My question is, if you were born 3000 years ago, what would you be referencing for religious guidance?
I read the bible (in college) because I wanted to. I was raised Catholic, and have renounced the Catholic specific teachings. But, I have already asked myself what if God didn't exist, and the answer came back that God does exist. I feel bad for those who have not felt the power that the Holy Spirit gives. I feel bad for those who are still waiting for scientists to teach them about antimatter, when all you really need to know about that is in the bible.
Believing in the bible does not negate belief in scientific studies, no matter what Beliathon likes to say. It augments it.
There are many ways to be spiritual without subscribing to a specific religion. You can experience it yourself by training and disciplining your mind with an art or meditation, or with psychedelics to get into that state of consciousness, or reference the words of someone else that has claimed to have been there.
Catholocism seems to come with a fee. You need to pay for it. Like a business selling a service. A giant multi-billion dollar business, that requires subscribership. Countless people unnaturally abstaining from sexual encounters that end up molesting little kids. Something doesn't add up there. If this is one of the symptoms of a particular belief system, then it has failed. It's no good to have a system where people see god, and appointed members whose desires are obscure and morals are lacking. I'm not saying every Catholic is like this, but there is a pretty common theme of molestation, to the point that it's not an outlier.
I'm not religious but one religion I am fond of is Buddhism. There is no fee to join. There is no god to pray to or be judged by. There is no salesman requiring subscribers. Instead of preaching it has meditation. You end up with a society that is pretty healthy, peaceful, kind, and tolerant of other points of view.
I think religion as a whole is interesting. It's interesting to see how it came to be, and how it changed the world and used ignorance and fear to accomplish order. But I don't think it's something that is to be taken seriously. All of them are great stories, great reads, and very poetic...something to be appreciated by those who enjoy, but not to be forced on those who don't.
It's the ignorance and fear thing. As long as science or something else can keep people in ignorance of the fact that they have no true control over their lives, and that the free will that people have is only an illusion of free will, then there will be no fear. All will be comfy-cozy until disaster overtakes us all. Of course, what's the dif? We don't have any control over protecting ourselves from disaster anyway, do we?