For me, it's all too obviously made up. Not only does every single organised religion revolve around natural human primitive intuition, but it also smacks of the most human desire of all (especially that of insecure men) - power. Power over the masses (especially women) is something desired by all the most beta of males, and it is these beta males whom have set the ball rolling with the whole religion thing. Look at Islam - why do you suppose women are forced to wear the hijab - is god really that offended at seeing women's skin, or is it more likely the actions of insecure, beta men?

Look at what Tyler says in the Blueprint. For people to take something as the truth, it has to fit 3 criteria:

1) The person has to be completely sure of their own beliefs and believe they are right
2) That person is in line with their beliefs
3) Other people believe these beliefs

Taking this into account, it's easy to see why the major religions have spread - not only were these criteria satisfied, but if anyone objected, they were threatened with hell and death. Quite a choice, no? Have faith in the idiotic or burn in the fires of hell. During a time of immense superstition and (from a scientific point of view) stupidity, it's hardly a surprise that religion became so big. Once it became so big, of course, the 3 rules above became self-perpetuating. Why are Islam, Christianity and Judaism the biggest religions in the world? See above.

From a personal point of view, and as a scientist, the world makes far too much sense to have been created by a supernatural being. Everything is an extension of the initial conditions for cosmic creation. It only takes a small amount of reading into any of the sciences (biology, maths, chemistry, physics) to realise that the world could not exist in any other way - all the laws of nature are there as a result of nature and are therefore consistent throughout.

One just needs to consider the human body to discount a creator. I've been in the Human Dissecting Room at uni and let me tell you, seeing human bodies, both whole and in bits (lots of bits in some cases) really brings home the whole question of the soul. It makes you realise - the human body is an object, nothing more. I can't really explain the feeling of seeing preserved bodies and body parts, but the body is nought special, just a large system of perfect systems working in the only possible way, dictated by millions of years of evolution. When you die, you rot in the ground and that's it.

Perhaps you could argue religion has come about due to the need to explain the great unknown in the world. We didn't know what the sun was, why we are here, why the body works the way it does, why nature works as it does, and naturally invented a way of explaining it. Now, however, we know how things work. The work of science (ie observation of the natural world and the accumulation of knowledge through evidence) has established how many of the laws of nature work. Maths and physics have explained the universe on a microscopic and macroscopic level, whilst chemistry and biology have explained much of the natural level. I've studied systems of the human body in minute detail and, much to the contrary of what religion would have us believe, it is not magic. It is a chemical reaction, regulated by other, autonomous, chemical reactions. Think that the growth, development and birth of a baby is a miracle? Read an embryology textbook, you'll soon change your mind.

It goes back to the whole thing about Fight Club I think. The truth about life is that we are all animals, placed on Earth to survive and replicate. When we die, we rot in the ground. There is no heaven, no hell, just everlasting unconciousness. We live in a universe that is uncaring whether we live or die in a life of absolutely no significance.

Religion offers a sanctuary for those of too weak a mind to accept this bleak truth. "There's a God and when we die we go to Heaven and live happily ever after. The point of life is to do God's work". Please. It's like something you'd tell children (and, scarily, what a lot of religions do tell children). It's unthinkable to contemplate that life actually has no meaning and no point so we invent one. This itself is fine - if people want to bury their heads in the sand then fine. My gripe is the method by which religion forces itself on others: the indoctrination of children, Jehova's Witnesses and terrorist activity to name but 3.

Like is said in Fight Club - to lose all hope is freedom. Would that people of a religious disposition could wake up to this fact, there would be none of this superstitious nonsense. There is no hope of salvation, of heaven or hell, or of there being a "happy ever after". Accepting this and losing yourself in the oblivion of a pointless existence is the way to be free. Not Jesus, Mohammed or any of the others.