Having grown up religious, I used to think this way.
In my family, I now see people coming up against real hardship, and because their purpose in life is so deeply rooted in religion, they don't know how to cope with things emotionally (instead, trying to defer the emotional toll of those things, believing that their god will handle it)... and they make strange decisions, things go horribly, they are left struggling to comprehend. They live as if they are on a rollercoaster of hope, anticipation, crisis, disappointment, recovery, hope.
In my own experience, having your self worth and sense of identity attached to religion is a fragile existence, especially if you are logically inclined.
> In my own experience, having your self worth and sense of identity attached to religion is a fragile existence, especially if you are logically inclined.
I admit, this can be a problem. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can be logically inclined and attach at least part of your identity to religion. Having part my identity attached to religion gives me a sense of purpose. I know that life isn't meaningless and that God expects me to do certain things if I want to maximum happiness for myself and the people I love.
On the other side of the coin, I have a lot of atheist friends who struggle with nihilism which has often led to other equally strange decisions, despite them being "logically inclined" (like dabbling in drugs) to try to cope with their sense of purposelessness. I had one friend (brilliant programmer) who basically fried his brain using LSD trying to find purpose in life. He is a completely different person than he was before, and not in a good way. Some friends have even had prolonged periods of depression because of it.
In my family, I now see people coming up against real hardship, and because their purpose in life is so deeply rooted in religion, they don't know how to cope with things emotionally (instead, trying to defer the emotional toll of those things, believing that their god will handle it)... and they make strange decisions, things go horribly, they are left struggling to comprehend. They live as if they are on a rollercoaster of hope, anticipation, crisis, disappointment, recovery, hope.
In my own experience, having your self worth and sense of identity attached to religion is a fragile existence, especially if you are logically inclined.