First things first

[Brian37]

I went to one nondenominational church in a strip-mall. They were interesting. They laid hands, spoke in tongues, would beat their hands, shout and I mean shout. Then they all broke down and cried at the end. Not a dull moment.

Not dull? How? Going to a ruber room hotel can also not be dull, but I wouldn't want to be living in it.

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The value I place in religious claims has come from man.

You can find all sorts of pretty motifs about compassion for fellow humans in all cultures, but that does not excuse humans from making excuses to pretend that they invented human morality, or that we are in anyway important to this planet or the universe.

I can also find compassion in fiction too like Harry Potter and Star Wars. The problem with valuing religion is that it takes our common condition and sexes it up needlessly into a comic book in which the fans claim rights over each other.

If everything comes from man, meaning our evolution, then scrap religion and recognize the individual, not because of their religion, but because they are good. People are going to be good or bad and every religion has good and bad people. Religious labels are nothing more than an anthropomorphic projection of our personal desires, they do not reflect the real common existence we all share.

The damage religion does is because people fail to see it as a weapon and all it is is a form of politics to attempt to become the alpha male. Religion wont go away, but to fail to recognize it as a weapon is not only intellectually dangerous it far to often reaches deadly results.

Religion, and political ideology can also be a religion, when left unchecked and unquestioned leads to horrible things, no matter what you worship, a state or a god.

Hitchens in his book and his speeches often said "Name me one good thing said or good deed done that an atheist could not do that only a believer could." There is your evidence that man is what does good, not religion.

Claiming religion has done good is ignoring the roots of why it exists as a concept at all. Evolution explains why we do both good and bad, not human invented comic book clubs.

Things like charity and caring and honesty are something humans have always evolved to exhibit. But we also prove that we can be extremely cruel when our social order is challenged, but nether of our good actions or horrible actions are the result of superstition. But by coddling superstition you enable people to use it as an excuse to use it as a weapon.

So I find no value at all in placating the insecurities of superstitious people. I cant stop people from believing or belonging to any religion, but I damn sure am not going to value something I find absurd just because it has pretty stories in it.