Religion is an interesting thing. On the one hand, it makes culture that much more fun and beautiful, it makes people feel connected to the world even where we're not factually sure as to how it works, it's a pretty beautiful thing.

On the other hand, it is very easily manipulated to cause all kinds of problems.

Make no mistake though, it's not Christianity that causes most problems - it is the monotheistic Abrahamic religions. This encompasses Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and the like. And it is not the religions themselves, but the extremists and the manipulative people bringing up passages which should by now be obscure in order to advance or uphold a bigoted personal agenda (popular example: vague possible condemnation of homosexuality in Leviticus [which may actually be a condemnation of adultery, or a reference to periods and cleanliness, we really don't know]...right next to condemnation of tattoos, eating shellfish, and wearing more than one kind of fabric) - at worst very violently.

And then there's science deniers. The planet is 4.5 billion years old. The amount of evidence that we have to suggest this is overwhelming. Evolution is real. We have seen it on both large and small scales in action, and the fossil record comes as close as possible to definitively proving it occurs on an even larger scale still. I'm not saying that if your religion says otherwise then everything about it is wrong - but perhaps the idea of the world being created 6000 years ago in 7 days is more figurative than literal? Perhaps that's what it seemed like on an immortal omnipotent being's time scale without modern people to judge it by? We don't know. This generation will probably never know. But the only evidence to suggest that's literal is an ancient book which, even if it was dictated by God, was PENNED and must be INTERPRETED by flawed humans.

I'm very spiritualist, myself. I mean hell, I like to think that most of fiction is real (which I do have some physical and mathematical evidence to suggest) and that most stories are actually past life memories that a writer consciously or subconsciously misses (which I only have personal, anecdotal, and circumstantial evidence for, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it - at least until I'm proven wrong). I'm also an engineering major. Science and religion do not always have to conflict. But your mind should never be closed to any possibility.

A person should THINK, is what I'm getting at. The interpretation of Abrahamic religions preached by the manipulators and the extremists is "don't think ever free thought is bad" at best and "these people I think are icky are actually evil and must be destroyed and if you don't help me you're going to hell" at worse - both of which (as well as everything in between) are completely asinine things to assert if you are at all willing to think about it for five seconds. They're also a pretty far cry from, for example, the actual message of the New Testament, which is basically God saying "Yeah, we're cool now, just don't be a douche - and if you do slip up, own up and apologize for it - and don't forget about me, and we're on good terms!"

Just look at all the priests who are sure that they'll be forgiven for molesting children but insist that anyone else will go to hell if they even so much as once have an "impure" thought about someone of the same gender. Look at the nine-year old who was excommunicated from the Catholic church because she aborted a pregnancy caused by rape that was going to kill her - yet her rapist father was forgiven. A lot of these people, when you look at it, either don't have two brain cells to rub together or, more likely, are actually not interested in making the world a better place, but only in maintaining traditional power structures where they are, of course, on top.

That mindset right there is where the evil of religion comes from. People can get away with anything if they can convince enough people that a divine being sanctions it and the manipulative jerks of the world know it.

tl;dr: Religion itself is a good, healthy thing as long as you keep your mind a little less sealed shut than Pandora's Box about it. People manipulating other people through religion need to stop like yesterday and people need to learn how to recognize when such a thing is happening.