Quote Originally Posted by thir View Post
I disagree. The religions that are non-dogmatic and which are considered private do not hurt anyone, and thoughts are free, you know. Religion has fuddled people's head's in the past and can do so now, agreed. But not necessarily.
While these private religions may not hurt others, they can, and do, harm the person believing in them. They can create emotional/mental problems, even physical problems, by allowing the believer to bypass reality. If you believe that prayer alone will solve your problems, you can reach the point where you do nothing for yourself except pray. That's a problem.

But yes. Your main arguments are 1) that science does not know of any such thing (people having visions while in coma or some sort of dead), therefore it does not exist,
No, science DOES know of these things. They have been reported upon and studied. The phenomena exist, scientifically. The CAUSES are also generally known to science, and there a sound physiological explanations for them. They are, as far as can be determined, inner processes of the brain and not OBE's.

and when people say they have in fact had such experiences they are lying, or it is magic or religious humbug.
Not quite. When they report their visions they are, mostly, telling the truth. Their minds have, in all likelihood, experienced this thing. It's when they start writing books, going on speaking tours, claiming to KNOW what happened and it was all God, or something, that they devolve into misrepresentation and lying.

Oh yes, they are, there are major different cultures within a nations borders.
Yes, there are. And you can have these different cultures, side by side, all practicing the same religion. Sure, there might be minor differences in ritual between them, but the belief structure will be the same. You can also have representatives of a single culture with major differences in religions belief. Protestants and Catholics in Ireland are a prime example. Pretty much identical cultures, outside of their religions, but major differences in belief.

Correct. Therefor no prayers, she is simply nature, and everything else.
So what's the point in worship?

You do not get it, Thorne. Nature fed us, roots, berries, fruit, grain, occasionally meat. Where did that come from, if not nature?
But she gave us barely enough to feed the small groups wandering the plains. And often not enough even for that, resulting in conflicts between groups for the scant resources left.
Where do you think your meals come from? Build in a lab? Where do the cattle graze, where does the wheat grow? Of course we live off nature.
There have been many technical advances - what has that got to do with anything?
It's only when we began using our brains to cultivate the land, learned to protect our crops from weather and pests, became able to grow more than we need, allowing us to barter with others, that we began to progress. In spite of nature, not because of it.

Apart from the fact that we are now weak and cannot survive without our many technological incubators. If something major happens, we are lost.
It's true, our technology allows far more people to thrive than would be possible if we were dependent solely upon nature. I don't see that as a bad thing.