Religious or crazy?

Religion is not viewed as crazy; praying to someone who is not there, putting all your faith and belief in a figure who you have never met or seen, performing acts that this "God" tells you to do for the good of mankind, etc. But believing in ghosts and spirits and extra terrestrials is viewed as crazy. Or if you are a schizophrenic and believe that you are seeing a person right in front of you speaking to you, even if that person is "god" perhaps, you may be classified as "insane" rather than religious... How on earth has our society become so disconnected from our spiritual side and so afraid of alternate beliefs that the answer is either religious or crazy?

We watched A Beautiful Mind in class the other day and got into this discussion... What is classified as crazy? Are artists crazy? Do we have to be crazy in order to create our most compelling art? What about the fact that I personally have seen a UFO? Or what about the fact that my sister is a medium (can see spirits and ghosts) and I have had a personal encounter with a ghost where they moved right through my body and apologized for it? What about aliens? Do they exist?... Do you think I'm crazy for stating/believing in these things?...

How can we be so naïve to believe that with the size of this universe and the history of this earth that we are the only beings that can exist or that there can be only one set of logical belief systems?

I continued this discussion with my roommate and good friend, Ian, last night. We got into a discussion of people in general, and how most of us refuse to acknowledge things in ourselves that we don't want to deal with. For example, if a boyfriend cheats on his girlfriend, they will then not want to talk about it and therefore pretend it didn't happen. But it did happen, and them not acknowledging it and dealing with it is avoiding the pain and of their actions and a denial of truth within themselves. I believe this applies to belief systems as well. Perhaps so many people cling onto religion because they are not ready to deal with a possibly painful truth that they are alone. Or perhaps so many people are adamant about others' beliefs in ghosts or extra terrestrials because they are afraid that they might actually exist.

I am in no way against religion. I actually do have some kind of faith in something, though I don't know what exactly. But I think this is something that needs to be questioned and discussed and thought about, if not to find some answers than to simply create some honest awareness.