Dreamed a god up

Remember when you were a child and believed in Santa Claus?  How your belief drove you to do things that would bring about presents on Christmas?  You would strive to be good before Christmas, since you believed that as a result of your good behavior, you would be ultimately rewarded.  And despite the evidence to the contrary, you continued to believe in him, until you ultimately grew up and realized that the idea of Santa Claus was more important than his actual existence.  Santa Claus, you see, was the symbol of family, kindness, and selflessness that Christmas was supposed to bring.  It didn't matter that Dad was really the one putting your new bicycle under the tree anymore -- you had learned the lesson of being good and giving to others is the true spirit of the holidays.

Humanity is still that child that expects magical things to happen, when the truth is based in reality.  We should have grown up by now, learning the lessons of our youth; however, the problem is that we still believe in the magical force -- in fact, we believe so much that it has gone past wonder and learning the lessons of what the force is supposed to represent.  We now defend our belief with such conviction and ferocity that the belief in this entity has become a dangerous thing.  People now lose common sense to defend what they believe in, and even go to war and die for their beliefs.

Their belief in god persuades them to do foolish things.

Stories about god have been told for ages, and originated from people trying to make sense of naturally occurring phenomena.  This escalated into people creating stories of gods imposing rules on mortals (e. g. the Ten Commandments), in order for leaders to keep control over people.  Sometimes these rules were for benevolent purposes, and was only used to keep order and peace; other times, however, people have used religious doctrine to control and subjugate people.  

Even today, religion is the cause of the never-ending holy wars in the Middle East, and as a way to control people's behavior even in the United States of America -- essentially as a way to limit freedom in a way that is not allowed by the Constitution, since, they argue, "God's Law" is superior to any human law, even though "God's Laws" were actually created by men, as explained above.  Worse, they corrupt and change the shades of meaning of these laws in order to get exactly what they want, whether or not it is legally or even ethically right.

The most important thing to realize is this: there is no god.  All the inconsistencies that continually arise in the Bible, in religious debates, and that conflict with actual scientific research and evidence instantly vanish when one realizes that god does not exist, and that we are a species that came to be on this earth via billions of years of natural occurrences.  Yet despite all of these inconsistencies, all of the unexplained (and unbelievable) mysteries behind religious experiences, all of the hatred and irrationality that stems from religious beliefs, we as a people still have not grown up and accepted the simple truth -- religion and god are just like Santa Claus.  The purpose of religion is to understand that we should be kind to one another, our time here on this planet is short, and that we should treasure what we have by joining together and becoming strong as one, rather than fighting each other.  But instead, we still cling to the ancient idea of god, and we defend its existence with hatred, intolerance, and violence.  

Grow up, everyone.