I Smell a Rat

I tend to be a bit more cynical on that point... about most. I think some are what they show.

For me:

The idea of a Religion is to form logic loopholes that cannot be solved & force guilt and other insecure feelings. That authority structure then states they can alleviate the very problem caused by membership in that belief system (impossible, because the problem is always an insolvable cunnundrum)... then they have you... you pay and the cycle is complete.

Faith and religion have nothing to do with each other.
Faith is a personal belief system. Religion is a socio-political body that uses certain belief systems to find their membership. Nothing more. They rarely embody the actual tenants of those belief systems, they cannot or the membership would not need them after a time.

I wrote this a while ago.