My loss of faith

This year I completely lost my faith. It's not because of the job loss or anything else, but because of a realization. This realization is quite strong but has a lot of logic in it:

Anything we believe in, unless it has a proof or justification of existence in the real world, is just in our heads. Therefore, we can (and should) choose what to believe in. If you believe that something exists but have no proof for it yet, it becomes an opinion and opinions are definitely in our heads.

Religion exists, belief exists, but does god exist? Does any deity exist? It's a matter of belief or opinion. As a matter of fact, religious leaders use this uncertainty to maintain power over those who believe in the existence of god. Had believers known if got exists, they would immediately stop serving their priests and start addressing god directly - which would certainly cause a sharp decline in social status of those who claim to be the messengers of god.

The religious establishments (of all monotheistic religions) are calling any sort of intervention or deeper understanding of what they call "creation" a bad thing. They say evolution is a religion instead of what it really is, a proven scientific theory. They say that family planning is bad. Some even go as far as saying that genetically engineered crops, which feed billions of people around the world, are the devil's work. They actually said the same thing about rock n'roll.

However, when it comes to religion, I don't think that I heard a more outrageous story than the story of Avi Cohen's death.

Avi Cohen was one of Israel's greatest football players. He was the first Israeli player to play in Liverpool and he helped his team gain both the British and European titles. He was the head of the football players' association in Israel and a source of inspiration for almost every generation of Israeli players since the late 1970's.

In the middle of December 2010 he was involved in a traffic accident, which left him with a severe brain injury. About a week later it was established he was brain-dead, and won't recover. Avi Cohen had an organ donor card, but his family was promised by a group of ultraorthodox people that a miracle is about to happen, if they will just keep him on life support. He died naturally 8 hours later. Those so-called "religious" people prevented 4-6 certain miracles in exchange for one very uncertain miracle. And by doing so, deprived Avi Cohen's from fulfilling his wish to help others.

Even though it was Cohen's family's decision, I cannot blame them: they were hanging to any thread of hope for his recovery. However those so called "moral" and religious people provided them with what all doctors agree was a false hope - so instead of doing good, they did religious.

Religion had an important part in the development of culture and morality, but right now it seems more like a burden. It's like building a computer with diskette drive in the age of USB memory drives and full broadband Internet coverage - it simply holds us back. Faith is just an opinion, a state of mind - not knowledge. Religion is not morality. It is time for the people to grow up and do things because they are the right things to do, not because someone told them that some deity said so.