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Originally Posted by shrubbery
Religion is basicly the result of a human need to find causal connections and not willing to accept that we can't explain everything.
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What you defined above was desperation, not religion. Religion is an exercise of faith, and it isn't something proven to anyone else. Faith is fundamentally a relationship between you and your God. A religion is a community of faith, but again the orientation of each person is primarily towards God, not each other. And when you say that religion is "not willing to accept that we can't explain everything", I think you give religion way too much credit. Religion isn't an objective, discrete object that provides all answers to all questions. It's a path people take to see a different kind of scenery in life to understand life. It's isn't opposed to science fundamentally. And at its best, religion is a graceful thing that uncovers a great deal of beauty in life for those who look for it. Beauty isn't taught or proven.
The generality quoted about education and religion can be very misleading. For instance, there is no link established that says more education CAUSES less religious belief -- it is a connection that isn't explained, only pointed out. I think shrubbery and others may wish to infer that smarter people educate themselves out of a belief in God, but I see it very differently. I think that simple hubris is a great problem with highly educated people in many aspects of their lives, not just in spiritual matters. And while I agree with you that people are driven to answer fundamental questions in their lives, I disagree with your characterization of religion as an empty vessel for despondent people.
Faith is a tremendous thing. I hesitate to make a generalization of my own, but I know very few younger people (e.g., in their teens and twenties) whose faith serves them well (or at all). As with education, the more you invest yourself into faith, the more potential you see in it for enriching your life. I think faith is something unearthed in a person over time, and I think that the more one loves other people, the more that person discovers that there are selfless and beautiful aspects of human nature and experience that couldn't be less scientific, like love! Fatherhood unearthed faith in myself, and though I had a thousand doubts about the "validity" of the faith community I was raised in, loving my children was trancendental to me. My faith today is seeing God in nearly everything that surrounds me, in ways I never imagined twenty years ago.
Knowledge has it's place, and intelect is a fair challenge for religious belief. Neither one ever trumps the other, though. I think that faith and education both share the quality of wanting to discover the ultimate questions of our lives. Sadly, though, people begin to assign validity only to what they see. If I had to choose between all of my education and the loves of my life, I would choose love in a heartbeat. I can't prove my children love me, but I know it with all I am. Is that faith, that truth, somehow less valid because it isn't taught or proven scientifically? Of course not!
Education is an endeavour that is incredibly goal-oriented, and so are our Western, wealthier cultures in general. We tend to project that structure of work/reward onto more parts of our lives, and I think that's why religion and education bump heads as they do. As I understand faith, it's not goal-oriented at all. Faith-wise, I don't believe there is a bottom line that God looks to in our hearts. The poster of this thread describes him/herself as a person who doesn't harm others, and I think that's where most people start in their faith, with a realization that they are good, and a wonder if that's all that matters. For some it is, and for some it's not -- faith becomes an invitation to do more good and see more beauty in the world around them.