[Xaong]

And they still exist today. If I travel to the inner provinces in my country, I can see hundreds of people gathering around local "healers" and "holy men", who take them in for their money, and with the power of autosuggestion they manipulate their followers in believing they actually hold some sort of mystical key missing in the common people.

I can understand, but do you really think that only the (not all) religious people try to manipulate the other ones? Are all those people who are manipulated by the celebrities fashions, the medias, blabla better? The problems linked to atheism are quite recent in comparison with some related to religion, I give you that, but that isn't an excuse. Most of the young people in a lot of western european countries are atheistic, and little by little they will become the majority, if they aren't already. Some of them are violent and extremist. What the world will become if someday those dangerous people go in a crusade to "purify" the world from the religious?

And don't even get me started on the Catholic church and the temple to hypocrisy that is the Vatican.

Maybe true, but then again, we live in hypocritical societies and thinking that a person has a full control on its own mind is hypocritical.

Yes, people are stupid, and many people get stupider when they get older but my point is that religion as an institution has always existed as a means of power. There's no hidden purpose behind it.

Stupid people are everywhere ya know. And if religion is a means of power, the societies in which we live in is the same. Each people is influenced by many things, persons, insitutions, and all those things out of religion are not all good.

I can't help but wince when I read paper from atheists who act as complete idiot just to prove that they are free to do what they want in comparison with a religious person

There's nothing wrong with people believing in magical beings--the problem I have is with those taking advantage of the others' beliefs. Which is what religion has always been.

And there's nothing wrong with people who believe in nothing or other things, but yet a lot of people and insitutions take advantage of those people too. No need for a religion to take advantage of people. There are a lot of people/institutions who take advantage of the stupid people among the atheists' and from time to time use the concept of religion as if it was the root of evil by generalizing.

As I read you, I feel you see the persons who believe in a religion as crazy, not free and close minded. You know my grandmother is catholic and never did something wrong to anyone. She was a good mother, and a good grandmother with us even if we don't share the same fervour to the religion. And don't tell me she is a rarity, many atheists are close minded and can't even see that a lot of religious person are nice and not some sort of dangerous missionaries