Here's the thing: that warm fuzzy feeling is actually good for people to have. It is good way to stave off several debilitating psychological problems from stress, to depression, to reaction adjustment.
While this is true for any given individual it is also true that religion also serves as a common unifying concept for different groups of people.
People who are xian can know that they will most likely be on the same page as other xians (maybe more theoretically than in fact with xianity but the point stands). This allows them to function better in that cultural group.
It does mean that for an in group to exist you will tend to have out groups. This is where the problem comes into play: depending on how seriously you take your chosen faith it can motivate you to perform terrible acts in the name of your faith (which is of course the right one).
I see religion as a problem when it rejects every other religion and cannot live in harmony with the out groups.
Of course, by our very nature we form in groups and and demonise out groups so it's hard to say that religion courses it. Religion does do a bang up job of maintaining out groups, however.
Religion is anti intellectual inso far as it is irrational, but people are irrational anyway (and in fact we need to be) so it is hard to blame this on religion per se. However, religion is very good at building on people's inbuilt irrationally and motivating people to ignore reality by assuming that the irrational is in fact rational.
That for me is my beef with reigion: it make people too irrational (more so than they need to be).
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