denuseri, I think what you are calling religion should more aptly be called faith. There are, indeed, many different faiths in the world, and people are always modifying their faith to better reflect their own attitudes and beliefs. Religion, on the other hand, tends to codify belief systems, cast them in stone, as it were, and then persecute those who try to diverge from that system. Yes, I realize this is extremely generalized, but it's how I view them.

There is no valid reason that faith and science cannot coexist, as you have said. In fact, there is much in science that we do take on faith, to one extent or another. As an example, science tells us that the world is round, not flat. Our eyes tell us the opposite, but we generally accept, on faith, that the scientists are telling us the truth. There are experiments which we, as lay people, can perform which demonstrate the validity of this statement, but the vast majority of people don't bother to perform them. It's not really necessary. Those experiments have been performed, and documented, by so many others that I, for one, am willing to accept that the world is, indeed, round.

But when it comes to a divine deity, a supreme being, the only evidence which can be presented is hearsay. There is no experiment which can show that God, or Jupiter, or Zeus, or Odin really exists. It is something which must be taken on faith. And I am not willing to do that.

Of course the opposite is true as well. I cannot, nor can anyone else, prove that God does not exist. All we can say is that there is no concrete evidence to support the idea of his existence. One can believe either way and not necessarily be wrong, or right.

With religion, however, you are accepting the tenets which that religion is formed on, and that includes the absolute, positive, no doubt belief that God exists. There's no room for doubt, no room for argument, they say it is so and you'd damned well better believe it, or else. This is the exact opposite of science. And this I cannot, and will not, accept.

Again, their are always exceptions, and I feel that the newer religions, those which have started up completely on their own, like Scientology, or those which have broken away from other, more established religions, tend to be less rigid in their belief systems, more willing to accept some latitude, at least in minor issues. But the older, more established, and larger religions have maintained their systems for so long, and over such a large population, that there is little room for variations. That's why groups break away from them, after all.