Dial1194 wrote:
I've always found atheism to be the simplest option. No need to keep track of deities, or semi-deities, or rituals, or things you're supposed to do (or not do) for religious reasons.
After all, what was the saying? "Out of 3000 religions, everyone's an atheist about 2,999 of them. What's one more?"
Yes I strongly suspect that most religions were designed for people who didn't see much of the rest of the world, rather like the social rules of a particular locality (and I also suspect that their religious beliefs are constructed from their social mores rather than it being the other way round like they often say they are). Inward-looking societies with no interest in other cultures often seem to think their own ways are the only valid ways, because they've never seen anything different. But anybody who travels or looks around the globe notices that there are many different sets of social rules that seem to work as well as any rules do, and they may begin to wonder, "why would the place I happened to be born in be the only one that's got it right?"