From my perspective they not a linear thing, we don’t have good religions v bad religions, we just have religion that contains good and bad, how harmful the bad is determines my dislike. Some of the bad is the shroud of secrecy that facilitates criminal activities, it’s to the side of the religious teachings, some of it is the us v them teachings that can breed hatred and destruction.
I wouldn’t make a claim that religion cannot do good, I think giving a community a place to come together is frequently positive, but I would challenge to identify a good practice that religion does that a secular group/organisation cannot also do. If all the charity, compassion and community strength can exist without religion, then the divisiveness and harm become more important factors. Ofc I’m coming from a perspective of not believing in a deity/deities so see no validity in the teachings in the first place, their footprint on the world around is what I judge. Leave a gentle footprint, keep it out of public policy and i still dislike religion as a concept but I’m really not going to care.
I think there's good and bad religion for sure, by saying that I am not passing judgement on central tenets per se, so much as I am behaviour, deeds not words and I think there is a lot more to it than simple communitarianism. The thing is that most of the critics of religion do tend to choose religion at its worst rather than religion at its best and discount any or all of the good that religion has done over historical time. Which I think is unfair but probably understandable given the waves of anti-religious propaganda which have taken place, from a lot of different quarters, and which are almost a tradition all of their own now. It does not help that there is that tendency of some who confronted with wrongs, simply deny them or even reaffirm behaviour which has cause, or contributed, to them.
None of that is by any means restricted to religiosity though, and I think it may be a "fatal conceit" to treat it such, most of the harm associated with bad religion I've seen reproduced, sometimes almost in "refined" fashion, in secular formats. Abuse scandals, cover ups of sexual exploitation of children and vulnerable adults, institutionalized neglect and harm. Its all there and harder often to tackle or confront as it does not have the "bogey man" factor associated with religious beliefs and motivations which does exist in secular/shared cultures. Or the sorts of "self-congratulation" which secular/shared cultures can, and do, frequently engage in, a sort of "look what happens with them, see what they do, we are not like that", which is not a preserve of religious beliefs about "elects", "choosen peoples" or sectarianism.
I can understand someone with a dislike for religion preferring that communitarian, social service, congregating, care, mutual aid are organized, funded, delivered without those aspects. For many years, and occasionally still, there are varieties of religious experience or motives that I dislike too, not even particularly insidious varieties but sincere varieties I just think are extremely ill conceived, serve the worldly needs of individuals, are largely a psychological rationalization if you broke it all down etc. For different reasons other than secularism per se and having more to do with a shared culture I think there should at the very least be pluralism of delivery when it comes to those things.
The only thing I would say is that I've not seen anything quite like religion that can mobilize mutual aid, caring, altruism. A lot of the time secularism and liberalism or other creedos will demand that services or community exist but they do not personally feel duty, obligation or a wish to be the ones who deliver on that demand. I cant think of secular equivalents for religious services, rituals etc. which really operate in the same fashion consistently and do not break down or dissolve in short order or which are unenduring in the way that religion has proven to be. This could be something to do with thinking in terms of historical time though, which is something that almost subconsciously I find religions actually do while their critics do not.
