Eureka !!!!!

You're talking my language.

The Christian “church” is run like a business. The managers of the business are the priests, bishops and the CEO is the pope. Somewhere in history the business managers lost sight of their original business plan. It changed to becoming more powerful and acquiring material wealth which had nothing to do with Christ.

Agreed.

borderline extortion

Yup.

Pity 'they' didn't trade mark it, there's thousands of them now

Your description closely matches mine. My definition of religion is the it is a very big “crowd control” business with a high profit mark-up.

Well put! ?

Reminds me of a song by a band called nothing more; christ copy right. It's exactly what you are saying.

A tax exempt one at that.

Well said to control and receive rewards

Social clubs were fine and still are once one has the option of joining them. Most of us were not given this option when we were kids and the associated brain washing, associated with them.

Religion....the worlds most expensive social club.

A multi billion dollar business that doesn't pay taxes.

It can not be reduced just to that. Religion has done more harm than good for sure. But you can not neglect all those good besides those bad either. Religion has saved many people's life for sure, could that be saved by other rational means, yes? Therefore I am not for religion, rather I'm understanding of why it might be a great necessity for a lot of people who are scared of life and complexity and can not fathom randomness, uncertainty principles and nothingness. But I do acknowledge that mindsets ultimately will shift towards non-religious, rationality and I think we are making slow progress towards that and time will determine where we stand. Religion is a business, just like atheism can turn into a business.. any human activity can turn into a business if there's a service producer and consumer relationship established. And people love to be branded as rich, as sexy, as beautiful, as posh, as intellectual, as strong.. without brand you can not get laid and can't help natural selection to pass your genes. So, religion is just another brand which proclaims purity with falsehood, but it's just a way of trying to be unique and privileged. Even in a society without religion, you will see brands of new agies, new atheists( as if atheists didn't exist before), all these newy... newyy.. brands. Human just gets bored with old. Ultimately it's all about survival by some means, but not everyone can access a moralistic, objectively correct path of living. And those who do, hopefully can be endowed with happiness, joy of living and peace within themselves.

Roger that...........

Oh yeah... oh yeah....lol.

Great description

I think you might mean that god is a product (for con men (or women) to sell).