I understand why people believe in religion.

People need comfort when life is difficult and when reality seems unbearable. People follow whatever beliefs have been drilled into their heads since they were babies. People need to believe that their existence is special and intentional. People need a way to make sense of a world that is oftentimes confusing. People crave structure and guidelines for how to live their lives.

But most of all, people are terrified of death. They cannot handle the thought that there is nothing beyond this life and that the moment after they take their last breath they become nothing more than a memory, destined to fade.

This all makes sense and explains why people believe in supernatural deities. This does not change the fact that — in my eyes at least — all religious people are slightly insane. I don’t discriminate — Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Rastafarians, Mormons — they’re all ridiculous.

How can you believe that you are right while all the billions of other people on this planet are wrong? How can you believe that some entity created the entire universe, but still manages to care whether you eat shellfish on Fridays or like having a penis in your butt?

How can you believe in the integrity and accuracy of your religious texts when:

— Most began as word-of-mouth stories that were passed around for decades until someone decided to write them down.

— Some were written decades or centuries after the events actually occurred.

— They have been rewritten, translated, and rewritten hundreds of times over hundreds of years.

— They were rewritten and translated by historically corrupt and violent institutions like the Catholic Church, or by various despotic rulers.

— Every single one of them is packed full of blatantly contradictory statements or rules.

How can you believe that God is perfect and compassionate, yet also omnipotent? Epicurus posited the idea that, if God is all good, then he is not all-powerful, and if God is all-powerful, then he cannot be all good. Because why would an all-powerful yet all loving god allow his creations to suffer through unspeakable tragedies?

And I’m not talking about something like getting cancer or losing a loved one in a car accident.

I’m talking about the kind of suffering that most people cannot begin to fathom. The kind of suffering where a six-year-old Cambodian girl is sold into sex slavery by her starving family; who has her hymen resewn after each rape so that she can continue to be marketed as a virgin to the middle-aged men who pay for her; who is beaten to death by one of these men before she reaches her seventh birthday.

Try to twist that — something that happens to thousands of girls every single day — into one of the classic “God has a reason for everything” explanations that religious people are so fond of using. And please don’t try to blame an evil entity for all the bad in the world, because it just goes back to the original point. If your god is so powerful and loving, why would he allow evil to exist? To teach us a lesson? So we can have free will? Give me a break.

The worst part is, is that any sort of questioning of people’s beliefs always leads me to the same answer: just have faith.

Well, I’m sorry, but “having faith” does nothing more than provide you comfort in the midst of pain and prevent you from having to think critically about all the insane beliefs to which you ascribe. I’m not saying I won’t respect your right to believe whatever you want to believe, but please don’t shove your nonsense down my throat or try to control how I live because the floating man in the sky told you to.