This is what I think about religion, and my relationship to my Catholic identity. I can't change it, and i think that the people who berate and denigrate religion, are at best ignorant and irrelevant, and at worst hypocritical and destructive.

Edward Said writes thus:

I have an equal amount of intolerance, on the one hand, for manifestos of delight in the culture, history, and tradition of a given society, and, on the other hand, for vehement attacks on culture, history, and tradition as instruments of outright repression. Both these moods- and they are scarcely more than that- are irresponsible; worse, they are uninteresting. Occasionally they are useful as reminders- of the fact that the tradition somehow continues to exist and that it can sometimes also be repressive. More often, however, it is better not to treat such attitudes simply as objects of praise or blame at all- in order, as Merleau-Ponty says of a verbal phrase, to hear what they say.

-Edward Said Beginnings: Intention and Method, p.19.

Hugh Mackay has an interesting response to Richard Dawkin's book