I have often wondered why so many fucked up things are or have any popularity at all.
Anyone in their right mind would have not only voted against Trump but also would have publicly denounced him.
Religion is in much the same vein. Common sense would tell you that if someone promises you something but doesn't and can't even produce a shred of evidence that it is real then it is bogus.
But just look at the various things that are popular for no real reason. Reality shows about people whose only claim to fame are that they are famous. Famous for being famous...which came first?
Religion, faith healing, who promises peace and happiness but only bring misery and pain. There isn't a shred of evidence that there was ever a god. The bible is nothing more than a collection of folklore and fables (might as well have been written by the Grimm brothers).
You can drive around the seedier part of any town, and find palm readers, head bump readers, faith healers, witch doctors, massage parlors (whore houses), liquor stores, check cashing stores, churches, dive bars, topless bars, and every corner drug dealers, not to mention the street prostitutes.
They all have one thing in common. They are businesses (illegal or not) that prey on the desperate, the addicted, the poor. They exploit the customer and the worker.
You have to have a medical condition to use any of these services, an addiction, a psychological condition.
So let us categorize faith for what it is, a mental condition. The causes are many but the result is the same.
Most people come to this condition via institutional brainwashing. They call it tradition or cultural heritage, but slavery was a cultural heritage as well. It didn't make it any more justified for exploiting innocent people!
There are different degrees of this mental disease we call religion. the extremes are like Scientology or Westboro Baptist Church, but even the Pastor at Dallas Baptist Church actually said that god gave Trump the "okay" to take out North Korea. That is insanity by definition.
On this forum, we have a few youngsters that suffer this mental condition. Longwinded 77, Dumb Ox, Jon the Catholic, and a couple more. They troll and proselytize, apologize, and ignore facts. You can't reason with them. they need medical help.
So let us recognize this terrible condition called faith, then may be we can do something about it.