So many of the comments here are affirming what I have long observed: much anti-religious sentiment (“much”, not “all”!) is actually a reaction to fundamentalism, which is the bad theology of scriptural literalism, which brings heresies like hating LGBT, insisting the Bible is also a science textbook, superstitious views of certain Middle Eastern lands, and more. Growing up as a mainline Protestant, I thankfully didn…
After being raised in a non-Fundamentalist denomination I'd say the progressive ones are more insidious and no less harmful. Their foundations are all the same text, no matter how literal or figurative they interpret it. IME they usually also teach the same bad ways of thinking: emotion over logic, testimony over hard evidence, authority beyond your understanding, etc.
I am not taught emotion over logic. In fact, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (a framework derived from but not described by him) has you evaluate beliefs with reason being a co-equal base. In confirmation and later in-depth adult classes, we were instructed to wrestle with the scripture. For example, we dug into the context of the times to understand better why certain things would have been said. We acknowledged selected verses made no sense. We agreed some parts we have no choice but to disregard. We frankly don't take Revelations that seriously because it's mostly batshit crazy. :-)
I am not taught testimony over evidence. My church fully embraces evolution. We see Genesis for the story and the poetry.
Authority beyond understanding: that gets back into the theological allegiance insisted on by the fundamentalists mainly.