Christianity came at me first.

I killed it in self defense.

Nah.

Harmful to what exactly?

Yo you know I can't reinforce that part right? Unless you were joking. Then carry on I suppose.

I'm aware of two broad theories about how this happens, although I'm sure there are way more that I don't know about. The first one is that religiosity is a group-selected trait. The basic idea is that traits which are disadvantageous at an individual level are selected for because groups which have them can outcompete groups which aren't; to use a sports example, being willing to sacrifice oneself for the good of the team hurts you in the intra-team competition (competing for starting jobs, individual recognition, etc.), but a team of self-sacrificing individuals may be able to beat a team of more talented prima donnas. By increasing group cohesion and increasing members' willingness to sacrifice their own interests for the sake of the group, religiosity enables religious groups to win out in inter-group competition.

The second theory I know about explains religion in terms of memes; not internet memes, but in the sense that Richard Dawkins originally coined the term. Memes are any unit of culture that can be copied: A book, a joke, a dance, a style of architecture or art, a quote from a movie, etc. The idea here is that just like genes, memes compete with each other to be reproduced the most. The ones that win out are the ones with traits that are the most adaptive. Then, it's argued that religion has a lot of these traits: For instance, in many religions there is an idea of faith, or belief without evidence (or, in spite of contrary evidence). This discourages believers from encountering evidence that might disprove the belief, so memes which have this trait were more likely to be reproduced than those that don't. So in this picture, religion evolves not for our own benefit, but its own (As Dennett says, "It exists in order to exist.").

Not really sure which if any of these two pictures I buy into, as both involve extremely controversial assumptions. Group selection as an explanation for basically anything is not widely accepted by most evolutionary biologists, while memes aren't doing that much better. On top of that, the debate is highly politicized. Those favoring the meme-based explanation like Dawkins and Dennett often are or are affiliated with the New Atheist movement, according to which the net effect of religious belief is mostly negative, so they want an explanation of the evolution of religion that is not in terms of it benefitting us. On the other hand, many proponents of the group-selection view (David Sloan Wilson, Jonathan Haidt) get funding through the Templeton Foundation, which is not a corrupt organization or anything but does have a broad agenda of increasing harmony between science and religion.

Well that's a load of bullshit. China has 3 of the 5 most deadly conflicts in human history. Not to mention the millions to billions collectively killed by communist factions preaching the purging lf religion for the greater good.

Meh, atheism isn't that much different from theism. One side believes there's a god, the other side believes there isn't. None of have proof, neither does either way have any impact on how people live their lifes.

Why should I care? There is no god walking amongst men, demanding tribute, nor is its absence any more significant. People live their lifes and people can personally believe in whatever they want to as long as they don't intrude on other people's lifes.

I don't believe in them.

I mean have you read up on them?

Those stories can't be real.

Just no way.

Which makes it all the more laughable when they try to push God's law onto a secular government, but only the laws of God that they approve of, ie the ones that let them keep down gay people, women, etc. At least the other hypocrites keep their spiritual hypocrisy more separate from our earthly affairs.