> 'toasterlovin makes good points about the historical and even current positives of such organizations, I'm not convinced they balance out to a net positive today but I'm much more willing to consider the notion historically

Huh, my intuition is the opposite: now that organized religions have been defanged and stripped of most of their political power they are probably more of a net positive force today than they ever were in the past.

Perhaps that's true outside of the United States and I'm showing my biases. Here, the religious-reactionary complex has been a prime mover to get us where we are today.

It feels like the evangelical movement’s power on the wane, and the subcultures gaining ground on that side of the political spectrum are less savory...

Sure, but they paved the roads.

You're right, I've overstated my point 1., and neglected how many organisations promoting terrible values there are these days.

However:

1. Many of these share significant characteristics with religion (epistemic closure, or a stunning disregard for the truth; Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny touches on that).

2. For some reason religion still enjoys much more respect and reverence than these other organisations (among non-members).

Interesting that you're talking about epistemic closure. Have you considered that you may have epistemic closure with regard to your opinions on religion?

I don't know. I've read in the Bible, the Koran, and Buddhist texts, had some form of contact with religious communities in Germany, Spain, Israel, the US, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, making an effort to understand why people hold the religious beliefs prevalent in the region (somehow, God has chosen to reveal himself differently in different regions (maybe prayers from early weapons manufacturers?)). Furthermore, I've read several books about religions (I count 21 in my Kindle library since 2015, though cannot claim to have read all of them) and listened to courses about "Philosophy, Religion, and the Meaning of Life", theology, and comparative religion, going out of my way to include theologic and apologetic texts.

You tell me.

The only concrete argument I've seen you give against religion is that it promotes bad values. I think I demonstrated pretty clearly that they also promote good values. So religion seems at worst morally ambiguous, which is about par for the course when it comes to the affairs of man.

So why single out religion as a specific problem? Especially when the overwhelming majority of people in the world clearly find a lot of meaning in religion.