I think Stephen has basically got it fairly right there, Bill. For "hate" you could substitute the words "feel superior to".

Most threads that are started with a title such as the title of this thread are started out of the poster's basic hostility to or smug sense of superiority over the very idea of religion. Hostility is hostility. When it's more extreme, it's called hatred. When it's less extreme it might just be called prejudice.

People who are hostile toward what they call "religion" generally lump all forms of spiritual belief whatsoever in with organized religion...as if the two had to be synonymous. They don't. Not by any means.

In other words, the person who dislikes religion decides that it has and must have one specific definition (which he made up)...which is the prejudiced, pejorative way that he sees "religion"...and he then consigns all forms of spiritual belief (most of which he is very ignorant of) within the straitjacket of that specific dumbass definition of his...which he created out of his own prejudice, just so he can have something to look down on and feel better than.

His definition may be equivalent to a crock of shit. It would be like asking Hitler for his opinion of Jews. Pointless.