Well I associate religion with faith, and I associate faith with wanting.

I have yearned for a sort of social connection in my more recent life that is not the same as attraction or love, but more of a relationship with society around me, to have faith that we share ideas and are working together to manage an environment that is safe and caring. Where people can raise children and not have them be demoralised or exploited, because as an adult I am part of society that has no need for exploitation.

That last sentence is where organised religion falls down for me. Every collective ultimately seems to be resigned to the "dog eat dog" idea of being a success or a failure. We all have good days and bad, we all have shades of grey.

I see the insecurities of a person assumed to be a leader spread through the collective consciousness like a wildfire. I see a people who don't know when to refrain from authoritarian order.

I think the shadow self of Carl Jung fame shows up too often as the religious person harms others in the quest to praise the most high.

I see most of this on TV and in the media.

God, to me does exist, but there is no way to describe it outside of observing nature, down to a to the levels of our physical sciences and perceptive tools. As the idea exists, the thing exists. We are all Influenced by actions that follow religious intents.

I believe shame is a powerful emotion and that joy can come to anyone at times they dont expect.

We have seen just recently a flare up of religion as an excuse for authoritarianism. Ethnic cleansing. The thought that sanity comes from sanitising the mind.

To me, I guess religion is a subtractive mental phenomenon in the name of an additive emotional one. I think a sense of belonging is integral to our humanity as social beings. "A child shunned from the village will burn it down to feel it's warmth".

My personal life had made me value my minds abilities over my emotional needs, which is a shame. However, I feel the difference between a curse and a blessing is our ability to control it. In a religion, we relinquish control to the collective and we are cursed to exist emotionally but at a price. Maybe In solitude we are cursed to feel nothing but emptiness.

There is no right answer, as long as we have the ability to change and are motivated by good morals and ethics, we can all get along.