I hear you. I used to resent despise religion. But then I spent time around progressives who happened to be Christian. They behaved in exactly the opposite ways conservative religious people are known to behave. I’m from the south. We just don’t see that down here. It really caused me to think about the effect of conservatism on religion.
I think the more conservative a person is, with or without religion, the more cruel, inhumane or sociopathic that person is. One can accurately determine a person’s level of conservatism just by observing the severity of these traits. Religion seems to amplify these conservative traits, but it doesn’t always predict them in my experience.