Everyone Believes Their Religion is Special

Religion makes people feel unique and special. Reality have as a goal making you feel it is the only true one. This means no religion, including your own, is anything unique or special.

But wait, you might say, mine is Christianity. The Bible was written by God. He said we are to not worship any other gods but him. Then there was Jesus. He said he was God's guy and you need to talk to him about anything that comes along. He also promised that if you are sucked into his orbit you can sin and will be forgiven. 

We need to remember there were religions, like Hinduism, that are older than Christianity. That religion has literature and gurus going back to before those of Judaism. If being old makes Judaism and Christianity valid what about the age of Hinduism. I dare say every atheist sees both Christianity and Hinduism merely passing fancies in the ancient parade of religions. Nearly every Christian, and I suppose Hindu, see their religions as finally the true faith that should replace all others. 

I suppose there are many fears religious people face when they are confronted with the fact there is nothing important about their religion. We know Christians are taught they will be awarded an eternity in luxury if they will only buy in. There well may be fear this is not true. Yet again, they may reason, it doesn't hurt for me to believe this even if when the lights go out there is no luxury suite.

My guess is Christians never, or seldom, consider the opportunity cost of believing something that is not true. For example, what if all the hours they spend in church hearing the same things about the luxury suite that does not exist they were helping poor people or troubled people. Sitting in church listening to myths does nothing to help our society. Helping less fortunate people accomplishes at least something. 

In today's juiced up politics, there are Christians who think going to church is a political statement. There are both liberal and conservative denominations and individual churches. So, my question is, why not just go to a political meeting and skip the religious stuff? I realize the political meeting may not have one's old friends or the chicken casserole. 

A compromise would be to admit church is about meeting friends, chicken casserole and politics and not about truth in the unseen. Just admitting this would help put religion into its proper and unimportant place.