Faith and belief are the cornerstones of all evil:

• Belief asserts things as truth entirely without evidence. This lack of evidence is an intentional feature, and not a flaw.

• Faith asserts things as truth despite copious evidence to the contrary. It calls to intentionally ignore any disproof, in its entirety.

And it is through faith and belief that good-hearted people can be made to do things they would have never normally been willing to do.

“With or without evil, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil. But for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” - Steven Weinberg

Reading the bible never made me a hard atheist. UNDERSTANDING the bible did that. I have never seen a more bigoted, omnicidal, and just plain evil deity as the god of the Abrahamic religions. May it stay dead.