Try some logic.
Religion has been responsible for the lion's share of the pain, suffering, and death that has plagued humanity for eons. It has been an enemy of education and has destroyed much of the historic record.
People say "my religion encourages good and helps people". Since when has telling people that they have to believe in some big bearded guy in space or he'll fry them forever good? If you told your spouse that a talking snake told you to eat the neighbor's apples, how long would it be before your psychiatrist's appointment? "Honey, your Rose of Sharon bush just caught fire and told me I needed to liberate Tibet from Chinese tyrants." We can't have hospitals and soup kitchens WITHOUT this bull?!
If you wrote a story about the walrus men from the subglacial antarctic sea visiting you on cruise ship and giving you the keys to absolute truth, published it, and insisted upon it to everyone, no one in their right mind would believe you. "Walruses don't talk and they don't live in Antarctica," you'd say, "and they can't possibly live in a sea beneath the ice." But, hey-- bury it somewhere for a thousand years or so, and who knows? With an uncompromising group of zealots and some blood shed, they might be preaching your gospel in 3009!
Religion is all about undermining logical thought. Indeed, where I come from, there's nothing quite so Satanic as skeptical, logical, and independent thought. You get drummed out as an apostate and become a social outcast the moment you give it voice.
Why is this? Because when you ask the why and how of it all, they know that they really have no good answers. They can only fall back on other religious dogmas (lies) to support their arguments. And when people claim inspired religion, there's no way they can possibly be wrong. If they're wrong, God's wrong. And that's the gaff. They derive power over people from this principle-- they're right because God cannot possibly be wrong, and God is on their side! You question that, you threaten their power. When you threaten the power of a man, that man will do ANYTHING to keep it. Kill. Mutilate. Destroy. Divide. All justified by God.
No matter how you justify it or how "good" you think your religion is, the fact that you promote faith over reason is encouraging people to propagate this madness and suffering until, at last, WE ARE ALL in hell!
