Every religion I am familiar with is based on lies.

Lie implies an intent to mislead, be it white, black or grey; fiction ain't necessarily so.

I'm aware. I think that usually religions are or were originally based on an intention to mislead. Perhaps I should have clarified that.

I don't think so, there were for explaining why first. Then as people gave power to the gods (The sun, the rain) they start making their decisions based of superstitions as "A bright light inspire me to attack a community and conquer it" and then people used religion to take power of the masses. This is probably the phase that you are talking to.

I think there's a bit of that, the rest is conjectural philosophising to make sense of the world.

I too am cynical when it comes to religion and believe the bases for religious doctrines were probably formulated by those with power, and that powerful people are likely, but not certainly, to be nasty fuckers.

Peoploids prefer to obey rather than think and be responsible for their own appelflappen.

No, and only for the reason that I consider calling something a lie an insult. Many (most?) great stories are fictions, but I wouldn't call them lies. Since I cannot know the original intent of the fictions underlying the various religions, I like to assume that they were just-so stories, understood to be false, but as a vehicle for other messages.

Chron, I like that take on it too but now it seems they aren't understood to be false.

Oh, I agree. But a lie is all about original intent.

Clearly your friends don't go around creating religions as often as mine do. They were not founded on lies. Sometimes on fiction, but not on lies.

Then again, not necessarily on fiction, but on hearsay that was believed to be truth.