• Teacher at Christian academy accepts plea deal on child porn charges; victim’s family outraged (archived link)
• Catholic priest accused of sexual assault fathered children of victims, court hears
• Pastor among those charged in human trafficking investigation in Cumberland County
(archived link)
• Women's soccer coach at Central Christian College arrested for sexual battery against student (archived link)
• Texas approves new Bible-based curriculum for public elementary schools
• Writer excommunicated during Mormon purge is posthumously "re-baptized" with restoration of "temple blessings" (archived link)
• Indiana pastor is arrested for child exploitation, possession of child pornography, sexual battery, child seduction and voyeurism-using a camera (archived link)
• Nazarene pastor says he was threatened that he might not have a job if he reported church molestations (archived link)
• Oklahoma schools superintendent demands students watch him pray for Trump (archived link)
All positions of power can (and will) be exploited. While religion has been used to justify a lot of bad things, so has a lot of other things. Religion is also a lot of good things, like culture, philosophy and wisdom passing through generations.
It is also worth noting that you criticise religion as a whole, but all your links are about Christianity.
I point this out, because I used to be a hardcore White atheist and I had a lot of bad takes. A lot of indigenous religions do not have the same ideas about hierarchy and even the Christian idea that humans are above nature often does not exist.
Hierarchies are a bad thing in all* forms, but hierarchies are not necessary for religion.
They kinda are, though. My take is that all organised religion is bad. But what is the difference between a personal belief and a religion? It's pretty much the level of organisation. And with organisation comes hierarchies.
Uh... No? A religion is a belief system shared by many people. Organization, let alone hierarchies is optional but not at all necessary. For example as a Muslim I'd argue that at least mainstream Sunni Islam (excluding deviant groups such as Sufists) doesn't fit the Western concept of organized religion. Setting aside the merits and demerits of religion, it feels to me that discussion on this topic on English-speaking media is very eurocentric for the conclusions it attempts to reach.
to be honest Judaism isn't particularly organized either. there is no central authority past each synagogue's own rabbi and even then their "authority" is rather limited