Religion, or more appropriately Islam, wasn't just used to wind up the 19 men who committed the 9/11 attacks, it was the main reason, hell it was the only reason why these men carried out the attacks. It was their religious faith, their absolute belief, that flying those planes into those buildings would not end their lives that gave them the courage to do what they did. They really believed what they said they believed. They were 100% sure that when they died they would be fast tracked to a martyrs heaven where 72 virgin brides would be awaiting them. It wasn't political or economic discrimination or lack of education, it was religion and religion only that motivated those men to do what they did.

You simply can't say bad things will be done with all teachings. Consider the differences in world religions alone. Not all religions are created equally. Not all religions teach the same things and when they do teach the same things they don't teach them equally well. You will of course get psychopaths and sociopaths in all walks of life who will do horrible things in the name of whatever it is they believe, or don't believe. However you don't need to be a psychopath or a sociopath to do horrible things in the name of religion because (most) religions give you ample reason to do those things.

If anybody thinks the violence we see in the Muslim world is born of political injustices or Israeli occupation or the British and American excursions into Afghanistan and Iraq then where are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers? If the violence we witness in the Muslim world was born of these reasons we should see Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers. The Tibetan occupation is every bit as brutal and more cynical then anything imposed on the Muslims in the middle east but we simply don't see Tibetan Buddhist calling for the deaths of non-combative Chinese, you don't see them blowing themselves up on buses or at weddings or in crowds of children. It simply doesn't happen and it's not likely to happen. You would have to work extraordinarily hard to twist the core principles of Buddhism to achieve this. You don't have to work anywhere near as hard as a Muslim, or a Christian either for that matter. The more fundamentalist you become in the Abrahamic religions the more violent and intolerant you become. You become Osama Bin Laden or Jerry Falwell or Ian Paisley for the simple reason that these religions are born of the OT which is arguably the most violent and horrific text ever written. If you are Jain (a religion in India with over 10 million followers) it is simply impossible to become like that however fundamentalist you become. The core principle of Jainism is non-violence. The seriously fundamentalist Jain's walk around with with cheese masks over their mouths so as not to inhale a bug. There is simply no comparing the "peaceful" religions of Islam and Christianity to religions like Jainism and Buddhism.

Christianity is nowhere near as bad as Islam at this moment because Christianity has undergone it's reformation. Millions are still dying every year due to the genocidal stupidity of the Catholic Churches teachings of the sinfulness of condom use. Millions are suffering from horrible illnesses that could be cured through progress in stem cell research yet we have Christians preventing this work from being done on morally and intellectually indefensible grounds so by no means is Christianity harmless or now on the same level as the eastern religions.

Malachy said that if you follow the NT you cannot be violent. Explain the Inquisitions? Jesus is simply not some all peaceful, perfect example of how a human being should be. Read 2 Thessalonian or Revelation and you see a vengeful, hateful, violent, wrathful Jesus. That Jesus is waiting to be discovered. Nowhere in the book does it say "that's bogus". Taken in half his moods though he's wonderful.

Consider the leading lights of the Christian religions who are still taught today, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. These guys knew their religion, they were informed. Now in Aquinas' case he thought heretics should be killed outright. Augustine thought they should be tortured. Augustine's arguments for torture laid the foundations for the Inquisition and the men who carried out the horrific acts also knew and followed the NT. This wasn't some departure from reason. We weren't witnessing a departure from reason in to psychopathology when we were burning people alive for five centuries. This was perfectly reasonable behaviour if you read the books and you believed them.

Now of course people would kill each other over other things if it weren't for religion, as I've said previously. The two world wars had practically nothing to do with religion, but religion is such a potent force for overriding our basic moral instincts. It creates divisions in society, it gives people the willingness to gladly end their own lives in order to kill other innocent people and it exacerbates the natural human tendency for in-group loyalty and out-group hostility. It provides labels for who is evil and who is good, who should die and who should be protected. For that reason alone we should do all we can to oppose it. If it were true then we would simply have to put it, however unpleasant it is, but as there is simply not one shred of evidence to back up the claims of religion there exists no good reason at all to put up with it in our world.

"Religion is the greatest insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize winning physicist.