Dear Individual,

These are excellent questions, thanks!

<<Isn't religion all about laws ?>>

NO, NO, and NO again: religion is about coming close to God. Nothing more, nothing less.

Some religious people, in the course of striving to come closer to God, take upon themselves certain limitations, they may impose certain laws upon themselves, but that is only one religious technique, not the essence of religion, and in any case, such laws are only imposed over oneself - attempting to impose laws on others has nothing to do with coming closer to God.

<<Aren't the churches just like Governments, exploiting the masses ?>>

I suppose some may - and it would indeed be proper to check it on a case-by-case basis.
Note however, that not every religious person belongs to a church and not every church is indeed promoting religion.

NO, NO, and NO again: religion is about coming close to God. Nothing more, nothing less.
Yuyutsu,
Well, I can't continue debating this because I only have my own experiences & evidence provided to me by religious people to go by. My experience is that most religious people not some as you say, are selfish people. Yes, many put on a great display of kindness etc but when it comes to matters of money & to tolerate others' views the display changes dramatically.
Personally, I rather trust a good non-religious person than a religious one.

Dear Individual,

Do you have supernatural powers?

Because without those I would find it extremely difficult to determine whether and to what extent is a fellow man/woman religious. Just because one belongs to a church; or because they mark a religious persuasion in their census paper; or because they seem to display kindness, does not necessarily imply that they are in fact religious.

Also, bear in mind that religion is the road, a long road, not the final station (which is God), that everyone must begin the journey from where they are at, so it should not be surprising that even a religious person is likely to still retain a portion of selfishness and greed.

Yuyutsu,
I have no problem with faith but it sure puts it into the secret womens' business category. If we're indeed to go the course you (Bible) describe then I'm having difficulty as to why so many people simply can't go through life on their own accord so that everything they do is indeed up to them & them only. There are too many hurdles put up by others. What is the idea of this in the grand plan ? Surely, if I am being judged then shouldn't I be judged on what I did & how I behaved ? Not by what I was forced to do or forced to behave ?
Unless I'm looking at this in an utterly unenlightened way I fail to understand. It's like a Captain who has to cop for what his crew does. No individual can or should be responsible for the action of another unless the individual ordered the other.

Off topic but interesting.

Two sides of religion
- the search for deeper meaning to life
- the avoidance of deeper meaning to to life

I suspect most of the religious people we deal with follow the latter. Religion gives them a framework to avoid personal responsibility for how they choose to live. They will be the ones most loudly proclaiming their faith, the ones needing their rules applied to others, the ones with the blanket attacks on those who don't do it their way.

Probably don't come across many of tne former.

R0bert

Emile Durkheim, was the first sociologist to apply
perspective to religion in a systematic way. His
study, "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life,"
was first published in 1912 and has since become a
classic. Many of Durkheim's contemporaries saw religion
as nothing more than a primitive relic that would soon
disappear in the more sophisticated modern world.

But Durkheim was impressed by the fact that religion is
universal in human society, and he wondered why this
should be so. His answer was that religon has a vital
function in maintaining the social system as a whole.

Durkheim believed that the origins of religion were social,
not supernatural. He pointed out that, whatever their
source, the rituals enacted in any religon enhance the
solidarity of the community as well as its faith.

Consider such religious rituals as baptism, bar mitzvah,
weddings, Sabbath services, Christmas mass, and funerals.

Rituals like these serve to bring people together, to
remind them of their common group values, to
maintain prohibitions and taboos; to offer comfort in
times of crisis; and, in general, to help transmit the
cultural heritage from one generation to the next.

Some people may no longer believe deeply in traditional
religion, but they haven't found a satisfying substitute.

For many years it was widely felt that as science progressively
provided rational explanations for the mysteries of the universe,
religion would have less and less of a role to play and
would eventually disappear, unmasked as nothing more than
superstition.

However there are still gaps in our understanding that
science can't fill. On the ultimately important questions -
of the meaning and purpose of life and the nature of
morality.

As I've written many times, few people of modern societies would
utterly deny the possibility of some higher power in the
universe, some supernatural, transcendental realm that
lies beyond the boundaries of ordinary experience, and in
this fundamental sense religion is probably here to stay.