Well, then maybe the interpretation of religion I grew up with cannot be described as religion. Actually that's something I tell may fellow countrymen, when they claim, that Christianity, other than the Islam, is compatible with democratic values. I usually answer "No, it is not! We've just removed everything from our interpretation of Christianity, that don't do well with democratic values, and replaced it with scientific fact and common sense. If we would have a more strict and traditional interpretation of our religion, we would have no democracy as well!".

However, here, where I live and grew up, religion usually isn't mixed up with science and politics. There surely are people, who believe in god as a creator and who consult their "handbook" instead of using their brains and scientific fact, when it comes to matters like homosexuality or abortion. But they usually keep it private and don't interfere with education, scientific fact and politics. It's still not perfect though. While children receive an education free of religious attempts to explain the world we live in, religion is still thaught at schools. In a more theoretical and scientific approach (e.g. history of Christianity), but I still do not like it, that they are such classes, which is why I switched to philosophy as soon as I had the chance to. And I'd prefer to get rid religions like Christianity or Islam, mainly because they rely on religious literature that mislead people and, in worst cases, make them hate and oppress other people or even fight them in wars - which is surely not what god had in mind with her creation. Which is strange, isn't it? All day long the hardcore-Christians talk about altruism and equality and god loves everyone - until you are gay.

What I suggest religion to be about? Maybe a god, that is not the creator of the world, nor does he/she/it judge about the world. People should not attach human values to him/her/it, nor should they try to explain him/her/it with human concepts. As soon as they do, they start to exploit him/her/it to enforce their values on other people. This might be the point were any kind of religion becomes impossible because people will always try to enforce values through their religion. While it can be good thing, if these teachings are things like equality and altruism, sooner or later it will be contaminated with ideas like "Being gay is unnatural and should be abolished!". While we could maybe create a "perfect" religion from scratch, it won't work in reality. And apart from that scientific fact, common sense, education and experience should be enough to "teach" people values like altruism or equality. In a perfect world there world be no religions because we would need no religions. And maybe you are right. Maybe "we", here where I live, just don't do it properly. Which makes me wonder, if creationists see us as their "fallen brothers". I hope they pray for our souls ;-)