What is good about theism and theists?

[Werewolff]

I see religion similar to how I see culture. I think religions are cultures. If a culture is good, I think that it's a positive thing to maintain it. To me, religious people are just regular people who want to be good, and their religion is their way of keeping that together in the same way that any culture tries to preserve itself. I don't see anything wrong with discarding elements of a culture and emphasising others, which is what happens in religions and that's only natural as all cultures evolve. That's why you have christians who read the bible a lot and take most of it quite seriously, while others take the basics and run with that. As for lies or untruths, first of all, we should never rule out the possibility that there is a god. But more importantly, I think there's a lot to be said about the old saying : It's better to be happy than to be right. If being in a religion helps a person to achieve that, and to do good, then I'm all for it. I don't have to believe in the premises of a religion to see its good points. I don't think that religious people would revert to being bad if their beliefs about god were ever in doubt in their minds, I just think they would probably latch onto some other spiritual concepts like a lot of non religious theists, and if that also came into doubt for them, they'd be atheists with good hearts. For me, there's nothing inherently wrong with believing in god, and anything bad that has ever been done "in the name" of religion has been done by people who in my view would have used some other justification anyway.