Key word here, religion. Religion and belief are two very different things. If you were to compare belief systems to music artists then the believer would be someone who writes his music, publishes it himself and shares it with the world for free - maybe busking for a bit of cash or selling some CDs of his own for a fair price. Those who follow religion rather than finding their own beliefs would the the ones who give in to mainstream music publishing, accepting a big record deal and giving up a lot of their own rights in exchange for it, while these people are not inherently bad, they will sometimes do bad thinks for their publisher (or their religion). The heads of religion are like the great big greedy publishing companies, all they care about is that they have plenty of money and followers.
This is not to say that following a religion is wrong, like I said, everyone needs to decide what they believe, even if what they believe is simply what they see in front of them and nothing else, some people decide a certain religion is right for them, and so they should follow it, however anyone in a religion should remember that they are there to follow their deity/s, not the priests/heads of the religion, and so they should never feel pressured into doing anything just because the religion's book, or the heads of the religion suggest it is right. They should take the time to think about what their peace loving deity's would want, not their war and money-hungry leaders.
I see religion as very similar to gambling, it is not wrong in itself, but the people running it are very very corrupt and greedy people.
Haha, I have to agree there. I am a theist myself, as I mentioned a few pages previously, but admittedly when I first began believing (initially as a Christian) I really was not very educated about religion or belief, I just simply accepted what I was told, and believed it. I also noticed most of my friends who believed the same/similar things also had very little knowledge about what they were actually supposed to believe. Ask most Christians about the bible and in all honesty most atheists could answer your questions better. I then spent the past couple of years combining science, dissociatives (Ketamine) and a lot of research to decide what I finally wanted to believe, finally coming up with a complete picture that to me is scientifically and spiritually accurate.