[Heretic]

Religion (for the purpose of this reply, I use "religion" to apply only to Abrahamic faiths) is designed specifically as a series of controls. It creates two extreme poles of ending: Either you are "good", and you will enjoy eternity in some sort of semi-ambiguous paradise, or you are "bad" and you will instead be tormented in some sort of semi-ambiguous "Hell".

This is where the series of controls comes in. Religion is built around a central character, God, who is a combination of ideas, theories, personalities and power. God is the arbiter of all actions, thoughts, wants, needs and impulses of his primary centerpiece of creation, humanity. He painstakingly created Hell and the "Devil" that resides inside/rules over it. And then he declared that if humans didn't do as he said, he would put them at the Devil's mercy in the aforementioned Hell.

And then we get the rules that determine if we are going to Heaven or Hell. This is where the human construct of religion as a control really takes off. Someone in a position of immense power within the structure of a religion, such as a Pope or Imam, can make his own arbitrary declaration about something that should be condemned and avoided. And how is someone else to know if this is truly a holy inspiration, or simply using religion as a justification for expressing a very personal dispassion with a given action, idea or thought? The idea in these religions is that an individual person, or a powerful group of people, can control anyone who believes in their faith by issuing proclamations of such degree.

If you can convince someone of the existence of eternal damnation, then you can make them afraid of that idea. If you make them afraid of it, then you can make them do anything you want by telling them what they need to do to avoid such a fate.

I know that my reply is probably going to garner some pretty strong emotions and rebuffing, but it's not my intent to declare any religious person to be naive, ignorant or gullible. And please don't generalize me as an atheist; it's tiring to be stereotyped as somehow militaristic or hyper-aggressive about my beliefs (or lack thereof). What I've said here is merely my own personal justification for being an atheist.