Quote Originally Posted by TomOfSweden View Post
These are all nice reasons, but religions tend to make some remarkable claims. Believing things like that we go to heaven after we die isn't just superstition. That's standing all reason on it's head.

If that's all it takes to make people superstitious, then it should be super easy to get people off it? All we need is a scientific comunity club and having meetings where we read scientiffic reports together. Do you really think it's that simple?
First of all, I want to make sure we are differentiating between faith and religion. One can have faith in God, or Jesus, or Muhammad, or Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy, without becoming entangled in an organized, or even disorganized, religion. Faith is simply a belief in something. I would venture to say that a very large majority of people have some form of faith, even without religion.
Religion is the codification of people's beliefs, setting everything down so that all of the members of the religion believe the same things. (I realize that this is a simlplified definition, but it's no less valid.) My quarrel is not with people's faith but with the religions which try to exploit those beliefs.
I have seen many people, struggling to make ends meet, living paycheck to paycheck, but still willing to put that money in the collection plate every week while the preacher is riding around in fancy cars,wearing expensive clothing and telling his flock that if they DON'T put that money in the plate they're going to hell!
History is filled with stories of religious groups killing other religious groups for no other reason than their different beliefs. And it's still going on today, all over the world.
As far as education is concerned, that doesn't necessarily eliminate the need for faith. But I do think it tends to separate people from the religious groupies. I feel that those with a good education tend to be more tolerant of other's beliefs and less inclined to take the word of a smarmy guy in a $500 suit as gospel.
But the vast majority of people in this world are brought up from infancy being taught a specific belief system. Overcoming that upbringing is very difficult. And, as you say, the need to believe that there is some kind of afterlife, something beyond the mundane world we live in, will always draw people to some form of belief system.