My family are all atheists, sister brother uncles aunts grandparents etc.  This started with my grandad, and his influence has been felt on down. 

Personally I have a big problem with the faiths descended from Abraham for the following reasons:

-Islam - they tend to not care about terrorism or to rationalize it saying that the US, Britain, etc are hurting muslims.  Well we now have to spend much more on the military, CIA, FBI and law enforcement bc of terrorism, and we could be spending that $$$$$ on social programs or whatnot.  I have a big problem with that.

Protestants- they seem to think that bc they are christians and dont do things like drink or smoke weed, that they are superior morally and ethically to other people.  I've known plenty of Christians that pieces of Sh!t that you wouldnt want around your worst enemy, but whatever.  I dislike how they have their morality based on things like drugs, gambling, drinking, etc.  If I want to go to vegas, who the hell am I hurting?

Jews- They are kind of butthurt from the holocaust (understandable) but I dislike organized religion so I tend to talk some smack.  I'll talk the same smack about jews that I talk about other religions, and they try to call me some kind of nazi.  Fvck them.  Seriously, they can get over this, they aren't in the same group of minorities as blacks, hispanics, etc bc their level of income has historically been higher than these groups and even of white people on average.  

Catholics- I hate how the Catholics protect their own pedophile preists and just shuffle them around from Church to church and dont kick them out.  I also hate how they dont allow preists to be married, which tends to bring more molestes into the preisthood.  

I personally dont like it. I consider myself agnostic

"am I the only one who is atheist" "My family are all atheists" sir you're not the only one, aside from your family there are billions of atheists  out there, you should consider yourself lucky to be surrounded by people who agree with you, I myself am jealous.

Even the religious are turning away from organized religion and are simply unaffiliated with any church.

Churches tend to preach fundamentalism, which is total nonsense and sometimes very harmful.

This is positive direction for the human race.

The belief in God or a high power/creator is fine. Organized religion is not. It's basically a man made institution with man made rules, created to control and manipulate the population.

Oh, we're not talking about Civilization IV?

and to lead a political agenda. Its happened throughout history and will continue for thousands more years.

teaching children fiction as fact should be made illegal. Anything which cannot be proven should not be taught, and the process of proving should be left to qualified people. If the children grow up and they think there is a possibility of a god similar to that described in religious text, then fine but obviously if you tell them something is real from a young age, they will believe it. Theres children who believe santa clause and the toothfairy exists, its just wrong to misdirect them in this way.

I must be the only person on the internet who had generally positive experiences with organized religion. There are definitely plenty of nutcases out there and I do my best to avoid them, but I also went to a tiny private school partially subsidized by a local church, and got a significantly better education there than I was getting at public school.

We're talking going from Spanish and algebra--where the teacher chewed me out for taking notes--to informal logic and Latin.

I suspect this thread isn't really about how organized religion is bad, but more that asshats are everywhere.

Not really, bc IMO the various groups repeat the same kinds of things over and over. Muslims do one thing, jews another, protestants different things and so forth.

I can't really say about other religions, but I used to go to a christian church since I can remember. You're totally right when you say they judge someone's morals based on drinking, gambling or even sex (women who have sex before marriage are considered "immoral", and masturbation is a sin. I'm serious.).

Thankfully, after rationalizing for some time, I realized how illogical and stupid was to have someone tell me what to do or not to do - especially when they don't give any reasons, it's just based on fear ("You're going to hell if you don't do that or do this."). I'd go as far as to say that it brainwashes people, especially when it's about sex.

Thankfully, it seems that the number of people adhering to what I call "free faith" is constantly increasing. That is, people who believe in God or any other deity they so choose to believe, but do not follow what the churches tell them and don't agree with any of the religion's dogmas/tenets/teachings. I'm one of those people myself.