyone together. Many of you who are against religion may be surprised to find out that most of these events are not literally to just worship god in a circle, they're a good excuse for all of us to come together and just catch up/talk about life.
I look back at the time I went to the mosque everyday, while it was frustrating at the time, today I'm grateful because it instilled discipline and routine that I benefit from today at work, in college, etc. While I still drink, I am glad as a child I was taught how bad it was, may even send me to hell. Sure sending me to hell part is a bit extreme, but drinking is objectively bad for you and religion does a good job in my opinion teaching you the basics of how to live your life (method is questionable, not everything bad should send you to hell, but regardless result is the same).
Now that I'm older I've gone back to look at the religious text myself without input from outside parties (such as imam, priest) and low and behold - many of those things that were supposed to send me to hell, as I was taught as a kid, were just made up or left for interpretation by the reader. The grown ups were just trying to instill some values in me, and I'm sure it's been discussed several times by now, but it's the person/institution that bring flaws to the faith, not the faith itself. These religious books are very open ended, somewhat contradictory, vague, they're basically books on philosophy. At the end of the day its up to the individual person to interpret the text and they can probably find justifications for anything by referencing certain paragraphs while the next paragraph over would be contradictory (they wouldn't reference that though).
There are a lot of smart people in this thread, but you must all realize that the average intelligence is not very great. We can pretend that the framework for life/basic core values can be taught without religion, but honestly a lot of people do require a disciplined approach, one that may actually scare them into thinking they will be sent to hell if they did that bad deed. Religion is the framework that can apply to the masses, not everyone can just be given the logical reasons it's probably difficult for many to understand especially 100s of years ago. But everyone understands heaven/hell.
And finally, the "require proof" argument is very basic/unimaginitive/and somewhat arrogant. 100 years ago we didn't understand space-time/general relativity, 500 years before that we thought the sun revolved around the Earth . Can you imagine majority of the population believing the sun revolved around the Earth? It sounds insane today. And even then, all of this science/engineering was designed for the human perception, what our eyeballs, rods/cones, are capable of seeing. Language, math, equations, they are all made by our own perception/reality to understand the universe as best as we are capable. Perhaps we haven't discovered the missing ingredient yet to understand the higher/spiritual realm, maybe we never will just because we're not capable. Personally I like the comfort of believing that there is something after I pass away, that all of this, human existence, actually means something outside of just passing the torch to the next generation.
knowing that - can we call believers dumb?
