[baudrunner]

Religion offers a comfort zone. People were never comfortable with the reality of things the way that they had been for the many thousands of years that they struggled to maintain their existence, and a difficult struggle it has been for the vast majority of human beings throughout history. Life for them was hard work against all odds, and without hard work life could not have survived.

The positive influence of religious belief is in the application of effort toward a wholesome existence. That there is effort toward this goal points to the true nature of life, that this is an apparent contradiction of it. The untenable notion that a God created all the Universe provides an illusion devoid of reality, where dreams dominate, where wishes are imagined, and where the illusion comes as close to manifestation as possibilities permit. That is why that which humankind believes is real, and that which constitutes reality, are two different things. And that is also why life is so good today. You owe a lot to God. You now owe it to yourselves to maintain a grip on your perception of what actually does constitute reality. A reality where science proves theory, where your vision of what is agrees with the results of your efforts to prove it. Then you may someday settle comfortably into the understanding and acceptance of it, after you have evicted from yourselves this culture of greed that corrupts the process.