[Skybird]

You said "According to religion God created the universe." And that statement is a generalization that is wrong because it implies that every religion is theistic and has a creator/deity in its focus. You also wrote God with a capital G, that turns the word from a term like "god" (a category) into a name like the Christian "God".

One can be atheistic - and nevertheless feel religious, or spiritual. Religion is not an exclusive all-theism affair.

What they all seem to have in common is some kind of rituality and a trend for becoming policy- and material power-driven institutions wiht priests and cults and so forth. Thats why I am usually turned away by all of them, including theistic and atheistic alike. I am no friend of this ceremonial stuff, it tends to lure peopel awaya form what realy counts, making the symbol ursurping the relevance of what it only was meant to point at. And the abuse of rituals by hierarchies of priests to serve their own political, material, institutional interests, is obvious. Even in most forms of Buddhism (which knows no god/s and deities originally), this deformation can be seen. Thats why I tend to insist on keeping religions, all of them, on very, ry, very short lines. Lend them just a hand in good faith, and they eat you up alive, all of you.