My spiritual background for want of another term starts with Catholicism, and the brainwashing in the form of catechism that goes with it, recruitment by any other name. The attractiveness of the notion of a personal god to diminish the culpability of the institution has been one of a long line of 'duck and weave' strategies the religious use to soften the fraud of the institutions they are obviously bonded to. Religion and the existence of a soul exists in the writings of the bulk of philosoohers I have realised and due to this and the cultural impact of organised belief systems it cannot be ignored, but at thecmost I have been a pantheist with an interest in historic and philosophical aspects contained in the promary texts of all the monotheistic religions
Other than that I believe religious sentiment to comprise a destructive conservatism that narrows perception, a force driving corruption, and continues to create division and injustice for the personal gain of those who strenuously deny it. The idea that there are aspects of the world that are yet to be understood and may be revealed by a way of thinking that comprises faith is entirely logical to me and seeking justice, equality, and the kinship of fellow human beings if not all of life is a reasonable thing to do, but to give credit and subjugate reality for the sake of a deity is entirely nuts.