Religion - Fiction or Fact?

"Gravity will not stop existing if one stopped believing in it. However, Gods will stop existing if one stopped believing in them."

Imagine this: Every human living on this planet suddenly wakes up one day, with no knowledge of any religion, its rituals, temples, mosques, churches, books, songs, hymns, and almost everything that is related to religion in any way.

What do you think then happens to the innumerable Gods and their eternal truths about life, to the idea of hell and heaven, to the beliefs of social stratification systems, to the myriad number of rituals?

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the so dearly believed ideas of religion will stop existing from that moment onward. Why? Simple, because they are beliefs and they exist only if people believe in them. 

To understand this, take for example, gravity. It exists not because we believe in it but because it is real and its existence can be proven by evidence - and even if we forget the concept of gravity, gravitational effects would not stop.

To further stress the point, consider the fact that homo sapiens (that is, our species!) have existed on this planet for close to 200,000 years now and acquired cognitive abilities (ability to think, imagine, create myths) only 70,000 years ago. And, during this time, many civilizations of sapiens were born and died, and along with them died many religions. Their Gods, their temples and their texts are now artefact - which we often look at with amusement. And even have contempt for their teachings as per today's values (e.g. Code of Hammurabi, c.1776 BC, says the following, "If a man strike a free-born woman so that she lose her unborn child, he shall pay ten shekels for her loss" and "If the woman die, his daughter shall be put to death").

Were religions and Gods of those civilizations not eternal? Were the values taught by them not universal and to be true always? The people who lived under those laws certainly believed so and followed them with sincerity. But, where are these so called eternal religion and laws now - some in museums, some still in ground and may or may not even be discovered.

Then, what of the eternal laws and beliefs of the religions of present we so strongly follow and live our life by. If the very existence of these religions is just based on belief and not in reality, then why are they being passed on as eternal truths? And, how is it even possible for these contradicting religions to be true at the same time? And, if these religions are eternal truths, then why are they mostly imposed during an impressionable age when a child is not even aware if he/ she needs to question? And, also why the followers of these religions use threat of violence to make other people stay in a religion or not say anything against their religion if they really believe them to be eternal truths? Do we ever see a scientist going out with an AK-47 to convince people to believe in gravity? No. We don't.

What if an asteroid were to strike earth in some immediate future and it leads to destruction of all of planet's life as we know, and in some distant future life begins again and one more time leads to evolution of cognitive and intelligent beings (who may or may not look like us), and they dig up our temples, mosques, find scriptures, study our religions in an objective way, what conclusion would they draw from our practices, about our "eternal truths"? Would they look at our religions the same way we look at the religions of the sapiens who lived before us?

Think!