Of course there are crazy people out there. There are even crazy Athiests. There's always someone who ruins it for the rest of their group.

One can take the fact we have so many religions out there, and even create modern ones like Scientology (which argues that religious beliefs are a process of bad cognitive process), shows that the norm for humans is to engage in religious practices.  There is a longing for something bigger than use to give meaning, and plug into and find others so you can connected.  What you see in modern society, the product of liberalism (historical drive towards individualism), is a feeling of being disconnected and a longing to find others, kindship and things to have faith in and aspire.  It is human nature.  So, it shouldn't be surprising that, when people strip away theistic religion, you will see things like in communist and atheist Russia, that you end up enshrining other things.  In this thread alone you saw Einstien and the fictional character of House, quoted in areas where they aren't authorities, because intellect is enshrined above other things.   Folks, Einstein is an expert when it comes to physics, NOT issues of human nature, particularly beliefs.

.... End of post (resisted urge to find some Chesterton and post it).

yeah, but when there's a crazy atheist, you get to blame it on THEM, not their god (or lack thereof).  And therin lies the issue. 

True. But when someone (a Religious person) thinks of starting a war over Religion, I'm going to blame it on them.

Which is good of you, and how it SHOULD be, but the sad fact is that the blame often ends up being diverted to 'the church said I should', and the church says 'that's what's in the bible, god said it', and in the end, we get crazy people killing in the name of god and nobody taking responsibility for their actions.  

Sure, they'll get in shit, be put in jail, killed, or tortured for it, but in the end, the mentality is 'he was only doing what god told him to do' by other crazy religious people, and we just get more crazy religious people who basically are allowed to teach and preach hatred and intolerance and bigotry "in the name of God" while good religious people (like you) just go about your lives.  

I used to be a 'good religious person' who just wanted to love and tolerate the shit out of everyone, but then I grew up and saw how ineffectual that was, not to mention I Realized I didn't need a god to force positive morality on me, and I certainly didn't expect the spirit in the sky to let me judge or belittle others.  There are jsut too many inconsistencies in the bible, and the fact that there are dozens - no, hundreds - of different interpretations of the same book shows just how credible religion is as anything other than a series of tall tails and mythologies meant to push values and ideals of their time.  

These atrocities was a clear perversion of the actual message, so much so that the 'church' (which by this time was actually a theistic government, something Jesus never wanted) ended up putting the words of Jesus into latin so the common people could not understand them, this was so they could use religion as a tool to build their own power and agenda. They had to hide the actual words of Jesus in order to perpetrate their evil agenda. I fault the corruption of power and evil people for the atrocities you talk about, I cannot fault the core message which is tolerance, love, humility, self-control, non-violence, and equality - a person or group that actually holds to those standards could not commit such atrocities.

Hypothetically speaking, if I told you that you should love others, and you took it as a call to kill anybody that doesn't exhibit love as you choose define it, that would not reflect badly on me as you would be perverting my words. The same is true in this case. In all honesty, the deliberate misuse of Christianity by evil and intolerant people who only (selfishly) seek to grow their own power and agenda (or to 'force' people to act as they want) pisses me the hell off, so in that sense of 'religion', I would completely agree with you. The problem comes when you try to lump true followers of the message in with this blatent evil, as we live in the exact opposite manner to what you described.

So why not start a crusade against 'crazy religious people', people that actually believe or do the stuff you describe. I don't think any of the people posting in this thread match your descriptions, so you're barking up the wrong tree. Creating a straw man that exemplifies the worst possible misuses of religion, then projecting that straw man onto nonviolent, tolerant, non-activist religious people is counter productive and only makes you look intellectually lazy and intolerant. As defined by their results, there are good religious beliefs, neutral beliefs, and bad religious beliefs, as well as good governments, neutral, and bad governments, as well as mixes of good and bad in both cases. Either way, it would be incorrect to lump all the good and bad together and attack the entire premise based only on the bad (especially in cases where the bad is a clear perversion of the intention of a particular teaching). Anarchists are to governments what activist atheists are to religion, they simply go way overboard based on only the potential negative aspects of what they rail against.

On a side note, atheistic darwinism without any moral balance could be taken to the extreme as well. One could argue based purely on natural selection that weaker humans who are a detriment to the fitness of the species should be killed, left to die, or sterilized. Without any higher moral authority, what's to stop that train of thought from happening? The human race has proven over and over that it can pervert any worldview to perpetrate evil, so without any belief or moral compass, this is a possible natural course for humanity... It's arguably for the 'greater good' of the species as a whole based solely on naturalistic arguments. Where do our innate rights come from if not from a higher power? There are many, many arguments that could be made based purely on darwinism, natural selection, and fitness of the species that most everybody here would consider evil... where does that sense of what is wrong originally come from?

I've often considered this. In terms of a purely scientific approach, devoid of any emotional/moralistic rammification, the only logical conclusion is to allow the 'fittest' 50% to procreate based upon fitness and intelligence in order to advance the species as a whole at the best possible rate. Of course, in this type of approach you still need garbage men, janitors, postmen, newspapers, farmers, contruction workers, etc and these types of roles don't require any form of advanced intelligence or fitness so the concept isn't exactly as promising as it would seem even from a purely logical perspective. Like most concepts, the theory is better than the reality.

Where does sense of wrong come from? Simple - treat others as you want to be treated. This is inherent. We're intelligent enough creatures to realize this, it's why bullies are seen as bad. No religion necessary.

What about the 30,000 witch burnings in Germany during the Protestant Inquisition there or the 100 people that had their lives ruined at Salem, Massachusetts or the 127 killed by devout Mormons on September 11, 1857 at Mountain Meadows?  All of these acts were committed by  people that thought they were following The Bible / Their Holy Books to the letter.

And the book is filled with enough atrocities of its own right from the Hebrews white washing of whatever they did to the people of Cannaan whom were probably no worse than the Native Americans or South Americans that Europreans thinking they had a Mandate from Heaven destroyed.

Or its calls for the wholesale slaughter of gays, children that disobey their parents, witches, and census takers in the Old Testament to Jesus own words that he came to bring a sword to the Book of Revelations which says that all those people following that ancient book of fiction to the letter get to go to Heaven and everybody else on earth goes to Hell in the New Testament?  That modly, oldy roll of tp is based on divisiveness.

Do you have reading comprehension issues?  I've said time and time again I don't have a problem with decent people, regardless of their religious affiliation or lack thereof. my first and most clear post in this thread explained that I knew there was good and bad, and I wanted to take away the weapon that is religion from those who would use it to do those things.  I've also stated that you don't NEED a god to do good things, so good religious people are just good people who happen to be religious. 

No wonder people suck at this.