Religion is not the best strategy to achieve worthwhile human goals

I think you are missing my point. Its rather simple if you think about it. Imagine I had a company that wanted to maximize revenue. Not make a lot of revenue but actually maximizing it, thus selecting a strategy that provides revenue x such that any other possible strategy will produce revenue <= x. (I say <= because there can be many best strategies) So in order to find this strategy one would have to honestly, truthfully study how to maximize profit. To do that he would use the best tools he can to study the truth about how to maximize profit. Agree so far ? Now if some incorrect assertion was made, hence an assumption that Z is a step that a best strategy must make, then it would be impossible that any strategy based on assumption Z would work to maximize profit. This is by definition because the assumption was wrong. Still it may be possible to find a good strategy by making erroneous assumptions, but not the best as required. BTW -- the more wrong assumptions one would make the less the revenue would be, but that's beside the point. Hence a strategy to really maximize profit must be perfect, thus it can contain no errors, no false assumptions, it must have perfectly studied all the factors without making any errors. I argue that it works the same way when you look at one's well being. Want to maximize it ? That would require perfect understanding of it and all that effects it, no false assumptions can be made. Only an honest study of the truth will do. Where ever this study will lead, that's fine by me. If it leads to religion, then that's fine. Now regarding my point about religion. Religion makes huge assumptions which are not based on concrete evidence. From specific claims like a virgin birth or a talking burning bush or a profit riding a flying horse and ripping the moon in half, to more general claims like god has a plan for us, god wants us to do this or that ... Making such claims about the universe requires extraordinary evidence, which does not exist. Can anyone really claim that religion is the best methodology we have to study the truth ? Can religion really make accurate predictions ? How can one honestly know that he is maximizing his well being without religion offering any means by which this can be measured ? Notice that I am not claiming that I have some dogma that would maximize your well being, or that I know how to measure well being. All I am saying is that to achieve it humanity must dedicate itself to the study of truth, not to blindly follow extraordinary claims that are not based on any solid evidence. Why not ? Because they are not the result of honestly seeking the truth. ----- If seeking the truth is your business then skepticism should be your best friend not faith. ----- Faith is actually a deadly enemy of truth because it makes assumptions it can't possibly prove. Having said all that, the only case in which faith based belief can be claimed to be the best strategy there is, is after an honest study of the truth reveals that it is ! Now regarding the tools we can use. This is a philosophical debate, I am not talking about specific technologies we have today like MRI, CT and such. I am talking about something abstract --- the truth. And the tools we can use are also abstract, they are methodologies. Right now the best methodology is the scientific methodology. "So you are making the assumption that every single person who is religious is lying to themselves when they claim to find this. I can think of many different religious people who reached such a state of self-actualization through religious activities." I am saying that they lie to themselves if they claim that they have all the necessary information (which is basically all the information in the universe) to make the claim that they have found the best strategy. I am not proving an alternative dogma -- I am just saying -- study the truth. Now to make all this a bit more down to earth and less philosophical, I don't know if we can ever really maximize our well being or not, since we may not ever be able to know all that is true about the universe, but we can strive to do so, and I think its safe to assume the following formula holds: lim[z->W](h(z))=h_opt Where W is all the knowledge in the world, h(z) is the value of our well being when using the knowledge z to construct the best strategy and h_opt is the maximal possible value of one's well being So the more we know, the happier we can be (if we choose to apply our knowledge for that purpose) As faith is an obstacle in the study of truth, it is also an obstacle for maximizing well being.