[Baltar]

Humans are very intelligent -- just look at what we've accomplished in terms of scientific, technological and medical advances. Yet most of the world is still stuck with religions that are either hundreds or thousands of years old, written by people who thought that the sun revolved around the earth. When a physicist comes up with a more accurate formula to describe the universe, it eventually replaces the old one. For instance Newton's laws were the best thing we had until Einstein came up with something much more accurate. Imagine if nobody was allowed to question the validity of Newton's laws. We'd never have the theory of relativity!

It's technically understandable why religions stay the way they are. Scientific laws aren't written with a clause that says "thou shalt not question these laws and statements" or "those who question these laws and statements shall be put to death". Yet most religions were written exactly like that. So there's very little wiggle room for them to adapt to human advances (the Catholic Church for instance fought very hard against the idea that the earth revolves around the sun). I suppose if the religious texts were open to revision then the religions would lose some or most of their power, but personally I'd rather live a conscious life than one constrained by beliefs people had 2,000 years ago.

So why do people still cling to these religions? Is it simply conditioning, tradition, fear? Will we eventually see a fall of religion as we know it? I have nothing against spirituality, belief in higher power, etc. But these are all possible without all the negatives that come with today's mainstream religions.