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this made me think of a book i read a long time ago. i belive it's called The Engines of God, but i'm not exactly sure.
the basic idea was that humanity had finally achieved space travel. so, they've gone to the edge of the arm fo the milky way (the arm we're in). they discover a few planets. one was an advanced civilization, but the planet was destroyed, and the orbiting space station appeared to have commited suicde. the other planets were all primative. so, as the story goes on, the realize that anything with rectangular shapes (say a skyscrapper) was destroyed. so, eventually you find out that these cloud things came from outside the galaxy, and traveling at like the speed of light, went through and destroyed anything 'unnatural' or, anything with straight lines, sharp edges, etc. on a planet surface. they discover that way back when, a first wave of these cloud things came and wreaked havoc on earth, and that's how religion was formed. it was an interesting book, and if you like to debate about religion at all, it's an different twist on all the other ideas.
another interesting idea (only works for judiasm/christianity and maybe islam) is that the bible/torah/quran (i can't spell it, sorry), is just a collection of stories, similar to aesop's fables, just stories to tell us how we should act. my rabbi gave a sermon on that once, it was different, and it's definitly more believeable then the world being created in a week, or any other way a religion states the creation of the world.
another thing is, i think religions came up to define the unnatural, anything that couldn't be explained by humans. so, the wind, way back when, was a strange and unusual thing. nothing made the air move, so it was attributed to a god. rain, sun, night, etc, everything that you could show with your own two hands was said to be done by a god of somesorts. now that humanity has discovered the 'real' causes of wind, night, rain, etc., religion is in a unique spot. you can either go and say well, there is still a god (or many gods), but they don't control thigns like rain and wind, or you could say there is no god(s), or you could become a hermit, and believe as the 'ancients' did.
the topic of religion is a very broad one, and not something that is easily discussed through an online forum, or even online. sorry to anyone who thinks i'm being offensive, i just can't really show what i feel through a website. really needs to be a person to person debate... :/
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