Truth Of Religion

I've spent a substantial fraction of the last twenty years reading history, and in particular, the history of religion, and specifically Christianity.

At it's heart, religion must make a claim that it explains important aspects of how existence functions. Over this time I've noticed some things. Over *all* of recorded history there have been religions that have governed each of these societies. Yet these religions (thousands?) bear only a tangential relationship to each other. And yet each person has believed that their religion is correct and all others are false. This tends to indicate that humans are terrible judges of the correctness of religion. It also tends to indicate that humans have a deep desire for the all encompassing surety of religion. This also leads me to conclude that humans tend to not have the ability to judge the correctness of religion. They want it so badly that they don't want to look to closely to see if it's true.

One of the aspects of religion that waves a red flag for me is that there is no way to determine if a doctrine is false. There is no corrective procedure. This aspect indicates to me that it is ripe for misuse. You could be advocating horrible things with doctrine and I would have no way to combat this. Science, in contrast, does much better at explaining the nature of the world. And it has a corrective procedure. You are allowed (encouraged!) to challenge every aspect. For me this is the only healthy way to proceed.

I think I know why humans want religion (the universe is a terrifying place), but I see no evidence that it is true.