There is a strand of Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious argument which goes like this.
Of course you can go through the Bible or the Koran and pick out some repulsive quotes. This is because they were written a long time ago. We don't suggest that the whole of our holy books are literally true any more, we simply see them as metaphors for deeper truths.
There are some points about this approach which immediately leap to mind.
Firstly, you may not take these books literally, but a lot of people do, and as a result they can say and do some extremely unpleasant things. We are concerned about these people, who are arguably the majority of theists in the world, and we insist on our right to robust debate with them, whether or not you think we are being sufficiently respectful.
Also, as metaphors, as guides for behaviour, as history, even as literature, both books are rubbish. You'd have to give the King James Bible some credit for phrase-making, but most of that is down to the translators. The Koran is quite the most tediously repetitive book I have ever read, although again there is the occasional rhetorical felicity.
If you want a moral code, Kant or Russell are better. If you want history, Robin Lane Smith is better. If you want literature, Shakespeare is better. If you want metaphors, bloody Star Wars is better.
When people cherry pick from the Books, they apply modern criteria. We like the stuff about being nice to each other, so we take that out and ignore the stuff about subjugating women and stoning sodomites. If you're going to cherry pick, what is it about the nice bits that makes them nice? The bits that aren't viciously cruel are frankly unremarkable.
Having said all that, obviously if people must have conversations with their imaginary friend we'd rather they were nice ones. Cherry pickers may seem odd to us, and we may dislike the mental tricks they use to get to where they are, but if every religious person in the world became a religious moderate the world would clearly be all the better for it.
There's another reason why we like the moderates better, which is to do with our methods. We take the position that we'll beat the religious in a fair fight, and that over the generations for every one of us they persuade, we'll persuade ten of them. In particular, we think that if given fair access to children we can reduce the percentage of religious belief in each successive generation. If we're wrong, if religion turns out to have virtues which outweigh its flaws in the public mind even in the absence of coercion, then that's up to them.
What we do object to is the deliberate undermining of children's critical facilities, through faith schools, Koran chanting and the like. I grew up in an atheist household, as it happens, but I never went to atheist Sunday school. No-one ever took me to the local Humanist Society offices and bathed my forehead in unholy water. In fact, we were all Christened in a church, because that's what people used to do.
I was never told that I had been born into the atheist faith community, or that my parents' metaphysical beliefs created obligations for me. I was only ever told that it was up to me to make up my own mind. At school and in the Scouts, I was taught about religion, with massive emphasis on the guy nailed to the planks, and subjected to various religious rituals, all of which I resented.
I resented them because even at that age the contrast between my parents' laissez-faire attitude and the strict enforcement of the God botherers was clear to me. If offered a genuinely free choice between one group saying "think as you're told" and another group saying "make up your own mind", it's clear which way most children will go. If offered a real choice between one group saying "make up your own mind, but we think you're really going to like these books from the Iron Age" and another group saying "make up your own mind, here's a Playstation", it's just as clear, frankly. Even if you don't like Playstations.