Two of the four you mention as ridiculous are not ridiculous to me.

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God - this isn't talking about people saying "god damn it" and "jesus fricken christ" although many people think it is. My understanding is that it is talking about doing things in the name of god that shouldn't be. A lot of the atrocities attributed to religion fall in this category.

Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy - this one is a shame. Today we do so much and don't take proper time to rest. We end up burning out and having heart attacks and short shifting ourselves, our loved ones, friends, and family. Our culture would be better off if everyone really took a day off each week to rest, relax, have some family time together, catch up with friends. But both Saturday and Sunday are used to get things done that can't get done during the week and our lives suffer.

It would be instructive for you to remember the consequences of the decline of religion in the western world, starting from Robespierre, extending to Social Darwinism and Rapine Capitalism, reaching a peak with Stalin and Mao, not to mention the most barbarous and savage war in the history of the human race, 1939-1945. Religious violence in history is the exception to the rule, but in the history of secular 'humanism', violence waged for the gain of transient goods of the world (power, money, land etc.) is the rule.

Religion is a means to unite all aspects of human existence through recognition and realization within the individual and the collective of unity. Unity, the foundation of mathematics and indeed all sense perception, the irrational, or better, super-rational sine qua non of awareness, is the primary attribute of God, and is totally unexplainable with any kind of secular science. For it simply is.

To the person who said:
'Peeps in caves couldn't of done it alone'
Caves? The Old Testament was written in Ancient Egypt and continued being added to into Roman Times. Likewise TNT was added to from Later Classical Antiquity until the 1500's.
I know thats the bible but the Qu'ran is just an expanded Bible that continues after Jesus.

If your religion requires you to donate to charity, I'm not really sure you can call it charity. Giving to charity kind of requires you to be generous. If its required, you aren't being generous.

The act is generous.
I understand your point, but people aren't being forced to do this.

Well if you don't give money everyone gets pissed at you. And if your an adult Muslim, then almost all your friends are als. Muslim. Big problem.

"You lost me here. You see human kind in primates? I'm not sure what you are saying"

I'm saying that if you look at the evolutionary history of kindness, kindness not only predates religion, but it predates humanity. Considering we have inherited our nature to a certain degree from our ancestors, it's reasonable to suppose that humans have always had kindness, whether or not they've always had religion.

Alderian, yes, the very nature of scripture makes it very open to interpretation. To some it simply means saying things like "Jesus Christ!" in exasperation, to others it means that you should not swear by anything holy in an insincere oath, and to others like you, it means you should not justify crimes with religion. I would take it farther and say you should not justify anything with religion, but I think the fact remains that it is not the commandment that is relevant to today's society, but your interpretation of it, which changes depending on the era and the religious group involved. You didn't need the commandment to tell you this, rather you told the commandment what it meant. Who decides what can and cannot be done in the name of God?

As for the Sabbath commandment... yes it's true that people often take things too seriously, but how much more serious can you get than a holy commandment sent by god dictating that you must observe a day of rest. Is this a law? Should it be enforced? There are passages in the Bible which command you to kill your neighbour if you see that he does not observe the Sabbath. If I want to work, or if I'm forced to work to sustain myself or my family, is this justifiable as a commandment? Isn't that ridiculous?

BaronSamedi, yes but do you see more religious charities than secular charities than the population ratio would suggest? You forget that the great majority of people identify with a religious group and are not atheists. Would that explain why you see mostly religious charities or do you believe that religious people are more likely to contribute to charities than non-religious people?

KingWren, you're taking a heavily card-stacked view of history here... What you might call the height of monotheistic religion in Western Europe was no paradise. The Middle Ages was fraught with cruelty and injustice and a bloated Papacy. Compare feudalism to capitalism and tell me which one is better. Yes, there was the Crusades, and the Spanish Inquisition, but by and large, I wouldn't even blame the large host of problems on religion, though you would blame unrelated incidents to a decline in religion. You're not even consistent with your criticism of secular humanism because you've lumped Mao and Stalin as signs of declining religion as though they somehow represented humanistic philosophy. You might as well have cited the declining number of pirates in the world to the apparent increase in depravity, and I say apparent because by and large the general trend in world history has been one of decreasing violent crimes by a population ratio. We're living in much better times now than we were back at the height of religion in Western Europe, and I don't blame religion or credit atheism for this... but the indomitable technological progress of humanity. I don't mind you making specious assumptions about the foundation of mathematics and all sense perception, but that still only explains a sort of deism and it's a great leap from a mystical sense of some Oneness to the Holy Trinity.

Are we talking about religion, or Western Christianity after c. 1000? The idea that religion in western europe constitutes all the religious history of mankind, as your apparent level of knowledge requires to be the case if we are to have a discussion about "religion", is a fundamental problem that many people have in discussing this matter.

Mao and Stalin are direct inheritors of the Utopian secular humanism of the Great Terror. How do you even begin to posit the opposite?

Your false dichotomy between feudalism and capitalism is totally absurd. Feudalism is a product of necessity, and therefore an economic system. Capitalism is a product of choice, and therefore a spiritual system.

The spiritual alienation and ennui of humanity, the destruction of the environment, the apotheosis of the isolated individual which marks the movement to rationalist savagery (see Vico), the trend to homogenization and the poverty of language and culture, and the enforced dedication of all humanity to the pursuit of worthless "progress" that is utterly meaningless against the transient universe's backdrop, are all aspects of this impoverished and vacuous civilization. The reckless use of Technology, which I assume you believe in through the formula (manipulation=knowledge), is one of the principal causes of the desolate and barren state we find ourselves. This conversation, likely to be characterized by the violence that seems to be inherent in the interaction between anonymous, isolated strangers communicating only by means over which we have no control, is a case in point.

"The spiritual alienation and ennui of humanity, the destruction of the environment, the apotheosis of the isolated individual which marks the movement to rationalist savagery (see Vico), the trend to homogenization and the poverty of language and culture, and the enforced dedication of all humanity to the pursuit of worthless "progress" that is utterly meaningless against the transient universe's backdrop, are all aspects of this impoverished and vacuous civilization. The reckless use of Technology, which I assume you believe in through the formula (manipulation=knowledge), is one of the principal causes of the desolate and barren state we find ourselves. This conversation, likely to be characterized by the violence that seems to be inherent in the interaction between anonymous, isolated strangers communicating only by means over which we have no control, is a case in point."

Golly, that's so crushingly depressing. I mean, you're looking at the world through concrete-colored glasses there. I do see the point you're trying to make, but that "apotheosis of the isolated individual which marks the movement to rationalist savagery" nonsense seems a bit too much like bored ivory tower intellectual cant than an actual explanation of contemporary society.

I copied the whole paragraph because for some reason I thought someone would post while I was writing. In hindsight that was foolish of me.

"Are we talking about religion, or Western Christianity after c. 1000? The idea that religion in western europe constitutes all the religious history of mankind, as your apparent level of knowledge requires to be the case if we are to have a discussion about "religion", is a fundamental problem that many people have in discussing this matter."

You mentioned the decline of religion in the Western world starting with Robespierre, so I assumed you were referring to Christianity in Western Europe prior to the humanist revolution in the Enlightenment. You created the context, and I argued it on those terms.

"Mao and Stalin are direct inheritors of the Utopian secular humanism of the Great Terror. How do you even begin to posit the opposite?"

WHAT?! Are we in the same reality here? Do you know what humanism is? It's primary affirmation is the worth and dignity of the individual and the importance of human rights and equality. It was a movement against authority and the supernatural.... How do communist dictators like Stalin and Mao inherit that philosophy? I can begin to posit the opposite by pointing out that they practically represent the exact opposite of humanistic philosophy.

"The spiritual alienation and ennui of humanity, the destruction of the environment, the apotheosis of the isolated individual which marks the movement to rationalist savagery (see Vico), the trend to homogenization and the poverty of language and culture, and the enforced dedication of all humanity to the pursuit of worthless "progress" that is utterly meaningless against the transient universe's backdrop, are all aspects of this impoverished and vacuous civilization. The reckless use of Technology, which I assume you believe in through the formula (manipulation=knowledge), is one of the principal causes of the desolate and barren state we find ourselves. This conversation, likely to be characterized by the violence that seems to be inherent in the interaction between anonymous, isolated strangers communicating only by means over which we have no control, is a case in point."

You're rejecting the world for the sake of rejection, not on any justification here. In your nihilism do you find solace in religion? For someone who supposedly realizes the absurdity of human existence and endeavour in a cold universe you place a lot of arbitrary meaning and significance in various aspects of human existence. The environment? The violence inherent in our interaction? Come off it. You're just replacing a genuine attempt at understanding with hyper-literate key words and depressing philosophical nausea. Do you like ice cream? Coffee? Sex? Reading? List your earthly pleasures and ask yourself if you would have these amenities in another era, or if you'd have lived a life of necessity that would have never afforded you the opportunity to learn and regurgitate such destructive nonsense. Take heart in the small but meaningless pleasures and the knowledge that most people don't think the way you do. I hate to fulfill the prophecy of inherent "violence" in our interaction, but I was in a similar funk once, and I can't help but respond somewhat emotionally to these sorts of statements. I'm sure you're quite normal and generally a good person.

I'm usually too hasty to judge right before I go to bed. =/

I never said that I think (organized) religion can do no good - I simply said that (off hand) I cannot think of any examples of that.
The many dozens of people who have ascribed all kinds of examples of goodness and lumped them all to the credit of some organized religious group or other (Lutheran, Roman Catholic or whatever), forget one or two things: Charity emanating from organized religion ALWAYS has strings attached ("I will give you food/education/shelter/clothing, but first you must convert to my religion"...) plus the plain fact is that many of these good acts stem from innate human (slash/animal) kindness, which surely does NOT need any organized religion to reconfirm its validity.

As to the arts (yes, the Sixtine Chapel, Brunelleschi's Dome in Florence, etc., etc.) were all CO-inspired by religion (the only one in town, by the way...), but also very much by civic pride of the various guilds, towns, governments (bit like recent corporate efforts to build themselves the highest skyscrapers).

Finally, how about a thorough study how Europe became christianized - We were taught in school that this was a beneficial and wonderful thing (yes I was brought up Dutch protestant), but on closer inspection it is clear that Willibrord, Boniface, and all their ilk made their religious "conquests" generally by FIRE & SWORD. "Either you, the chieftain, become Christian, like me, or this army standing behind me will rape, pillage, burn and exterminate all of you! No-brainer, really, isn't it? (Mr Frisian, Batavian, etc etc).

May the debate progress! Maybe, this way we will all of us find "the solution" to this problem (the dominance of organized mass-religions in this world).....or maybe not!

@KingWren "The spiritual alienation and ennui of humanity, the destruction of the environment, the apotheosis of the isolated individual which marks the movement to rationalist savagery (see Vico), the trend to homogenization and the poverty of language and culture, and the enforced dedication of all humanity to the pursuit of worthless "progress" that is utterly meaningless against the transient universe's backdrop, are all aspects of this impoverished and vacuous civilization. "

No it isn't.