True religion

Not all religion is bad, that is why I made the distinction of "worldly religion" and "true religion"

In our time, almost everything related to religion is now worldly religion, since it has been affected by corruption and degeneration.

True religion teaches man how to behave right and how to understand god, while wordly religion is just about power and prestige.

You probably always have a mix between those two, true and worldly religion, depending on the motives of the people behind it. If the motive of the people behind the religion is altruistic it is true religion, but if it is selfish it becomes worldly religion which is corrupted and casues pain and suffering for people. Even our corrupted religions today still carry pieces and principles of true religion within them, but they are mostly ignored. This means you still can learn useful things from our religions meaning the scriptures behind them, but you should not take part in them, or believe blindly.

Overall religions in our time are dangerous territory.

The big problem we have with religion in our world is based on a confusion of the word "religion" itself, we usually mean the institutionalized religions when we speak of religions, but those are inventions by man and not the true thing.

In the eastern "religious" traditions the word for religion is "dharma" which is more accurate what religion really means.

"Dharma" basically translates to "right action", "law", "what is right" or "ethics"

Dharma also has an opposite which is "Adharma" which translates to "wrong action", so everything what dharma means, just inverted.

Dharma is not exactly what I call "true religion" and "Adharma" is not exactly what I call "worldly religion" but there are similarities. It is more to show that there are different concepts of religion. "Dharma" is also an objective term describing what is right and has nothing to do with institutionalized religion, which claim to be right, while everyone else is not right. Eastern religions are much more tolerant about this, but they are very institutionalized now as well, they are just not as aggressive.

One should try to think of "dharma" as "right action" to determine what is right and not in terms of one institutionalized religion against another.

Conclusion:

A bad religion is probably better than no religion at all, since even a bad executed religion still has some dharma left inside it, while a completely irreligios person has no dharma left at all, if no other ethical principles are followed instead. Some religious or ethical control is needed otherwise the population will fall into complete barbarism.

But on the other hand institutionalized religions can be very dangerouso since they almost always highjack the person for their own interests of power and as a result the person will become enslaved, especially if it is a cult.

Better not join or follow a religion just because you think you have to, a superficially and dishonestly executed religion is just for worldly prestige and therefore has no spiritual value.