The bottom line is that All religions consider that believing in things - Gods, angels, miracles, reincarnation - without empirical evidence is a good thing - they call it faith and generally prize it as a high virtue, if not THE highest virtue.

One could hardly ask for a better recipe for trouble.

This is why it is reasonable and unbigoted to say 'religion makes me sick' as long is is made quite clear that not all religious believers make one sick! That would be bigotry.

The only reason that Christianity isn't as dangerous as Islam - and a brief look at America's record in the Middle East makes one wonder about that - is that secularism has largely drawn its teeth - not from any intrinsic virtue in Christianity itself. Islam lacks an Enlightenment.

I must say that I am amused and a little irritated by those on this thread who take the virtues common to all humankind and decide that they are 'religious' virtues. They are not. They are the evolved survival strategies of a social species that inevitably embed themselves - alas all to imperfectly - into the human artefact that is religion.