I am not in to religion, but I do have a great interest in it from the point of view of the impact it has on society in general and its moral teachings. I was a party recently and got in to a discussion with some people about religion. They were quite shocked when I told them I am an Atheist. One of them then said something that I found patronising in the extreme and she was promptly corrected.
She said "you were raised an Catholic though... and being raised in a Catholic country you were taught good Catholic morals which have made you the person you are".
My response was "I was raised in a Catholic country where the Catholic church ran all of the schools and if you wanted your child to get a place in school you had to get them baptised, so my parents did. I have my parents to thank for my moral values. Thankfully they had the good sense to protect me from what they saw going on all around them as if they took their moral values from the Catholic church I would have been brought up to believe that raping children was fine and allowing others to rape children whilst you turned a blind eye was fine and beating children and forcing them to work as slaves was fine".
There are not really any other ways to have safe sex which will prevent the spread of HIV unless you have a physical barrier between both parties, I agree condoms are horrid to wear, thankfully I am now seeing someone long term so dont need to worry about that.
Interesting saying from the USSR... I can see that for some people it could be true. One of the most liberating things I have ever done in my life is completely remove religion from my life and become an Atheist and skeptic, suddenly everything made sense to me. I do not judge people that are religious or tell them that they are wrong... however if they take issue with my beliefs or lack thereof then I am happy to chat to them about why I do not believe.
My personal belief is that the world would be a far better place without religion. The amount of violence and hatred that has been caused in the name of religion throughout the ages and still today is incredible. It appears to me to be a way of filling in the blanks about things people do not understand. What happens when you die? If you did something really bad and cant live with yourself you can just confess and be forgiven etc etc... then its all about my religion is better than yours... my religion tells me to do all these nasty things so I must do them and so on and so on.
Religion = money = power
This is true of just about any of the mainstream religions. There is always an element of financial giving. Go to the Vatican and see where the money Catholics give to the church goes. It doesnt go to helping their community it goes to building a palace and putting huge jewels on a fella in a funny hat. Look at the majority of Christian religions, there is usually a rich pastor at the head of the church. Look at Islam, massive amounts of money flooding back to the middle east to fund god knows what.
Live a good life, do good things and try not to harm people. That is my version of religion. I dont need a church and it doesnt need to be complicated and if that message was put in to action by most religious groups around the world I believe the world would be a better place.