I feel that the tone on alwyn's blog (http://sealt6.blogspot.com) is too strong, and even as an agnostic myself i find it difficult to accept his argument with an objective mindset.

I am not religious, I am a free-thinker, and i find myself tending towards thoughts about the utilitarian side of a question, and this would be my emphasis on my following comments on alwyn's arguments against religion, particularly christianity.

I have not read the Quran, nor the bible, nor the Iching, nor the Analects of Confucious, but I feel that the goal of all religion and philosophy is peace. "Thou shalt not kill" is a classic example. There are no long-lasting or progressive society that is based on plunder, murder, treachery.

I find that the general guidelines of religion is to make people follow the "rules". Why should one follow the rules? It is only by following them that the society is likely to progress, and it is because progressive societies are more likely to yield a high population increase, we can roughly tell how successful a religion is in maintaining social cohesion by looking at the population of people. If a religion requires one to be polygamous, kill others, or steal, it would be unlikely to sustain itself for long because these acts lead to social instability, and an unstable society is unlikely to yield a high population growth.

Here I shall not argue about the presence or absence of an omnipotent being, because it is totally pointless to do so. However, we have to realise the benefits of believeing in the power of an omnipotent being.

We must realise that if rules are set and not enforced, there is no point having rules. If rules are to be followed, there must be a system of reward and punishment, regardless of whether spiritual or physical. Hence, the system of reward and punishment in afterlife is especially powerful. If everyone is to accept the "terms and conditions", then little enforcement is needed. The overheads of the society is then able to devote more resources to the development of infrastructure and a system of government.

Since ancient times, it has always been the intellectuals who are giving problems to the government, and it is usually during adolesence that people start to question about purpose and identity, and they have very good arguments to reach a conclusion. Inequality, red tape, vulnerability and purpose of doing things are usually what cause people to go against the government. One can be assured that mortals will never be able to create a perfect system that can ensure that all these are taken care of and will not degrade with time. However, by imposing an "afterlife meritocracy", all the red tape of judgement, gathering of evidence, and the appropriate verdict will be passed, and this would be good enough to make sure that people are deterred from the evils, since there is no flaws that can be found in this system.

Hence, stating from the utilitarian point of view, there are many merits of religion, which is costless maintenance of social cohesion, help one sort one's thoughts out and deal with the cruel facts of mortal life with a positive attitude.

However, I find that i would have to agree with alwyn that that religious sources are not in agreement with science(which we must agree is quite reliable; for now i haven't seen any methods of making carbon14 or radon decay in 5000 years by the amount which would by convention decay in 200 million years). From this fact alone we can draw a few conclusions:

1)Science is wrong.
2)The omnipotent being is wrong.
3)The prophet/gospel writers are wrong.
4)The text is not meant to be interpreted literally.

Assuming that the omnipotent being is perfect, we are forced to conclude that either one of statements 1, 3 and 4 are correct. 1 is certainly plausible, but i would like to mention that it would require a lot of effort to actually explain to the scientists why it is so, and i might add that the process of even undertsanding would daunt many.

i find that it is unlikely that 4 is the case. If the omnipotent being is perfect, then he must also have known all along that man would screw it up if the text is not meant to be interpreted literally. People who have read religious texts should also find it difficult to interpret it in any other way than literally.

i feel that 3 is the most likely situation. Afterall, no human is perfect, and it is not wrong to argue that a prophet can write in the holy text that he is perfect. By logic, if he is perfect, he is telling the truth by saying he is perfect. If he isn't, then he has lied and stated that he is perfect. Afterall, why are there 3 versions of the same text?

Hence, i feel that if it can be established that the writers of the books are wrong, we can bring this matter to a conclusion in a more tactful manner, as this would not offend any religion directly. I urge people not to take their own viewpoint as the only correct one, especially if their own viewpoint is obviously flawed. We can never establish anything concrete about whether science or religion is correct, because there is always a way for philosophers to bring them down.
The omnipotent being is still omnipotent, and science would be able to find more efficient ways for managing resources.

Let us not forget that the human society would not be what it is today without religion or philosophy. It is only with social cohesion and a suitable basis for specialisation that science is able to develop, and even with science we would need philosophy or religion to guide our lives, and to keep the society in place, and to uphold justice.

Note: Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism are philosophies, not religions.