If you read a book on the Third Reich, would you suppose it was being raised as a positive example?

In a similar way, a great deal of the Old Testament is presenting history, not condoning those beastly actions (and, indeed, often directly and straightforwardly condemning them). Context is vital.

This as well. Often people who are looking for answers (or questions) find them.

> This is true. However when a country is sufficiently developed it may no longer need religion. The functions that the Church used to provide (education, healthcare, charity) will be taken over by the State.

This is quite wrong - the main beneficial function of religion is to provide an institutional framework for enhancing social capital and the overall "sense of community", which is a critical antidote (far more so than "welfare" or even private charity) against social exclusion and marginalization for the most vulnerable in society. The only states which try to take over this function altogether are totalitarian states - in fact, even in many authoritarian or otherwise dysfunctional and unfree states, religion - at least at a "grassroots" level - tends to function in practice as a haven for civil society. The only institutions that even compete would be labor unions (in some places), and for obvious reasons these are far less universal in their overall outlook.

For the average person, yes, but many people got their start on philosophy reading religious texts (see: Kierkegaard, Hegel, Tolstoy, and others)[1].

Going into the realm of personal experience, I made the choice to go to church as a child, and reading the bible expanded my horizons to lots of other religious texts and eventually philosophy and literature. My closest friends in this hobby and discipline started the same way as well.

I am not positing that it opens everyone to philosophy and new ideas (as it is deeply steeped in tradition), but that it opens those who may already be interested and gives them an "in".

[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_philosophy

Saying "A can provide X" doesn't mean "without A there cannot exist X"

There is no need to treat religion and atheism as polar opposites. Atheism, at least in the west, has considerable overlap with Christian theology on topics like human rights. There is little rationality behind human rights, they can't be measured nor observed. Eg, who, when and how determined that humans have the right to life, but dolphins do not?

"Universal human rights" feels like a more modern wording for "God-given lifestyle". They are beneficial, but also as irrational as any religion before them, and rely on supernatural origin to make them them non-negotiable.