What do you get out of religion?

[ChickenOfDoom]

Religion has never been a significant part of my life. At one point (elementary school) I held a loathing for religious people. This came to be when I was in the third and fourth grades where people would tell me that 'god had a mom' in response to questions about who created god if god created the universe and insist that I was going to hell for not believing. I told them that when I died I would just go sideways rather than up or down. From what they told me I got the general sense that god was an asshole and that if he was going to send me to hell for not believing in him I didn't want his heaven anyways. So at that point it seemed to me that religion consisted of beliefs about what happened to you after you died, where the universe came from, threatening people of different beliefs, and going to church every week. So I decided to become an atheist because they were obviously all just stupid jerks and I didn't want to give in to their threat that I was going to hell.

Then I had a chat with someone on battle.net while playing Warcraft 3, during one of the heated religious debates that went on sometimes, and I realized that being religious and being a complete moron weren't necessarily the same thing.

But I still don't see what people get out of it. What is there to religion, besides the obvious social and communal implications? Besides a series of beliefs and practices and institutions leading infrastructures of public control, what is it?