I can't help but feel you all are talking about the three big ones here. My religion does not advocate proselytizing or damn other faiths or even have the tenant of damnation at all. No hell, no heaven just some abstract concepts of an afterlife and a good deal to say about living a fair and honest life. Religion is often a box people put their spirituality into, sometimes the box is too small and they are scared if they let out it might run away from them.
I have to add some things...
I once thought that perhaps I would be an atheist but being overly intellectual yet still a bit superstitious I decided agnosticism was more my view on things. I decided I would be a soft agnostic too. I would not say that god is unknowable but that god is probably unknowable in any way that could be expressed with words and that I surely did not know. Atheism to me seems to express more of a view that there is no such thing as god or gods at all and that these things are merely constructs of various minds to explain any sort of unknown thing that might later be knowable, like the nature of the sun and moon for example. Later on down the road I decided there was more to the beliefs of religions new and old than what the logical or analytical side of me could grasp and that perhaps to leave agnosticism behind I had to internalize and "feel" some sort of spirituality against my logical sides better judgement. Thus I "feel" I have achieved some sort of gnosis even though I think I would be foolish to ever think I could impose that spiritual knowledge on another or even think that it would apply to them if I could. Spirituality TO ME should be personal and only then can religion really fulfill its intended purpose. Of course this is just opinion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality

I would rate you as agnostic or at least pacifistic, usually athiests go out of their way to make sure other religions dont influence any one at all.

But then again, Atheism is sort of become a new religion, just with a different following then most.

I'm sorry, Starstriker1, but my own personal creation mythos leaves no room for silliness like dinosaurs. I mean, obviously, the world began at 4:08am on August 30th, 1970. Dinosaurs? Pfft. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed. You can all begin your existences anew again when I wake up.

While I don't want to get involved in a serious discussion of religion, as an atheist, I must beg to differ with what the TheGreatEmperor said above.

Atheism is simply the absence of belief in a deity; it does not imply being anti-religion, nor does pacifism really have anything to do with it. It is also decidedly *not* a religion, in any sense of the definition.

"Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color."
--Dan Hirschberg

Meanwhile, agnostics simply believe that one cannot know for sure so there's no point hedging one's bets on belief in god(s) or disbelief. Fence-sitters, basically

For myself, I don't care what people believe, so long as it does not affect me or my loved ones -- I find fundamentalists of all stripes dangerous.

Huh? Not sure what "hatred" or "sickness" you're referring to here, MarcusCardiff... and I didn't mention terrorism at all.

I mean, some terrorists are fundamentalists, certainly, but not all fundamentalists are terrorists, surely?

I was, of course, referring to fundamentalism in the religious sense only, and, frankly, terrorism didn't even enter my mind as I wrote it.

Perhaps you simply misunderstood what I was saying? In any case, no harm done. Have a good night.

Hi!

I don't know, but in my universe God is not needed.

BR, Iztok

And what evidence would that be Feud?

I don't follow any religion nor do I belief in any deity, higher being, the afterlife or whatever. I got raised as christian, but never had faith. In younger years due to ignorance, now by choice.

Why? Well, there are many different reasons.

1) First of all, there's the historical background. Look at the knowledge we take for granted nowadays. Lots of stuff which are natural for us, people did not know about in the past.
Take for example the plague. Today we know its caused by bacteria and we know how to fight them. We also know about proper hygiene to prevent infection in the first place.
But in the past, nothing was known. Yet they wanted to know where the plague came from. Religion at least gave them an answer, as in "And the mighty one spoke: He who is sinful will suffer from the plague".
Religion seems to have an answer for everything, that pleases people. And yet religions are so deciteful. If there's something even they can't explain, the usual answer is "Have faith, his ways are unfathomable for mortals".

2) The world can be a very cruel place. Along with knowledge comes cognition. Cognition that we're alone in this universe, we're totally insignificant and eventually everything will end: Our lives, what we've achieved and finally the universe itself. This is a horrible idea, it doesn't give us any hope. Religion on the other hand offers means of escape: Salvation, rebirth, resurrection, ascension and so on. It takes a weight from our shoulders none likes to bear. Nonetheless it's self-adulation.

3) There are hundreds of religions in the world each with their own deity/deities or the lack of a deity and each with a different way how to achieve salvation. And each has their own creation myth. "God made the Earth in 7 days", or "Earth is the back of a giant turtle raising from the sea" and so on.
Obviously, we're all living on the same earth, so only one creation myth could be true. But statistically, whatever religion you're following, it's far more likely that another one is the real one and that your's is wrong.
So doesn't it make more sense to say that all religions are wrong?

4) Holy Books, Scrolls, Tablets and their imposed rules. Way too often, the words in the holy texts get taken literally without interpretation and reflection of the historical background.
Take for example the "eye for an eye" phrase. It has been misunderstood for ages, as means to demand retaliation. However, you need to see how this phrase came to be. It's original task was to fight against blood freud amongst the tribes or in general, any two parties. "Eye for an eye" was a rule to prevent escalation, a punishment should be in relation to a crime.
Another example: In some religions, people may not eat meat from pigs and other "dirty" animals. Let's see the historical background again: In the past, people didn't have fridges, little was known about hygiene and in some cases (e.g. Judaism), people lived in rather warm countries where it's even harder to keep meat fresh.
People have observed that meat from some animals stays edible longer than the meat of other animals and people stayed more healthy from not eating some sorts of meat. So the logical consequence (in that context) was to forbid people to eat some sort of meat.
But these rules are hammered into the heads of people like into stone, there is absolutely no reason to follow them anymore.

5) Word of mouth, translations, loss of context
Let's have a look at the new testament. It got written years after the life and death of Jesus. Word of mouth was used to carry the story through the gap. And of course it got changed by that. Things got exaggerated and glorified. In essence, it's nothing more than a hyped urban legend anymore. There's a core of truth, but the details have been skewed so much that you can't take it as fact anymore.
Next thing are the translations. In order to translate a text, you have to interpret it. Words can have different meaning, you need to understand the context to translate it properly. And sometimes the difference is quite subtle. And language changes. A word can mean one thing today and another thing tomorrow. An example for a word that has almost completed this change of meaning: Gay. In the past it just meant something like happy, but nowadays it means homosexual.
Take a look at Arabic. Imagine someone who speaks modern Arabic with someone who lived over a millennium ago? It's still the same language, the same words, the same grammar. Yet words would have different meanings or would used in different contexts. And both would be unable to understand most sayings and phrases the other one uses. To complicate things, Arabic texts are hard to read due to the lack of vowels in the text. This even leaves more room for explanation.
Please forgive my gross simplification, but recent studies have revealed that the texts suggest that someone who fought for Islam doesn't get 72 virgins in heaven, but instead 72 white raisins. (At historical times a luxury good)

I could give many more reasons, but for now it should suffice.

For my part, I reject faith and religion based on these arguments.

I am real, everyone else are actors in a tv show called, The Max Clarke show!!
This is a test by God, because erm, ice cream tastes nice, but too much ice cream means you get brain freeze...

May the flying spaghetti monster bless you all with his noodly appendage.

Religion began when man gain knowledge and learn stuff by exploration. They fear things that they don't understand by creating religion and state that it the act of god.

Those who prefer to seek more answer via experiments instead of submitting to this particular reasoning that everything is created by god, believe more in science.

Give it 3 thousand years, religion will disappear when man make use of science to turn themselves into gods.

I got two views of life.

1) Life is just a series of "if then else" statements that is constantly growing and growing. It will finally stop growing when your hardwares all fail. Then you are simply deem obsolete, throw you in a tiny coffin and cya..like how you throw your things into the dustbin.

2) Everything in this universe are made of energy or make use of energy. Energy cannot be created nor destroy but it can be converted. It can represent data. Your body is just a vessel converting energies from one form to another. Several energies changes, get converted and forms the soul as they get meshed together over time containing your memories and experiences as data. When you die, this energy won't be destroy and will be simply returned to the realm where all energies reside. You didn't die nor were you in hell or heaven. You are just simply part of the universe.