But lately religion has been a mess you know, most people use religion for their own selfish interest....life with religion is something else, Life without it we wouldn't have been at this stage of life.
Of course we wouldn't. But we cannot say we would be more primitive. It would be different - better in some way and worse in some other, but impossible to evaluate as a whole, because there are so many variables in a such a long time. But IMHO it would be better, because of middle ages and christian negative influence to education.
I consider myself lucky because I believe in God. I received my religious belief from home later I went to church to complete my religious education. I am Catholic and I respect all religions because they are based on one God, I can be friendly and share my beliefs with them without fanaticism.
The sad thing in my opinion are people who do not believe in God, it is difficult for them to make them understand that God exists.
There are things that happen on earth and in the universe that still have no explanation and come from God.
If someone is an atheist please believe in God because he exists, he manifests himself in many ways, you know that he is with you especially when you suffer from any disease and you leave them in his hands.
I describe it this way because once I got sick I didn't have many financial resources, just a treatment I felt very sick and I said to myself if I don't heal with this I don't know what I'm going to do, and I asked God a lot for my health and I felt the healing hand of his son Jesus.
My testimony may sound unreal but I felt my healing that way, perhaps it was the power of my faith, but I felt the presence of Jesus one night when I asked him to heal me.
It is often possible to see so many contradictories in catholic statements. In one hand you are trying to convince us you are not fanatic and you respect other religions. But in other hand you consider existence of people who do not believe to your god as sad and you are trying to persuade them for your own religion (without any rational arguments, of course). As an atheist, I do not consider this behaviour as a respectful, not even tolerant. It is just one step to force people to one right religion.
I come from catholic family and christianity is strongly engrained in society in my country - I know christians very well. They tell you there are things with no explanation, but they didn't forget to mention that they (of course) know how to explain that things. They consider others as inferior stupid wretches and manifest themselves as superior people, predestined by their god to enlighten others. And call this as respect for other opinion.
IMHO religions that consider as a holy duty to spread around the world are fanatic somehow... by design, it is coming from their essence. But it is not surprising - all this come from ancient history when religions started to be used as a tool for spreading political power (often by using violence).