ill go out on a limb here and say im neither an atheist or a believer in christ (as the bible paints it). ive often found the whole i believe in christ bible thing a bit strange but think it comes down to people wanting to believe there is more to life after death and that the bad and wicked will be punished and the good will be rewarded. the whole idea of a god who created the world and sits back observing all the bloodshed carried out is a bit mad but then religion often comes down to personal belief. in many ways im sort of glad people believe in god because it helps keep the masses in line. can you imagine the chaos that would happen if someone could prove god didnt exist?
basically i think people should be free to believe what they want and maybe there is something more but i dont believe the answers come from the interpretations of the original text in the bible nor many of the corrupt members in the church who preach one thing and practice another
The chaos you describe may be a valid point 500 years ago, even 100 years ago.
But the modern world we know today is a world where information floats free.
Humanity have in the 20th century up until now proven that the solution not only to our problems but our survival is education and science. There is no longer a need for faith OR religion to "keep the masses in line" We are capable of creating laws and we have a society that rewards people for good behavior and punishes for bad behavior. But we do more then that. We try to discover how such behavior exists and why it happens and it gives us the power to prevent it from happening again. Simply punishing people is not always the best solution. Many believe that having a death penalty is an effective way of discouraging bad behavior but history and statistics show that this is not the case.
My country has no death sentence and no life sentence, yet we have the lowest crime rate on Earth (charted and documented by the UN human development program)
The US has the death penalty and life sentence, and one of the worlds highest crime rates.
Our prisons do not look like most prisons you may know of. Prisoners live like normal human beings, they work and they have schools to get education. By giving people the opportunity to better themselves they come out of prison as functioning members of society. Only a few retracts back to the criminal behavior they had before they went to prison, but most are able to lead productive lives.
To prevent future born citizens to fall into the destructive pattern of being criminals or violent, governments fund scientific studies of where and how these behaviors come from.
By doing so, one is able to take necessary steps to prevent this from happening and going out of control. But it is not working perfect yet, as this is a rather new way of dealing with a societies social problems. There are forces that retards this development, and religion has played a huge role in this. This is why more countries now keep religion out of politics, as history has shown that trying to control the masses by dogma will always in the end backfire. By letting your whole life be ruled by dogma, and letting your emotional and intellectual integrity be controlled like this, you create a chain reaction in the society and the problems never go away or even seem to get better. They stay the same, and no matter how hard you punish people, there will always be new one's doing the same evil things.
The world will never reach a state where we can see peace and prosperity throughout the entire population, unless ALL societies start to work with their problems in a methodical scientific and rational manner.