You’re religious so you’re being defensive and fighting for reasons to keep your beliefs. You don’t want to believe that you participate in a larger organization that harms humanity. That means you’re a good person.
The religion you participate in still harms people. It doesn’t matter what religion it is.
Good people trying to do good things participate in evil organizations that perpetrate harm.
I’m actually not religious. I just think a lot of these arguments sound uncomfortably close to bigotry.
These are arguments from a position of pure concept and theory, the realm that religion deals in.
Pragmatic reality means that we’re never getting rid of religion because people will continue to perpetuate the abuses of the past into the future.
That doesn’t make them bad people; they sincerely think they’re doing good.
Nonetheless: their belief does not make what they’re doing good.
My youth spent canvasing in favor of the bigotry of Prop 8 in California is not absolved because as a fundamentalist I believed it was the best thing for “the gays”.
I’m sorry it makes you uncomfortable but the truth is that religion and the religious cause endless suffering on this world and they deserve to be called out.