The Catholic church was once considered to be the most powerfull organization on the world with the Vatican being feared and respected by most. But as with every big organization that have a lot of power the Catholic church abused it's power by killing innocent people because they simply had a different believe and the abuse of thousands of children by the Catholic priests. In more recent times the Catholic church lost alot of people since more and more people simply don't have a religion anymore or are going towards the asian religions of Buddhism or Hinduism, what are 2 far more peacefull religions.

But even in the modern days the Catholic church still has its present around the world trying to stop everything they are against (homosexuality, abortion, the use of condoms etc) luckily the current pope is a modern one so he actualy aproves the use of condoms to prevent std's. In 2015 Ireland finaly aproved gay marriage what was ofcourse extremely late but it's a good thing it happened. But still it's by far the last country that has aproved it the USA has still not completely aproved it, where according to some people being gay is having some kind of disease and that you can be 'cured'. And this is all because of a religion based on a .. well on a what exactly ? We don't know what god is, or even if it exists in the first place we don't know if the bible is true and did Jesus really exist ? There is no hard evidence that it happened so we're left in the dark on that one.

But if 'god' would exist would he really let people use his name for all the bad things they do ? Would he really exept people killing in his name, abusing others in his name and having wars in his name ? So religion has the power to hurt people more than anything as we see time after time on the tv, the internet and read in our newspapers, is it time that religion should no longer exist ?

If you read this all you might notice there is an important word missing in all this: 'Radicale'. The word Radical is why we have wars about religion it's the word that hurts people because people use the name of their lord while they instead should use the word Radical. The holy books can be read differently by everyone that reads them.

So is religion bad ? The quick answer is simply No it isn't. It all depends on what we do with it and Radical people are the ones we should blame and look at not the church, 'god' or the holy books.

I think we all need something to believe in, and there will always be the minority spoil it for the majority.

Faith is good to help some people through tough times,all in all I think religion can be a good thing in the right hands

I'm the kind of person who at least tries to understand that persons perspective and reasoning about why they may feel differently to things (Gay marriage for example).

There was this one woman on the news (about Ireland making gay marriage legal), who said that she opposed the idea of Gay Marriage as she was brought up in a world where Gay Marriage was not the norm, sick and disgusting etc. So I can totally understand why she has that POV about Gay Marriage.

I would say that religion has been taken way out of control, especially now-a-days with Christians harassing gays, preaching about God in the streets and extreme Islamic groups. But at the same time, these people were probably brought up around people who had the same views/beliefs or were strict about certain things.

I do believe that the media does 'brainwash' in a sense as they hardly ever focus on the positives. There are some strict Christians/Catholics out there that do support Gay Marriage and believe in some things that the others may not. There are also Muslims out there who do not share the same views as Islamic extremists.

I find it very worrying and upsetting how racist people are becoming today, it's becoming the norm in a sense.  If you see a Muslim with a turban on in the streets, people either stare or judge that person and instantly assume that he's a bad guy! Why? Because the media never focuses on the good people, they're practically brain-washing us by showing us bad things about Muslim/Catholic people - When was the last time that you heard that one of these people have did something good for their community/friends/family? I can bet you it was ages ago, but the last time you heard about Priests abusing children or ISIS? I bet that's very recent!

To sum things up...Religion is good and bad, there's not one or the other imo. You can find really nice religious people which is a good thing, but at the same time you can find bad religious people because they were brought up in a different environment to ourselves.

I really do hope that I made myself clear on what I was trying to talk about without go too-in length about it, I did try to explain my best and keep it short and sweet, haha! I'm sorry if I appear Racist or have upset anybody, that wasn't my intention!