"If I'm going to favour my own principles AND empirical evidence OVER Word Of God, I might as well give up on religion entirely and save myslef much guilt and fear."

Drop the 'empirical evidence' bit and this is basically how I decided to leave Christianity: Some bits of advice in the bible are obviously wrong, and if I'm going to be using my own judgment to determine which of the questionable bits are right and which are wrong, I might as well just use my own judgment in general.

I suspect that this kind of reasoning might be more palatable to religious folks than the more common proofs that religion is wrong on matters of fact.