As averse as I am to the use of the term “religion” by both pejorative nonbelievers and defensive believers, I think that a fruitful discussion of religion is advanced significantly by examining attempts to study religion.
Tomas Rees at Epiphenom does fantastic reviews of research on religion. And his last post is great summary of his 2011 reviews. Indeed, he has one-page summaries from each of the last three years. So if you have time, I suggest you make it a project to at least read the summary pages. These quick reads could further arm you to defend religion or aid you in attacking religion. But obviously, I would hope for a third option: to help you better understand religion.
PS: On Tom’s site is I often object that generalizing about “religion” is very precarious because under the umbrella of religion falls a huge variety of highly different activities. And Tom often tries to honor this objection. Perhaps I am simply being defensive because under some loose, rarefied definition of the term even I would be considered religious in a buddhish sense. 
That is a great site! Thanks for sharing!
Tom,
I am not sure if I count as religous or non religous for the purposes of his study. One one hand I do not believe in Gods but I do believe in the paranormal(ie. miracles). I also do not really beleive in evolution, well not exactly anyways. I believe that it all began, it all began for us anyways, early in the morning on Thursday, Novemeber 22nd 1963. All time before then is just imaginary. But for political purposes it i still important. In fact it is every bit as important as if it were real.
If human understanding of time and space is flawed, which scientists know is true, then nothing can be ruled out, right?
So am I religous or not religous? I am happy with the temporary discription of buddhish Unitarian Universalist but can such a critter be contained in one of those two boxes?
That blog looks neat! Thanks for the tip.