If it wasn't for religion

[Dr H]

Yeah?  How does that work?

Because I can't consciously force myself to believe something that I don't believe.
Either I believe it, or I don't.

I could choose to act as if  I believed, for any of a variety of good or bad reasons.
Not quite the same thing.

I think what Aegon's friend meant is that if one were to go by logic and reasoning alone, then one would have to conclude that God's existence is unlikely. Nevertheless, his friend intuits that God exists and therefore continues to believe.

I see nothing confusing about that. And in fact, I find this to be rather honest, compared to all the theists who say there is evidence for God and/or that faith is somehow logical. Wish more and more theists were like the former instead of the latter.

I'm not sure I agree that "intuit's" is the equivalent of "makes a conscious choice".

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Without religion you wouldn't haven't Dostoevky, or Tolstoy, or Comac Mccarthy, or Flannery O'Connor, or Marilyn Robinson, who have offered us greater insights into ourselves, then others. In fact you wouldn't have an MLK, or a Gandhi.

Perhaps.  
Or we would have had them and they would have produced rather different works, but works of genius, nonetheless.

I mean, really, the same sort of claim can be made about any cataclysmic or traumatic event.  Without World War II we might not have had Ernest Hemingway, or George Orwell, or Albert Camus, or Kurt Vonnegut, or nuclear power, or the space program.  That doesn't mean that World War II was a good thing.