In terms of religion: while I cannot speak for others, as an engineer, statistician, quant (what little of one I currently am, and how much of one I aspire to be), thinker, or whatever else you or I choose to label me with depending on the time of day, for one second to think that some old folk tales written by uninformed and superstitious human beings several millenniums ago with less knowledge of science than a modern third grader hold the answers to anything in life is nonsense of the highest order.
Are there tales of morality and suggestions of how to live a more fulfilling life in some books of religion (allegedly, anyway...judging by what occurred throughout history and what goes on today in the Middle East, I'd beg to differ even on this)? Possibly. Are there direct diktats on how to literally live and govern in this day and age? No.
And the problem is that bible-thumping conservatives, for all of their talk of government leaving people alone, favor a far more intrusive government than that favored by progressives. Progressives advocate to make life a little bit tougher for the tail-end minority in the upper reaches of wealth that most people can only dream of while running a socially laissez-faire government. If you want to marry a person of the same gender, go ahead. If you want to have an abortion, that's between you, your family, your doctor, but not the government. If you wish to carry any sort of religion (or none at all), then that is your right, and you have the right not to be shunned for it.
The conservatives are the exact polar opposite of that. They believe that the government should be economically laissez-faire and return us to the gilded ages (which sired the biggest financial catastrophe in the recent history of man in The Great Depression), and the attempt to do this again through Bushonomics (or perhaps Reaganomics) has come close to repeating that same exact history. Recall that in order to escape the Great Depression, it took a world war to spur on millions of manufacturing jobs by having people manually piece together war machinery.
Times have changed since then--the military complex is no longer a creator of wealth as it was in WW2, but a destroyer of it. Despite how beautiful a piece of machinery the F-22 is, the enemy aircraft for it to shoot down exist only in video games.
In short, everything the conservatives stand for is anachronistic. So many people wish for the standards of living of the 50s...but do recall, that standards of living in the U.S. were relatively good compared to everywhere else...why?
Because "everywhere else" was a smoldering heap of rubble, rebuilding, or a communist dystopia. And even then, standards of living in the U.S. were only good for you if you were white, American, and Christian.
I for one believe in government that prioritizes the little guy--those without the wealthy parents who went to elite universities that they can send their kids to as legacy babies, who connect them to well-heeled individuals already entrenched in high positions in industry that their children otherwise did nothing to even earn the time of day from, and who are already born on third base. They need no help from Uncle Sam--as they've already benefited tremendously. Uncle Sam should be there to help those who show potential, but just don't have the necessary wherewithal to achieve it alone.