To me, religion is many things, depending on perspective.

To those in power, it may be a means to control the population.

To those who have it in their lives, and hold it dear, it can be a means to cope with life
  to have faith in an afterlife, instead of seeing it as infinite darkness, or even with
  morality in some cases.

Christianity is one I'm not too fond of, for several reasons. For example, some obvious paradoxes
  in which, alone, damages the integrity of the belief of their god. The "Omnis".

Another reason I don't like Christianity, is for the same reasons I don't like some others,
  which is the idea that if you do something against the religions system (murder, stealing, etc.)
  that you're gonna go to a place of eternal suffering. Some people feel they need something like that
  in order to keep them from doing "bad things", which tells me without the negative outcomes, you'd
  do those bad things without regret. That's fucked up. If you can't be a good person without that,
  fuck you, fuck you to the moon.

As an Atheist, there's nothing stopping me from doing those things, other than my own personal morality.
  I take pride in the fact I can be a good person without such things. I think everyone else would benefit,
  from being able to do the same.