Originally was afraid to come in here; thought it was about Aliens....
I've been brought up in Ireland since I was four, so religion is pushed in your face while you're young and in school. I don't believe as such. I'd be more or less agnostic to be honest.
I'm not saying that I need science to prove an existence for me to believe, but with all the information to hand I cannot blindly follow something that I do not know to exist.
I actually had a discussion in work one day with my colleagues and we did all come to a conclusion though, if something was to happen; say you or a family member ended up in a bad car accident. Would you "pray to god" (not literally) that everything would be ok? Most of us would believe that everything will be ok and we or our family members would recover. But would you reckon it was some divine intervention that saved you/or your family member? Was it the doctors intervention with important medication (maybe gods work again?)?
Someone of religious values would put a recovery like this down to gods will/power. (Just my opinion)
I would be fully willing to believe; should I be given a reason to believe. I cannot trust an ancient book. Especially a book that has been rewritten for several different beliefs and been manipulated in so many different ways.
How can one belief be different to another? If there really was a god, would he really be preaching a different set of beliefs (maybe not core beliefs) to different people? Take the heaven and hell idea for a moment (I don't know much about other beliefs other than what I was thought when younger), are we cast in to damnation but not together, we are separated even after death? Are we allowed to rejoice together behind the pearly gates or again are we segregated based on beliefs?
One thing is for certain, we live and we die. What happens after that, nobody can say. Whether we get reincarnated as a butterfly, or our life just starts afresh as someone else, who cares. Enjoy your life, for all we know, life just ends and that's it.
Maybe we roam the planet as a spirit, maybe we get reincarnated or maybe we do have an afterlife. All I know is that people are free to choose what they believe.
We have evolved as a species over time and certain things are viewed as immoral/inhumane such as the killing of another person. We all agree with this. Yet some beliefs will advocate the very thing we all think is wrong.
At the end of the day, I will live my life how I see fit. I will not let myself be dictated by a "higher power" that may or may not exist. Religion is pretty much a game or roulette, you win or you lose.
However, I will not tell someone what they believe in is wrong. I commend anyone who holds any belief of any kind for having the ability to be able to believe like they do without questioning their beliefs.
In conclusion, I guess some things are best left unanswered. That's our main problem though, we as a species need to prove or have a logical answer/solution for everything which I think has lead to so many people losing beliefs that maybe their family still/or has held in the past.