If you'd like to read some of the best writing ever done on the subject, I offer this:

In 1959, at Washington University in St.Louis, I attended a lecture by Walter Kaufmann, professor of Philosopy at Princeton...I practically ran to get his book, "Critique of Religion and Philosophy"....later he wrote another ...."The Faith of a Heritic"

below is an excerpt about it from this page

"Writing about religion has always been a risky endeavor. There are few subjects which so often provoke banal,intellectually dishonest discussions that rarely get to the heart of the real issues. But Walter Kaufmann, one of the greatest scholars of the last century, succeeds in Faith of a Heretic where so many others have failed. Instead of defining concepts like "faith" and "religion" without examining their historical and cultural uses, Kaufmann traces religious ideas through their development in the Hebrew Bible, New Testament and subsequent philosophical discourse. This analysis results in a study of religion that avoids the reductionist condemnations of faith so common among today's "free thinkers," and the simplistic diagnoses offered by writers in the "science and religion" movement. If you want to start thinking seriously about religion, this is the place"