Accidents do happen

Anyone who has read any of my blogs has probably guessed by now that I don't just believe things without evidence. This goes for religion as well. Anyone who is religious simply has to have some faith in veritable litany of obfuscations and acquiesce to truths that have absolutely no counterpart in real life. Much less evidence.
It is by accident that anyone is born into a family and thereby into its religion. This has nothing to do with religious belief. There are no Christ genes, or Allah genes, or Buddha genes. It is accidental that one is raised a Christian, one a Jew, one a Muslim, one a Buddhist. A culture surrounds that family and gives structure and support to those who grow up in that family and that culture.
Religions are inculcated alongside the surrounding culture. Acquiring that religion is an accident of birth. It is as accidental as having educated parents, or rich ones or poor ones or handsome ones .
Religion requires belief in things unseen, unheard, and unable to be tested or disproved.
The world is and has been plagued by people who do not believe in accidents of birth. People who somehow believe that they have the rights to impose their religious beliefs on others regardless of the others' cultural community. They believe something is true on faith and faith alone without looking for and demanding one iota of logical substantiation in the surrounding world.
So I say to the religious of the world, regardless of what you believe - or need to believe or think you might believe about your God or Creator or Master of the Universe -
Keep it in your mind. Keep it in your heart. Let it give you great peace and comfort. Be aware that for most of you these beliefs are an accident of birth. Don't expect others, even your neighbors to believe what you do without question. Don't expect others to even understand what it is you believe.
Without a church or synagogue or mosque or temple, what would you believe?
These institutions and sects thereof do not unify their religion, they divide it. They seek to solidify and seal a set of unique beliefs amongst its members that its members would never in a million years come up with themselves just by believing in a higher being.
Being a member of an established religious group is not the act of most critical, thinking people, it is keeping the bathwater with the baby. It is buying into the culture of acceptance for simply belonging to the Faith.
How would you be thinking today about religion, if your parents were Jewish not Muslim or Buddhist not Christian. Your religious beliefs - just an accident.