Fair enough.
My rebuttal, because I think you have a fair point that there is more charity done in the name of various religions than not, and don't want to get all polemic about it, is that with or without religion, good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things, but it takes religion to make good people do bad things. I think that a majority of the world's religious charities tend to be bloated, to spend a lot of their donations on the infrastructure and employees, and in the case of Christian religions, on proselytizing and purchasing and handing out Bibles, but certainly not all of them, and so I can see your point. This phenomena of wasting lots of donation dollars on infrastructure and employees isn't remotely exclusive to religious charities mind, and I'm certainly not saying it is, in fact I think this applies to most charitable organizations globally.
My overriding primary concern is that if that religious structure wasn't there, I do think those people involved in that stuff would still be involved with it. Its founded in their empathy and love of humanity, less than their love of necessarily existing sky men. To give credit to the religion, for the actions of its followers, is to give undue credit where it doesn't belong, in my personal opinion. That's one of the issues I have with the "God" concept. God always seems to get all of the credit, but none of the blame. If I donate to charity, I did that. God didn't do that. Yet I'll credit God with me giving that charitable donation. However, if I don't give that donation to charity, I don't blame God for that do I? Of course not. Then its all on my shoulders.
We see this phenomena everywhere. The alcoholic doesn't blame God for creating him with the propensity to drink too heavily. He doesn't credit God with his suffering, or causing him to lose his family and job as a result of his addiction. But he's sure to give God the credit when he goes to AA and gets clean. The way I see it, God had nothing to do with any of it. The alcoholic was an alcoholic because of a genetic predisposition, and cultural availability, and acceptance of drinking, and he stopped being an alcoholic because of his hard work, and negative cultural attitudes towards uncontrolled drinking. Another example is when someone has a heart attack or something, and goes to the hospital, and people who spent decades of their lives striving to get through medical school save their life. You don't see the patient blaming God for giving them the heart attack, and you won't see them thanking the medical staff very often either. Instead they'll be on television or telling their friends "I thank God for saving my life". From my point of view, God didn't have jack squat to do with them surviving that heart attack. Luck and talented doctors did. Its just sorta this double standard in religious thinking that denies credit where its due, and gives undue credit where it doesn't belong, that I've seen so often in my life that it really sticks out to me as sort of....an error in thinking in a way.
But I do understand where you're coming from, and not going to knock your opinion. I don't fully agree with it, but I see the point you're trying to make and do think it is a legitimate one, if debatable.
