I see religion and spirituality as the inner and otter form of the same thing. Religion is the exoteric practice. Whether this experience is based on proteins and firing neurons or something greater will be a topic of much debate, but I understand spirituality to be the internal aspect of religion, not an alternative to religion....necessarily.

Can you have the internal experience without at least some external and perhaps codified practice? Maybe.
Can you have the external religion as a community fellowship, go through the motions and rituals but have no spiritual experience from the process? Absolutely you can.

But if you have a fellowship....even a Taoist fellowship, adopt a set of practices like meditation, read from the Tao Te Ching....well, thats religion. Spirituality is the subjective aspect of religion. There is a difference in connotation, but they are not totally seperate or diametrically opposed.

In my opinion, some religious traditions are more harmful than others....Quakers seem cool...They are vary open to a variety of beliefs and you dont even have to believe in the bible...but they do have some common beliefs and principles that they share as Quakers, so they are a religious and a spiritual movement.

In my opinion religion should be kept away from politics. Politics corrupts religion as much as religion corrupts politics. You put the two together and you come up with ideas like the divine right of kings and holy war.....not that the state wouldnt find another excuse for the exact same behavior in the absence of religion.

The judgment is there; the hyperbole was mine, true enough, but the language was yours. If you're agreeing that religion today is only a control mechanism, and referring to the religious beliefs of most or even some others as "dross and dregs", then you're prejudiced and ignorant regarding religion, as you're expressing an opinion based thereupon. If the words sting, then you're reading me correctly. The language is accurate. Religion is scapegoated by many - including myself on occasion - but waving one's rod over the whole of religiondom and rendering a simplistic description is both prejudiced, and ignorant.

>>the belief structures have created something that best pictures what humans were at their worst,
not what they could be at their best. It's a ramshackle picture dependent on what people subconsciously think they stand
to win by putting their belief in God<<

I think you're imputing this to individuals based on your perception of a mass. People win social acceptance via religion; that's a primary evolutionary advantage that religion confers. The beliefs derived from / programmed by religion are technology for enhancing the quality of the society according to moral and cultural values.

It's those values that, in my opinion, deserve more of your scrutiny than the technology that implements those values (religion per se).