Certainly true. The pointed rejection of all forms of religion after having been wronged by it is common, and Slate Star Codex makes mention of it in a note tha

Certainly true. The pointed rejection of all forms of religion after having been wronged by it is common, and Slate Star Codex makes mention of it in a note that's somewhat relevant to this topic. My personal hunch is that it mirrors an experience my friends have described about sushi and coffee, neither of which I enjoy. Apparently, bad versions of those things are unpalatable if you don't know what would make them good. If you start there, you wonder "why the hell does anyone consume this". But once you've had the very good versions, you "get it" and know what you should be experiencing when you go back to the lesser versions, and more easily "forgive" their imperfect representations of a thing you enjoy. I've definitely had that experience with religion. I grew up in a family that was ambivalent to such things, failing to understand why anyone would care at all. Then as an adolescent I saw all the horror, at home and abroad, wrought by religion, and rejected it as superstitious mumbo-jumbo at best, and a pretense for violence, bigotry, and a return to the stone-age at worst. When I finally managed to encounter a packaging that let me see what might be good about it, I was grateful to finally understand what the fuss was about, even if I'm not all the way bought in. I now have approximately the view that Sam Harris[1] does: "I still considered the world’s religions to be mere intellectual ruins, maintained at enormous economic and social cost, but I now understood that important psychological truths could be found in the rubble." [0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/09/all-debates-are-bravery-debates/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/09/all-debates-are-bravery... [1] https://samharris.org/podcasts/chapter-one/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/chapter-one/