Let's just use regular logical reasoning here on slashdot. In this case, you may agree that my belief in a creator of the universe isn't that silly, and does no harm to anyone.

So please stop picking on religion in general, and stick to criticizing specifically the things you don't like about it. You wouldn't say medicine is silly because homeopathy is, would you?

Your answer just proves one of the original claims in this thread: that religion does not get fair treatment on slashdot. You had to apply these "paralogical" arguments, which you admit are stupid, to prove your point.

Could you please just apply to religion the same type of logical reasoning that you use with everything else?

Now, if you want to talk about how the reasoning some religions use is wrong, please go ahead. But use examples and proper logic. I'm not saying that everything is right about religions. But you can't say everything is wrong, either. And some beliefs are not as silly as you try to make them look.

My point was that the study does not necessarily prove that religion gives worse moral values on average than its absence, because we can't study how the people from a religious society of today would act if most of them suddenly became atheists.

Maybe the causality in the correlation found by the study is not religion -> poverty and worse moral values, but poverty -> religion and worse moral values.

I agree with you that an atheistic ethical system would be better.

But being religious doesn't exclude adopting an ethical system that isn't based on religion, like the one you describe. What is wrong with acting in some way both because you believe it is good for society and because you think it will please the creator?

On the other hand, getting rid of religion does not guarantee that the people will adopt any ethical system at all. I don't think the assholes that are now religious would become any better if they suddenly became atheists.

This is probably caused by the fact that atheists are usually intelligent people (not all intelligent people are atheists, though).

We don't know for sure how things would be without religion, but I think it would be worse. Atheism won't make anyone smarter or give anyone better moral values.

If anyone posted that God has spoken to him, he would still be modded off the page. That person would even be considered a loon by most of us religious persons. For most people, religion is a set of moral values combined with the belief that the world has an intelligent creator.

Also, it's not fair to compare this belief that an intelligent being created our universe (which can be neither proved nor disproved) to the belief that someone's dog is that creator (which can be easily disproved).
Perhaps a more fair comparison would be between the belief in an intelligent creator and string theory. Neither of them can be actively proved or disproved. Yet we don't consider the scientists working on s.t. loons if they think it is true.

I wonder why they don't make any mobile phones with chorded keyboards. These would also be easy to use without looking at them, and it would also be easier to type using just the hand you're holding the phone in.

At least you'll only waste $1.25 trying a game that isn't fun, instead of the full price of the game (like you would in the current business model).