OK, if that is the case I apologize for coming across that way.
My thinking about religion is best summed up in books like A History of God (Armstrong), Doubt (Hecht), and the writing of
Charles Taylor (no, not
that one. Or
that one). I believe religion, along with law, government, science and art, is one of the greatest and most significant institutions ever created by humanity. I believe it is for the vast part neither good nor bad but simply a "social fact" of human history, culture, and identity. I try to read in it and learn about it for the same reason I want to know something about those other human activities.
That's why I am deeply offended when someone takes a very deep and fundamental aspect of humanity and turns it into a twisted, cynical, inane tool for political and social oppression. Fundamentalism, wherever it festers, is:
+ dangerous (as we are seeing in the Islamic world now, and as we have seen throughout history in all faiths)
+ poisonous (it works to literally extinguish other worldviews -- it suffocates human-ness)
+ stupid (it is based on the most basic of errors -- mistaking a map for the territory, a metaphor for truth, a model for reality)
+ deceitful (when your soul is at stake literally any lie is justified)
Religion is worth talking about. Fundamentalist religion is just humanity's raw psychopathic id with a good press agent.