Is religion still relevant in modern society?

[Runa216]

RolStoppable said:
I've never thought of religion as the easy way out, it always seemed more of a burden. Obligations that don't make much sense and questionable rules on how you should live your life. That's the price you have to pay for convenience as you put it.

Atheism on the other hand doesn't ask anything of you. You don't need to believe in a higher being or even think about the reason for our all existence. You are free to live your life as you desire. Unless you happen to be a scientist, you don't do anything to help explain the remaining questions. Just like a religious person has the Bible at their hands, so does an areligious person have scientific papers at their hands.

So what is the difference for you personally? Did you solve any mysteries by yourself? Or did you just rely on the work of others to find your answers? Because that is the way of convenience.

Well it's about finding answers and truth.  With Religion, it's easy to assume you know everything because a book tells you so, a book that doesn't cite its sources and has been proven wrong time and time again.  Hey, if science proves us wrong, we'll twist logic so say "God works in mysterious ways" or "The Devil is testing our faith" or something to that effect.  By having an omnipotent being to place all the blame, it makes arguing convenient because you're not obligated to prove anything, or even to give evidence.  Winning a debate about the origins of the world is as simple as saying "That's how god works, we can't understand it." and leaving it at that.  We've had people living for thousands of years under this faulty, faulty logic (even going so far as to control nations, start wars, enact genocides, and just be general bigoted fools).  To make matters worse for the nonbelievers, it's a cultural taboo to criticise this faulty belief system due to their impenetrable defense of "we have our right to believe" mantra.  

Science and atheism, on the other hand, for some reason require a LOAD of evidence or proper proof to support their claims, and the church has been making it hell for the scientists for centuries, millenia even. I've not seen a single scientific discovery or theory that didn't prompt the waves of the religious forth to spew their "This discovery is the devil" rants.  We have people actively disputing PROVEN scientific fact (evolution) and well supported theories (global warming) who all seem to come from a creationist standpoint.  

Being religious is easy when it basically boils down to "Don't dare question us and our faith, but we can harass and criticise you all we want because we've got that universal faith defense."  

and that's my main problem with religion, and why it should be abolished or at least relegated to a simple matter of personal choice, not something that's so powerful.  There's no need for religion in modern times when it has done so much to halt or delay scientific progress.