Really I mean it! What is it really and why do we have it? I remember back in my old college days taking a history of religion class and back then I thought I came to a pretty good understanding how it was used in a societal way.
Now, I would like to understand what it means to the individual. One idea that I have floating around in my thoughts is that religion is used in place of or to bolster actual confidence. If you are religious (and I'm talking mainly about Christianity here, and I'm talking about a truly religious person ) you have no doubts about right or wrong. You have no doubts about where your deceased ancestors are. You have confidence that you are a good person, a special person, a person that's hooked into the God-given system; the ask and ye shall receive system. My idea is that this system works really well for some of the truly religious and it is seen as proof of God's existence, it's God working in their life as far as they are concerned.
It is a purely mental construct of course, and I see it as a way of replacing or adding to genuine courage and confidence. Genuine confidence in one's self is far far preferable because being based in reality it isn't strapped down by any sort of theology or dogma, in other words a truly confident atheist is able to weigh all aspects of a real reality while forming opinions or action plans whereas the truly religious theist is bound by their religion to act like an automaton. Automatons are not what we need in today's world, in today's world we need people who can think and act clearly, people who are not doomed to repeat history's mistakes over and over again because their "God" tells them to.
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