Christianity and its effect on self-worth

[Tonus]

Yep. You noted Christianity in particular, but many atheists believe that most religions are evil. If most religions are evil, and most people have belonged to a religion, that means people are generally evil.

I think that religion is just another form of tribalism. Humans, being social creatures, have the habit of forming exclusive groups based around common traits: nationality, ethnicity, skin color, hair color, gender, and so on. We have also developed a desire to form exclusive groups based on traits that are not inborn: sports teams, political affiliation or ideology, and religion being among those.

In the past I've said that religion is a particularly dangerous form of that trait, because it posits that there is a supreme judge who can excuse --or even praise-- the most horrific actions of one person towards another. But we can see that even without divine sanction, some people will savage one another in the name of a political ideology or even a sports team. So maybe religion only stands out in one of two ways: it implies that there is a supreme force that approves of such behavior, or it implies that there is a supreme force that is apathetic towards it. So it's not evil in and of itself, but it permits and sometimes excuses evil done in its name.