You do not know what they believe or the sincerity of their beliefs
The thing is that there are many religions still being practiced around the world. Not everyone worships just one god, from Shinto to Hindu. And who are we to posture as if we know what is in their minds and the sincerity of their beliefs?
IMO you appear to be attempting to casually dismiss my examples of billions who do have beliefs that do not fall with your expectations or description.
In the Conspiraturd âreligionâ Saturn has a huge role.
Iâm sorry you feel that way. Actually, I took my view from your link. Hereâs the text:
âThe degree of religiosity among the churchâs denizens, however, is a matter of debate. âI donât believe anyone believes in a one-eyed man who is riding about on a horse with eight feet,â Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson, a high priest of the Norse god religious church, Asatruarfelagio, [told] Reuters. âWe see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology.ââ
But youâre right, who am I to decide what they believe? The fact is, I donât believe those gods exist.
There is a book called âI Know That Life is Meaningless: How I Was Finally Able To Copeâ by Morrie Bantter on Kindle. It shows (completely) how simple and obvious atheism really is. He describes how everything is determined by one simple law of motion. It is indisputable. He also describes how perverse and disturbing religion and religious thought actually is. Below is the synopsis of the book. I think this book will promote atheism significantly.
Synopsis:
Where are the help books for people who know that life is meaningless? I donât mean that they believe that life is meaningless. I mean that they KNOW it is. Where is the person who says that you have to accept the meaninglessness of it all? I had to accept it, or I wouldnât survive. Other than death, I really had no choice. The despair I felt over a 10-year period damn near killed me.
When the Big Bang occurred, particles were sent out. We know from the laws of motion that a particle will stay on the same trajectory until acted upon by another force. This means that a particle canât turn unless it is acted upon. A baseball canât just reverse course in midflight all by itself.
I obsessed about this. I knew that the answer to everything was in this most basic dynamic. If this particle hits another particle and that particle hits another, and all these particles came from the initial blast of the Big Bang, and they also have to follow the laws of motion, then doesnât that mean that the universe had to of rolled out exactly as it did, at the very moment of this initial blast. It was set right then. This has to be correct. This IS how it is. There is no other ârealâ possibility.
Once you come to this realization how can you think about anything else. It consumes you. I knew that everything was predestined. Naturally, my thoughts turned to thought. Actual thought. Thought is made up of the same particles and waves as everything else in the universe, so, of course, it is going to follow the same laws. Our very thoughts â these simple manifestations of the laws of motion â had to have been predetermined at the very moment of the Big Bang. They are going to occur as they do whether we like it or not.
When I was thinking on this, the most amazing moment of my life occurred. I was thinking about how at the Big Bang one particle hit another particle, which then started a chain reaction that worked its way through time and space and finally culminated in this exact moment of time in my mind that I became aware of it. I was aware of the path that caused this thought. I was directly connected to the Big Bang. Talk about your revelations. I had broken down the entire universe, to the particle. I donât know what euphoria feels like, but the feeling I felt had to qualify.
Not long after this, my life turned to shit.
Once you initially break all of this down in your mind, down to this single fundamental law, the whole thing becomes incredibly simple; laughably simple. 1+1=2. You have no ârealâ control over anything. You have no ârealâ consciousness. It is all just the motion of particles and there isnât a damn thing you can do about it.
What do you think this does to a person? I can tell you what it did to me. It destroyed me. It utterly destroyed me. There was nothing I could do about this. I KNEW it was true. I absolutely knew.
How was I going to cope with this? I canât lie to myself. I knew that this was the way it is. It was a certainty. I would have given my life for one ârealâ thought.
Thus began a 10-year odyssey of psychiatrists, medication and uncontrollable despair.
Finally, I recovered. My recovery had nothing to do with the psychiatrists or the medication (Iâm completely off them). My recovery had to do with one simple concept: acceptance. I had to accept the meaninglessness of it all. If I wanted to continue living, I really had no choice. I thought that it would be devastating for me to do this, but the opposite turned out to be true. I got my life back.
For what it is worth; that is a feature of 19th century physics. There are many modern physics frameworks that do no have this âfeatureâ.
For myself - I give my life meaning.
This bundle of âbouncing particlesâ is very happy and has purpose.
I enjoy the concept of predeterminism, thank you @nedwreath for that one.
I am also compelled by quantum indeterminacy to question the concept of predeterminism. 
But even without predeterminism, our universeâs constant motion is a simple catalyst for everything that exists.
Hello again Nyarl, nice to see youâre still kicking. 
nedwreath:
I believe it only needs the undetermined math that will ultimately further prove the determinism.[/quote]
Twenty years ago when I told people that determinism has been dead for 40 years, it was common for them not to believe me; and I can understand why someone would be skeptical.
Nowadays you can buy commercial hardware that exploits these ideas. So there isnât much else to be said.
Itâs been hammered into my brain that the Old Testament mustnât be taken literally, and this is why. For example, your post details how genders are determined during conception. Now many denominations of Christianity claim that the story of Adam and Eve is figurative, not literal. In fact, as evidence of evolution is provided, the Catholic Church is beginning to accept it as a possibility. Itâs similar to evolution, the way Christianity constantly âadaptsâ to scientific evidence and proof.
Yes, figurative in the patriarchal respect because god is a male and women are after-thoughts. Horrible concept.