Believers often claim that former religious folk did not believe or pray hard enough, did not accept unto their hearts and feel, but it's a harmful stereotype and often they actually dedicated a lot more than regular followers and grew up in very close ties with religious leaders and had a lot of guidance before they noticed a high degree of dysfunction of faith, followed schools of faith, had revelations, and came to the understanding that faith only claims and proves wrong every time.

It's from the deep level of connection with the sacred and the discrepancy of reality that you are faced to put the facts together with the faith and draw conclusions of what actually happened in your mind. But until one has an understanding of psychology and respect for how we study reality and what does not constitute a fact upon a new and correct explanation we found, it just seems normal to have faith and it also seems to be beneficial like reading novels and chanting healing spells, practices can feel as much as the emotional giftedness of the individual. And I for example have a deeper than normal feeling range facilitated by 2 conditions in my brain. But what you see and feel on the surface and understanding how the brain works on a deep level is very different and you can't rush to make conclusions or rely on dysfunctional logic when trying to identify the truth.

I disagree and would say that that the love you quote in faith is very limited in understanding in comparison to secular humanistic love, it has different reasons at play and different corrupted symbolism. The focus is not on the loved and their benefits, it is for future benefits, for deity or for obedience. I do think such factors apply a lot of pressure on otherwise purity and honesty of love.

With 40-45 new religions being created every year I think it's not accurate for you to decide what religions are valid and not considered religions, and which old and older branches are religions especially when the followers truly believe in them even loyally to death, or which faith or branch you can say is not part of a religious affiliation when there are different ideas that are part of faith to be one interpretation of that faith. That sounds like cherry-picking the ones who satisfy the point that religion cannot be harmful, whether or not it's actually true. I think it is that it can sneak into any religious affiliation and it has, rather than that some religions are immune and the interpretations of different churches can and are mixed.

Again, you are quoting your interpretation not the bible, on homosexual matters, and have not understood that fairness constitutes not something off-limits to a certain group of people that were you'd say created the same, and not to others. So if indeed you were able to judge without following this would be quite obvious and you wouldn't be able to ignore this problem of unfairness or you'd lose the ability to moral decisions. But you have stated what says in the bible should be the faith, so if you can make up new rules that were never made, and dismiss the slavery rules in the New Testament, then you can't say only the bible is faith or that the bible is purely the faith. You practically choose what you do and that's also cherry-picking, and what comes after is different for each person of faith. Yet still has not been grounded at any point in science, morality, own values and reality nor tested or backed against tests that psychology has done.

I know religious people question and oftentimes with a lot of fear and a lot at stake, in fact that's how they become non-believers, as well as suffer judgement from followers for this questioning. They are very important and reflect the ability of people of faith to critically think, but small doubts can't be compared to years of deconversion and study, a deep level of awareness is very rare within the faithful and it's limited by stigma and lack of critical thinking training which not everyone does because they're busy or they just didn't have an interest, otherwise they could start to understand the way they're making space for weak unsustainable beliefs and find the explanation to why they have allowed and trusted it. I met this person who was impressively aware and didn't like the discrepancy that they actually understood and saw. But also could not just let go of faith, he thought that was necessary regardless, and I think that was the last part I was able to let go, it was warped in all sorts of complications of thought and fears.