i don't think (for religious people) that they should have organized religion, but I don't think it's that bad either. For most people, they need a sort of guidance, they don't know how to show their love or what exactly God wants, so they go to organized religion to pretty much help them understand what God wants.

But, i don't think it's a MUST. well, i'm not religious at all anyway, but i think i've made my point.

There isn't really a side for atheist but here it goes:

Both my parents are fairly religious, my father is a Catholic and my mother is a Protestant. I've gone to Catholic Church almost every Sunday for my entire life (still do) and there was a point in my life when I considered myself very religious.

Then I started to think. In Sunday school class a teacher asked the question: "why does God let bad things happen to good people?" This seemed like an obvious question to me so I responded that bad things happen to everybody; if good things happened to good people and bad things happened to bad people then there would be no point to heaven and hell, because everyone would already have received justice.

I was satisfied with the explanation I had come up with and forgot about it. Later though the I thought about the subject again. If people only helped others so they could get into heaven, were they being selfish? I couldn't for the life of me come up with a suitable response. I had thought that people should do good deeds because they were good, not because they were going to receive some reward, or be punished if they didn't.

On that same note I didn't understand why, if Christianity was correct, the majority of humanity, billions of people, would be sent to hell, for no other reason then because they were born into, or chose the wrong religion.

I guess this is why I don't like organized religion (or religion in general for that matter). It is far too much "us vs. them" mentality. We are morally superior because our god is the right one. Obviously not all religious people are like this, and even the vast majority are probably benign in their beliefs, but when you look how easily religion can be used as a tool for hate and intolerance then you see why organized religion is dangerous. I'm not trying to pick on religion though, I feel the same way about nationalism.

I have nothing against religious people - in fact I respect them in a lot of ways - but blindly following an organisation that uses indoctrination as it's main tool for membership, and claims to be infallible...well I guess you get my point.

In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, there's a character, I think Hera, but I could be wrong, who was born of a virgin, the son of a god, was a carpenter, had apostles, and was crucified. Coincidence?

There were no scribes following Jesus, the oldest written word on the era was not compiled until 500 A.D. That's a long long time considering how hard it is to remember what happened just a few years ago. Of course if you believe that god actually wrote the New Testament himeself through man, then you can't really argue I guess.

And of course the Bible is absolutely rampant with contradictions. All these are easily explained away by the faithful of course.

That's not the problem, or mine at least. I just think it's dumb that an all powerful, all good god would care about religion. I like John Milton's Paradise Lost:

The mind's it's own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. What matter where if I still be the same? And what I should be, all but less than he, whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least we shall be free. The All Mighty hath not made, in his envy hath not created, nor shall send us hence. Here we may live, and under my reign. To rule is worth ambition though in hell. Better to rule in hell, than serve in Heaven...

Basically I don't like the idea of a god telling me to be good, when I am capable of doing so on my own. And if I choose to do evil, so be it. If all his knowledge and power and goodness were not enough to lead me from that path, than it is mine and not his to follow. If he exists, and is who religion claims him to be, I want nothing to do with him. If he is a figment of our imagination, which I believe him to be, then how incredibly silly we humans look every Sunday!

I was born into a Lutheran and Catholic household but because my father practiced no religion it fell to my mother to start us off on the "right track"...and so we were raised as Lutherans. Catholics believe theirs is the religion closest to God and Martin Luther was once a Catholic as well. When he disagreed with many tenets of the church he wrote and nailed his "95 Theses" on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany in the year 1517 and the Reformation was born. I have read the theses many times and have always agreed with Luther on the matter of indulgences.

I have attended every denomination of Christian church services along the way and have read much on the major and minor religions. I am lucky, I think, that I have much more than a basic understanding of my religion and am basically happy in it. Although I can respect structure in the matter of attendance I don't happen to believe I need that regimen even though many others do. I have thought from time to time that I might change religions altogether but to what end? Nothing except God's word and the teachings of Jesus Christ could mean more to me than any religion I can think of. I do find them all fascinating but each and every one of them are man made. So, no, God is enough for me but if the day comes that I desire or need the structure of organized religion, I know exactly where to go and know I'll be welcome.