I rather wonder if you are as harsh in your rhetoric with any religious people you happen to meet in person.....

Only the ones who come banging on my door trying to save my soul, Bill. And my views are hardly harsh, much less rhetorical, or yet even narrow; you can look at the religious impulse in humanity much as you can the propensity for ciminality and war - negative attributes, the fruits & movitation of which don't really bear close examination.

I'm all for Wonder and Spirituality, but you won't find these things in religion - just as you won't find sexuality in pornography. These things (wonder, spirtuality & sexuality) belong to each and every one of us as intergral to our very humanity - they lose all substance when systematised and otherwise exploited, which is precisely what religion does.