Religion is not the best strategy to achieve worthwhile human goals

Asking other people to come up with an alternative that somehow defeats a relative standing of "the best" is not YOU considering alternatives, and it's only arguable that such a statement even warrants the assertion that you could consider any alternative. But we'll see. "Would you not agree its a factor of our well being ?" Of course I am, but I was merely pointing out the irony. Your argument is that religion is not the best means to wellness due to it's irrationality and inability to be proved. However, you assert that the conscience, which often promotes values both from religion and values that have no real logical or rational basis, must be taken into consideration. Why should religion be discounted when something equally as vaporous in evidence or logic require consideration? "This doesn't mean you can't attain some wellness by other means, its just that you can't know that you have really tried to maximize it. For example if I tried out something on myself, and it didn't make me feel so good, but I lie to myself that it did, and so I conclude that it makes me feel good, then I would not be able to ever achieve my goal." Well... that's subjective. Are you really trying to assert that every single religious person is lying to themselves about what makes them feel better? I doubt that was your point, but it seems to be implied. Regardless, I'm not sure exactly where you are trying to go with this. If you're saying that religion only hinders the ability to maximize wellness, there isn't much evidence that agrees with you. There are numerous sources (common knowledge in health psychology, actually) that support the assertion that religious people on average not only seem to be happier than those without religion, but also healthier. Here's a few articles that cite specific cases: http://www.find-health-articles.com... http://www.find-health-articles.com... http://www.find-health-articles.com... I'm not exactly sure how you intend to prove that anything is "the best" (which would be the only way for you to disprove that religion is not, in fact, the best) way of maximizing wellness. Can you prove to any one person that they could, in fact, be better off than they are? In order to do that, you would have to have an in-depth look at their own personal histories, values, and even chemical differences in their brain. It seems to me that it would be impossible to prove that for any one person, religion couldn't be the ultimate method for achieving that person's own personal self-actualizing state. I suppose in order to continue this debate, you are going to have to give a concrete, solid definition of how any one person can know that they are at the maximum apogee of wellness. If we don't know what constitutes maximum wellness, then how would you intend to prove that religion can't be the best way of reaching it? What constitutes "the best tools" we can use in order to measure the degree of wellness a person is feeling? We can use a survey or statistics, but as I cited above (and what you can find in any well-defined Google search), religious people still have the edge there. We can use an MRI to measure pleasure centers, I suppose, but again, all that tells us is that a person is, in fact, feeling pleasure when engaged in religious activities, regardless of whether or not they understand why or how. In fact, it isn't a stretch to say that people who live a lie can certainly feel much better about themselves than those who study the truth. After all, we have little reason to lie except when it benefits us, and the idea that the conscience tortures everyone for every lie is unlikely, since we have all gotten away with a lie at some point in our lives and have had no second thoughts about it. In essence, the truthfulness of the existence a person choose to lead in no way affects their level or ability to become well. How is it logical to say that just because a person lies to themselves about religion in order to be happier isn't the happiest he or she can be? Do you have any sort of proof that reality is that much better than a fantasy someone can create? That goes against the definition of "fantasy." "It is only when one can truly claim (without lying) that he has completed his study and has full knowledge of the world and his own nature when he can honestly make that informed decision to start lying to himself and to discontinue the study of truth, since he already found the answer with pure certainty." 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. And think of it this way... we are human. Even if a person were to go to the effort of abandoning EVERYTHING in order to study their own ideas of happiness, there is no proof that anyone could actually consider EVERY aspect. After all, all we can do is trial and error in this field, whether that's done within religion or from a perfectly scientific stance. Whatever you were to find in your study has no real objective way of being measured against the methods a religious person would use in order to reach the same conclusion. "Note that I never said that religion is not a good strategy to achieve well being, I just said it is not the best." Unfortunately, then, this argument isn't likely to go anywhere, because "best" is quite relative in this area of debate. The only way you can actually "prove" anything is to find people who undergo a certain method of achieving wellness and you are able to prove that, on average, this group of people produces "more well" people than religion does. So far, even in this laughably absurd method of measurement, religion still beats non-religion, and that isn't surprising. The idea of immortality, someone all-powerful looking out for us, and being rewarded for being good in a tough world would obviously make someone happier overall, even if it's a lie, than someone who is scientifically able to deduce that cheesecake is the best, non-religious way of becoming well.