Religion

A non-scientific belief system, taking advantage of the fact that people would like to think that something nice happens to them after they die. Such frameworks often use the notion of faith to explain away unfathomable gaps of scientific logic at the root of their fairy-tale like mythology. Many religions feature a deitic character, known as 'God', who takes on the characteristics of a ghostly super-hero with bizarre magical powers. Fantastical and spurious events form the basis for explaining the nature of science and reality. Competing religions often despise each other to murderous lengths, but have even more contempt for people who don't adopt any religion at all.

Organised Religion
A business that derives its income from charging people to adopt its belief system. Many organised religions are vastly wealthy. Despite their apparent agendas to help the poor, the biggest recipient of their charity is often their own bank balance. The Roman Catholic church for example is notoriously rich, after having spent hundreds of years sending armies to pillage Eastern civilizations under a series of murderous campaigns called 'The Crusades'. The Vatican coffers are extremely healthy. Especially after making financial deals with the fascist dictator, Mussolini, prior to the second world war link. The wealth from that deal alone is suggested to amount to at least £500m.

Statistics
Many of the world's currently popular religions are less than a few millennia old, despite the fact that the current evolutionary form of the human species has been scientifically proven through fossil records to have existed for around 200,000 years. It is often the case that scriptures accounting for 2% of human history appear to explain the previous 98%, which is analagous to assuming that an apple is green from skin to core on the basis that the skin is green.

Ethics
Many religions attempt to exert influence on ethical doctrine. However, this is highly contentious! If religious organisations were allowed to affect governmental policies, we would have restrictions on issues such as

 abortions (illegal under Catholicism) blood transfusions (no go for Rastafarians and Amish cultures) contraception (unacceptable to Catholics: go forth and multiply) gender reassignment (they seem to all hate this one) gay marriage (and this one too!) freedom of speech (blasphemy has consistently gotten people into trouble) 

Religions promote ethics, but a strictly confined set of ethics which is not necessarily universally congruent with greater society. I used to think that Buddhism was one of the more tolerant religions, until I found out about this: link. Some religions are so intolerant of mockery and criticism, that I can't even mention them by name, as I could be hunted down and murdered by radical activists.