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If there's one thing that made me jealous of those who follow a religion, it was this: faith in tomorrow.

If there's one thing coming of age an atheist taught me, was tomorrow was anything but guaranteed.

Through experience alone, I learned of religion to be a sham. A means for goading people into a place that ran mental heuristics designed for its followers to absolve themselves of any guilt.

Guilt, you say?

Yes, guilt. 

Guilt over whatever bullshit they aired to others over the previous week.

Guilt over whatever sins they may have committed against their own doctrine of faith.

Faith.

Speaking contextually my encounters of the faithful, I have found faith to be a justification for one's actions far more than I have found it to be a means back to oneself as a non-zero component in their problems.

Faith just seemed like an excuse for letting one's ego flail about, with the excuse that it is kept in check on Sundays for an hour.

When you make a leap of faith, you choose the person you are going to be rather than letting the others choose for you.

But when you make a leap of faith in choosing to believe something someone told you, you're not taking a leap of faith. You're still being told what to believe. You're still letting others shape you.

Religion has its place as it is the most effective means for driving us to make individual moral progress.

Morality has always been a tool used by the strong to assuage the weak into a particular way of thinking.

So if the point of religion is to organize oneself around a particular way of life.

Ought we not recognize the ways in which we are being influenced by the particular way of thought we have chosen?

If faith lets us choose the type of person we will become and we choose to have faith in anything other than ourselves, what type of person do we become?

Guess we'll find out tomorrow.