Hi Gregory,
I am hoping to influence people away from this meme of ‘its the leftist, atheistic media’ that causes people to have a negative view of religion. If you say to people that the only reason they thing religion is bad is because of how the media represents it, then it really is extremely unfair to them. People are capable of reaching their own conclusions, independent of what the media says, and people are also capable of not automatically swallowing what the media does say. The approach you have taken is a kind of straw-man because this is not really how people reach their conclusions. If the media is biased, then it is biased towards telling people what they already believe.
I think that we have to accept the fact that people are justified in criticizing the various religions of the world when some of their proponents do bad things. This is not to say that they do not also do good things. In any field of human endeavor, the media tends to report the negatives because that sells papers. This is true of politics, of science, of education, medicine, law, commerce and religion. In all of these areas, the news media does not spend time talking about all the amazing achievements and good that is done. I think people mostly know about this unfortunate feature of the media and many people are able to factor this into their calculations.
Another side comment; Aside from the validity or merits of Compte’s work, I think the polarization and rampant anti-science sentiment in some sectors in the United States represents just the kind of tensions that he was referring too. Yes it is much more complex, but it is nevertheless there.