Ottifant sir. I'm not so sure about religion only coming about as a tool of the leaders to control people. I think there's been a real need for answers and people who could give some that made sense got power. Which is the oposite situation than the comunists like to have us believe. That came a lot later. Originally science and religion was the same subject.

It's not valid to say that religion is an opium for the people in a society where there is no plausible alternative. Religion has been so entrenched in humanity that it's probably been with us since the dawn of man, and it wasn't all that long ago since we got the scientific explanations to easily explain away all religions. Rather than calling it an opium for the people, I'd rather like to call it old science.

Religion isn't just faith in the supernatural. There's many different levels. I read a book this summer called The Global Empire by Alexander Bard, (it's being translated to English now). The book is a compilation and discussion about history and the future based on what modern philosophers have said, and since I'm a philosophy buff I thought he really got all the bits together in a good way.

Even though the belief in the supernatural is important for the defintion of it as a religion, it's only a little part of what it's all about. Atheists need to understand it's history before just pointing and laughing. Tradition is powerful. Personaly I don't understand how religion can be so widespread in these times but I wasn't brought up in a fundamentalist atmosphere, so who am I to judge.

According to Alexander Bard, (and modern philosophy) the evolution of religion follows the technological evolution. At first we had polytheism. Every village had their own diety. At that point the goal of religion was mostly to explain natural phenonema. As ship building technology and the written languages where developed trade between the various culture exploded.

Trust is important in trade which meant that there was a need for common moral and ethical rules. This is when the aggresive monothiest religons entered the arena, which proved very economically beneficial for the internal markets of the regions and therefor conquered all. The religous books also served as a method to spread written languages, further enhancing trade. By the time we had courts, constitutional protection under the law and trade agreements set up these reasons where obsolete. The monotheist power structures that had been built over the years moved over to other areas.

Next blow to the power of monotheism was the scientific break throughs and new view of the world which took away the last bit of justification that the church had for it's existance. This is when the Inquisition came and the prosecution of scientists. At this point the church has gone from being a constructive and positive force in society to a situation where it's only negative and obstructing progress.

Today the church is nothing more than a club for people who show a common interest just like any other hobbyists. Albeit a powerful club. I'm certain what we can see today is the last desperate death rattle of religion and it will die and atheism will take it's place, just like monoteism conquered polyteism. Just like obsolete genes die out, so does obsolete practices in society, (aka memes).

Now over to sexual policy. When the monotestic religions developed and became our common law all power where held by men. It's not hard to understand why the comandments where written as they where. The laws in the Bible were put in place to cater to the needs of the patriarchy, to help them control women, be sure that their women only cared for their own progeny and to avoid conflicts between married men. In every culture that has ever existed we've had prostitutes, and this was fact when the Bible was written and continued un-hindered after. The first time prostitution ever was outlawed was a direct result of women getting the vote in USA.

This is my summary of Alexander Bards summary of 20'th century philosophies take on religion.

I don't think religion was meant to be anything. Religion was created and shaped by man to fit the needs that society needed filling. Freud's and Lacan's theory is that we in the west, (also aplies to Arabs) have a culture of taking pleasure in feeling guilty about ourselves and trying to make ourselves into victims. A form of culture-wide masochism. I personally can't explain how concepts like original sin can have survived in any other way.

And to the spiritual questions, who made the world and are we alone, the obvious answer is that we don't know. Making any certain claims is fooling ourselves. We can take guesses, but it'll never be more than that and there's no shame in admitting we don't know. We haven't known since the dawn of man, so I think we'll do just fine in the 21'st century without any more half-assed explanations. Me personally, I'm leaning toward a theory that doesn't stand all the laws of nature on it's head. Whether you chose to call it god or not is of no consequence.

I group the religious people together with the people who still think steel frames for bicycles is better than aluminium. Sounds good if put in the right context, but is in fact bullshit.