It's a pity this has to be about religion rather than the way it has been abused and manipulated by the people who invented it
Strip away the bogeymen, sky fairies and men in frocks and you have a half decent philosophy regarding how we should react to one another as human beings
If those claiming to be Christians lived up to their claim, this planet would be an infinitely more friendly and interesting place to inhabit.
Unfortunately.....

I concur totally with Tom Munnelly's description of one of Ireland's great traditional singers, Tom Lenihan - a man we recorded annually from 1974, when we first met him, to his death in January, 1990.
"Tom was a deeply religious Roman Catholic who practiced his faith without ostentation or cant. In all the years of working with him I never heard him say an unkind word about anybody. In making such a declaration I am aware that such claims can often be mere well-meaning clichés, but I wish to emphasise that I record it here as an objective statement of fact.
This lack of complication in Tom’s faith was not an indication of simplicity of mind. The simplicity Tom acquired over the years was that of wisdom and the ability to discard the peripheral while retaining core values. This was illustrated for me one day when I called to keep a recording appointment I had made with him the week before. In the meantime I had discovered that a pilgrimage to the Marian shrine at Knock for the over-sixties had been arranged on the same day. Knowing of Tom’s devoutness, I more than half expected him to be gone when I called up to Knockbrack. Sure enough, there was nobody about the house when I arrived. I was walking back to my car when I was hailed from a nearby field. Tom was in there thinning cabbages. I said: ‘I heard about the pilgrimage and I thought you’d be gone with them.’
‘Why would I travel a hundred miles? If I want God, isn’t He here with me in the garden?’
I couldn’t argue with that."

Me neither
Jim Carroll