* "Wasted" is a value judgment. Arguably anything humans do with their lives that's valuable to them isn't wasted.
* Creating narratives that provide context and serve a starting/exploration point for value judgments seems to be something humans just do (the astute might even notice the author of the comment I'm replying to is hardly immune). Religion isn't that different from the rest of the liberal arts in that respect, though the way people inhabit it arguably is (and everyone inhabits one narrative/cosmology or another).
* Given those things, it looks like you might be confusing religion with a kind of folk cosmology (as that's the easiest explanation for a flat judgment of religion as a waste of time).
Really? How many official atheistic rituals are performed per week? per month? per year? How many atheistic personalities do you see/hear on the radio / television (talking about atheism, not about pizza)? How many atheistic politicians do you know (probably very few, since it is political suicide)? How many times per year is an atheist ringing at your door to tell you the wonders of atheism? (I get several calls per year from the jehova's witness and other groups, trying to convince me - very educately - that their religion is "the good one - tm")
I heard people are going to the church (or synagoge, or mosque, or whatever) every Sunday (Saturday / Friday) (or they should ...), and they are very freely and openly telling everybody how much they believe in their choice of god.
Compared to the publicity with which believers are living their faith, atheist's non-faith is very introvert.
Which is according to the nature of the thing - why would you be talking about your non-beliefs all the time? Basically, we all have so many non-believes (an atheist has only one more than a believer) that there is no material time to talk about them.
Of course whenever an atheist breaks this code of silence (like poor madengr just did above) with a single sentence (not a three hours prayer - mind you!), it clearly proves that atheists are exhibitionists.
All this makes your joke a very stupid joke (since its logic is broken)
The joke was that atheists (along with the others listed) are inclined towards outspoken rants at everyone. You responded with an outspoken rant to the joke.
I often wonder if God is up with technology and is up in heaven watching peoples twitter feeds, facebook and forum comments saying to himself, "Hm, that acheron is being too christian today. Buck your ideas up young man."
What I see is millennia of people who have found themselves in a mysteriously ordered world with intense experiences and moral instincts. Over time people have developed systems to explain these things which have developed also.
Religion can provide a sense of community and support that society can otherwise lack. Personal faith can also be a means of support for people in troubled times.
>Now imagine the man-millenia wasted on all that hocus pocus.
my/mine imaginary deity/deities is/are the one true deity/deities, because, er, I say so, and so did my parents!
how people can buy into the fairy-tales which is religion has always baffles me, atleast unless you are indoctrinated from a young age and shielded from critical thinking.
It also makes it a fairly fuzzy target, since at at any time someone might invoke but <criticism> does not apply to <placeholder religion>, therefore it's not really an argument against religion per se and i dismiss it entirely
Exhaustive, lawyer-proof arguments are fairly tedious. Obviously some generalizations and shortcuts are taken.
The "my imaginary deity" argument was (hopefully) meant as criticism regarding institutionalized denial of truth to uphold supernatural aspects and claims to power for various religions.
Creation mythologies don't just have a bonding function, they may also serve as a justification for monarchy or caste systems if some people are descended from/treated preferentially by some aspect of that creation. X's chosen people.
Of course religions did fulfill social roles, as glue for people who needed answers for things that could not be answered at the time. And maybe they still do to some extent to this day. But that shouldn't keep anyone from highlighting anachronistic aspects.
If it doesn't make any unverifiable claims about the supernatural, then by all means remove it from the "religions" category and add it to "philosophy".
Anyway, you are here: http://i.imgur.com/WNkmN.jpg