So to answer your question: No, it's the people's fault.
Of course it's our fault, WE CREATED the word "religion,"
we gave it life(metaphorically speaking <_<) by defining it. Why is that so hard to grasp?
Youtube George Carlin's "Sanctaty of life," and don't let te fact that he's a comedian or that he's doing a stand up deminish the substance of his work.
Here is a great excerpt and I wish some of you would read it and give some opinions after analyzing it.
"The Bible is filled with superstitious beliefs that modern people rightly reject. It describes a world where a snake and a donkey communicated with human beings in a human language, where people could reach upward of 900 years old, where a woman instantaneously transformed into a pillar of salt, where a pillar of fire could lead people by night, and where the sun stopped moving across the sky or could even back up. In this imaginary world an ax head could float on water, a star could point down to a specific home, people could instantly speak in unlearned foreign languages, and one's shadow or handkerchief could heal people. It is a world where a flood can cover the whole earth, and a man can walk on water, calm a stormy sea, change water into wine, or be swallowed by a "great fish" and live to tell about it. This world is populated by demons that can wreak havoc on Earth and make people very sick. It is a world of idol worship, where human and animal sacrifices please God. Visions, inspired dreams, prophetic utterances, miracle workers, magicians, diviners, and sorcerers also populate this world. It is a world where God lived in the sky (Heaven), and the dead "lived" on in the dark recesses of the Earth (Sheol).
This is a strange world when compared to our world, but Christians believe that this world was real in the past. My contention is not that ancient people were stupid, but that they were very superstitious. As Christopher Hitchens puts it: "One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge."[18]
One can perform scientific tests for what I consider superstitious beliefs. One can compare what a meteorologist says about the weather with what someone who plans to do a rain dance says about it, and then test to see who's right more often. Testing and comparing results is science. The results of reason and science have jettisoned a great many superstitions. One can also test the superstitious practice of blood-letting, exorcisms, people who claim to predict things based on palm reading or tea leaves, and the effects of walking under a ladder, breaking a mirror, or stepping on a sidewalk crack. One can also test the efficacy of a shot of penicillin in providing recovery from sickness against the efficacy of prayer alone among those who refuse medicine for religious reasons. And we modern people are indebted to science for the advances in quality of life brought about by modern medicine. Science is what makes us different from ancient people.
Voltaire said: "Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives, and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of their time."[19] The Bible describes so many prevalent superstitious beliefs within Gentile nations that there is little doubt that superstition reigned during biblical times. Moreover, these beliefs were so prevalent that the Bible even portrays God's "chosen people" regularly participating in foreign religious rituals and worshipping other nations' gods and goddesses. Evidently, then, the beliefs of the Israelites themselves—and later their Christian successors—were collectively forged within a highly superstitious cultural mindset.
In the modern world we no longer believe in a god of the sun, the moon, the harvest, fertility, rain, or the sea. We don't see omens in an eclipse, a flood, a storm, a snakebite, or a drought. This falling away is due to our better understanding of nature than that of our ancestors, made possible only by the advance of science. Thoughtful, educated people today do not see sickness as the result of possession by demons, nor do we believe that astrology can provide us with insight into the future. We do not think that we are physically any closer to God whether we're up on a mountaintop or down in a valley. But the citizens of ancient nations nearly universally believed such things. While it is conceivable that ancient Jews and Christians where unlike all of their neighbors and formed their beliefs on the basis of the evidence available to them, it is not very likely.'
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/john_loftus/christianity.html#bib1
