I've lived in Germany and England for many years and the reason Europe is so far ahead of the USA and most of the rest of the world is because they are so far ahead in education and have governments that are sane as opposed to our currently insane government.
A test of American college graduates with a Bachelor's Degree or equivalent was undertaken and they were all given the French high school exit exams. 70% of American college grads FLUNKED it, meaning an American college education isn't worth a French High School diploma!
And when you get to the Southern USA or the Bible Belt the education is so pathetic it's scarcely worth calling an education. Parents esp. in these areas remove children from public schools [that admittedly suck] and homeschool them or put them in the Christian equivalent of Madrassas, those private church schools where science isn't taught at all and religious indoctrination is given the highest importance. And during the Summer you can attend a Jesus Camp or something like to reinforce what you get at home, in school and in church.
As a child in Louisiana I was forced to attend, on average six religious meetings a week at this ultra fundamentalist church consisting mostly of old people and I hated them. Once I ran away from a night service and ran [age 5] six miles into a rural swampy area near Shreveport, Louisiana where the cops finally found me.
My parents were all sweet and crying and boohooing "Oh, thank God, you found him." but once back at home I got it, but not as bad as my friend who was caught shoplifting [his parents attended the same church". I witnessed in horror as this Snicker bar thief [age 6 or 7] was given his just desserts by an angry mother. His hand was placed over an open flame on a gas stove and roasted. I still remember the smell of burnt flesh and the sound of his screams and his mother saying "You think this is bad, wait until Satan gets you in the lake of fire."
God and religion are separate. There may be a God, but it's clear that religion is a man-made system of lies, nonsense, cruelty, insane laws, horrid attitudes towards sex and the body and ridiculous notions of our origins and purpose of existence, if any.
We'll never know peace and true justice and happiness on this world until religion goes the way of the Dinosaurs into total extinction.
I'm now a pantheist. To me, my higher power is Nature, the MIND, the totality of all things, so God and Nature are the same thing. I have no rituals, need no prayers [they won't be heard anyway], and need nothing, having everything I'll ever need right inside me from the get go, innate.
The God who sits on a throne judging sinners, rewarding the righteous [interpret that as butt kissing sycophants] and punishing the wicked [interpret that as persons who can think for themselves] is repugnant.
I like Jesus and Buddha and Lao Tzu and some of their better ideas. But never will I worship them or hold their ideas any higher than Socrates, Shakespeare, Blake, Plato or any other philosopher or writer of renown.
Like the Deists, to me God needs no revelations, no prophets, no books, no scriptures, and no middlemen--clergy, imams, rabbis to interpret for him. Nature, existence is the revelation, there is no other. And the revelation is God revealing himself, not stupid laws.
Any law that can be broken is not of God, it, even if good and logical like traffic laws designed to promote safe traffic flow, is of man.
Like Nietzsche and Bakunin, I despise the idea that all good resides in God, because by implication that means all evil resides in man, there is no good in us.
Lies, all lies!
At least Swami Vivekananda was on the right track
"You have faith in God? Good. To have faith in yourself is better."
"To call us sinners is a standing libel on the human race."
Do you want something to replace religion, which would improve our education system, our governments, our cultures, our laws? Try SCIENCE for a change.
For all its faults and imperfections, it beats the hell out of religion any day.