All religions if you see it through are generally the same as what most people considered a good thing to be done but because people get used to it they forget from where it's originated, many religions reshape the society in their era to more advanced view like what we have now, if you see thing from the bad you will always see its bad and never its good but when you see its good you'll know the reason why, many of modern days invention and view developed from very extremely dark past such as war, etc. Not all good things come from good things but most comes from the bad and to be able to understand religions more don't start with modern standard but from the standard of society from the time that religions emerged and then you'll know why they're not shitty as you said
I don't see how any religion aside of Christianity ever reshaped their society into something better. Christianity is the only religion that removed sacrificial practices that were common in nearly every ancient religion that was replaced by it, and it strictly separates between religion and society.
The thing to notice is that Christianity mostly influenced European culture and development, while leaving other societies in the dust, because it only enables the capable societies. A society that doesn't have the capabilities to evolve past a certain level do not gain anything from Christianity, and instead it causes their downfall by being unable to cope with conflicts that involve other non-Christian groups.
That's the point where we have to introduce Heraclitus of Ephesus, the famous philosopher who coined the term that war is to everything a king and a father. Of course rivalry provides incentives to advance as a society in some aspects (e.g. technology, means of production, social order,etc.) to not become extirpated by a foreign or intern force. However, this again is limited to the basic capability of the society, which is determined by their fitness and ultimately also their potency in the field of intelligence.
Not without a reason we have a globally widespread White Western society everywhere, it is because Christianity influenced a society that had been naturally selected to be resilient and intelligent to evolve past the societal pressure from elites that held the reigns over the means of production for almost 10 centuries (from 8th to 18th century),allowing a great advancement in art and science.
And before someone says something about the "church"/"churches", I'll add that they have nothing to do with Christianity, they just use it as a tool to make people submit to them. Jesus never wanted for people to create a hierarchy within his followers that divides them in casts of the knowing and the dumb followers who just gobble up the crumbs thrown at them (if at all, since the Bible was only available in Latin,Hebrew and Greek for a long time, and liturgy also used these languages for their mass services).
It's obvious that the churches would try to prevent the people to emancipate themselves as free believers in Christ since they would lose their influence and money (it was common practice to pay one tenth of your income to the church as tax), so they kept their followers illusioned about their belief, and only after the 16th century, people started to embrace the real Christianity in Europe.
On that note it's actually hilarious what people talk about here (i.e. the commentary of the author) since it's empty from the beginning. The Japanese culture had already been partially replaced by the time of the 2nd world war since Japanese people had been approaching Western culture ever since the time right before the Meiji restauration. Fukuzawa Yukichi is the biggest example for these progressive people who were in favor of forsaking parts of their identity to receive Western knowledge and cultural traditions in return to adopt a stance that showed the Japanese people a way to advance into an industrialized(and thus Westernized) future.
He's not on the 10000 Yen bill for nothing, he was probably the single-most important Japanese person who made everything possible that brought Japan an advantage in the 1930s/1940s when it came to occupying China and Korea.
In the end the means were provided by the White man of Europe, and if they did this more with China/Korea, the roles just might've been reversed and the Korean people would be the ones calling the Japanese names out of feeling of superiority.
