The universe is just one enormous 'Soul Filtering machine'

[drfuzzy]

The OP summarizes one of the main reasons why I became an atheist.  Maybe, if a person is ignorant of evolution, of the age of the earth, what the stars are, the billions upon billions of other galaxies and the unfathomable distances even in our own solar system . . . Maybe, if a person only has knowledge of a small area of earth and believes that god watches everything and that illness is caused by sin and drought means god is mad at you . . . Just maybe, that person would find the bible narrative believable.  But now, you have to have it hammered into your brain as a child, and you have to not ask questions.  Questions like why a deity (who created all the universe, and apparently killed the dinosaurs to make room for apes) would appear only to a tiny tribe living in an area smaller than Lake Michigan?  Why is this deity's mode of communication so incompetent?  What about the millions of people who lived before the Habaru tribes split from other Canaanite tribes and decided they weren't going to eat any more pork or shellfish?  Nothing makes sense here, nothing is rational.  Any deity who actually created the planet would know that there was never a Garden of Eden and no original sin and no great flood or tower of babel . . . and that the earth is round and that the stars are not fixed in the dome of the sky.
And souls - - - the afterlife - - - these make no sense either, no matter how lovely it may be to fantasize that one's consciousness will never be extinguished.  
When I think of the vastness of the universe and the insignificance of the Earth - - - it just hammers the ridiculousness of religion into my brain.