Criticizing religion is "There's no substantial proof in god or the spiritual.  Until you can prove it, I can't take your claims as anything more than empty claims." 

There's a subtle but critical difference between criticizing something and 'bashing' it.  

Bashing religion is "All people of faith are ignorant sheep who can't think for themselves!  Religion at its core is a flawed theory and you're all dumb for believing it!" 

Criticizing religion is "There's no substantial proof in god or the spiritual.  Until you can prove it, I can't take your claims as anything more than empty claims." 

Learn the difference and you, too, can be on the path to enlightenment! 

I'm totally opposed to it because even if there's merit to the idea in theory, it requires that governments spend more only when they need to in order to stimulate demand and then reduce spending when times are good. The first part isn't the problem, but of course, the latter is. The temptation for the government to do more, more, more is even greater when times are flush. (I still get a laugh when I think about the 2000 presidential debates when Bush and Gore were debating how we should spend all these "huge" surpluses we were going to be running.) Then when the latest government-stoked bubble bursts and the economy goes into a tailspin, you're already tapped out and buried under a mountain of debt.

So Keynesianism just seems like a silly, borderline utopian notion that is premised on the idea that there are Top Men who have good intentions and take the long view and will always make the right call, rather than a bunch of fallible humans and craven politicians who just want to do the most expedient thing for the short term. New Keynesians are even more given to hubristic fantasies about what they (the aforementioned Top Men, naturally) can accomplish beyond simply stimulating the way out of an economic downturn and seem to believe they can coax the economy to do exactly as they please with no unintended consequences.

And sure, it's not surprising that any government will generally use any excuse to grab more power, whether or not it's actually warranted, and economic downturns are the perfect opportunity to do so. Politics tends to attract people who are in love with power, and while politicians probably do genuinely believe they are doing good things, they'd also generally prefer to strangle an economy to death with their own two hands than to let it flourish without them micromanaging every aspect of it. Such is the nature of a control freak. I don't know that it's "rational", but it's certainly to be expected.

But If i was religious my beliefs wouldn't be claims. They would be just that, beliefs. They would only be claims if i went around trying to convince others, which I wouldn't. Just like I don't try to convince religious folks that their beliefs are untrue. So who are you to "enlighten" someone who holds beliefs that differ from yours when they are minding their own business. Isn't that what atheists hate about certain religious people to begin with. Looks up the word hypocrit and then get back to me about englightenment. 
btw, this thread is basically bashing religious people. 

Also, Here's the definition of claims since you seem to be confused about that as well.