And I guess this must be closing in on the root of our disagreement: I don’t see that religion requires uncritical belief.
I don’t know what your litmus test is for “standards of evidence.” Can you elaborate on what good standards of evidence looks like to you and how you know they are good?
Lastly, by agreeing that there is not universality in the backwards-ness and issue of religion, it seems to me you can’t argue for religious thought to have inherit nature to that kind. Rather, there are expressions of it, religiosity, being backwards and bad. The part does not account for the whole.