That there are some theists and some anti-theists who use silly rhetorical tricks to denigrate their opponents is not in dispute; But equally it doesn't seem to be relevant to the current discussion to point that out.
Unless they're doing it. Not denigrating opponents but more denigrating the subject.
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As for definitions, there are a great number of phenomena and grouping them under “Religion” is like lumping all animal species together as “Animal” and saying “let’s describe the thing that is ’Animal’.” In this sense, there is no "Religion" to succinctly define.
The OP has presented how some among the religious urge progress away from magical thinking but a lot of focus in responses went to pinning it down to what it’s been historically: It’s been magical thinking so that is the nature of it that can never change. It’s been superstition, it’s been anti-science, it’s been unthinking acceptance of beliefs pushed by hucksters, it’s been weak people running away in imagination. It’s defined to pin it down in negative terms so that any change in it must look like what secularists want, a change to the secular: ’it’s either magical thinking or else it’s philosophy or psychology, so there, we’ve made
all good into
our domain’.
How does one get out of that impasse, assuming they have the will to and see what religion might offer?
To say the bathwater has been sifted and no baby was found is to restate the hardline “it’s all bad” stance. And that’s values-talk, it’s not a fact: ‘I, and those who value things much as I do, don’t value it so there’s no baby’. So maybe we can borrow other values for just a bit and apply the
principle of charity?
There are religious atheists. There are religious naturalists. They’re not half-secular folk pining for the magical imaginary things they’ve lost and trying to add it back in (as if nature's not in a sense sacred and miraculous). They're thinkers and they’ve wondered “Is this religion or ‘just philosophy’?” and decided it’s their religion because philosophy isn’t a life-practice, it’s rather some burdensome and droll mentation that too much of it will suck the life out of life. Some religions will go beyond only obsessing over "What are the true beliefs we must hold?", and some even advocate dropping beliefs as entirely as a person can because, for them, conceptions are blinders to how reality is. That's weird to many Europeans and Americans because their culture assumes it's by description that we know how reality is. Daoism and Zen are two examples of religions that view words as just getting in the way; they offer beliefs and rituals as “skillful means”, a prod in the direction of being more directly in relation with reality (or, being it directly) rather than having it mediated to one's self via conceptions. And it’s similar in some sorts of Sufism and Christian mysticism (when that word is taken to mean, not mystification, but rather an attempt at non-mediated “pure” experience).
The point of all that being how "it's all just bad stuff" is a values statement, not a fact-based description. Also, that the exceptions wreck any attempt to lump all religions as "basically this" or "basically that"; if they're dismissed as not characteristic then that rather illustrates why it looks like the bathwater has no baby in it to some people. Another point being to toss in some more about what I find promising of progress in religions. That religion can be a path to get more "connected" with nonverbal reality is not new, it’s been there a very long time, but there’s a chance it can become more well-known now… except for the ranting about the hoped-for demise of all religion “cuz fundies”. The so-called “liberal religionists” are told “you enable fundies so in a way you’re more reprehensible than they are” and the right response from them might very well be “No we, maybe more than you, are the cure”.