Re:I for one... (Score 1)

I'll second that. Religion, governments, economic and political movements of all sorts are responsible for horrible and great things. It really depends on how you study history and on what parts you focus. We have seen a vast reduction in the actual power of religion in this century. Yet the rise of the modern state brought about the modern form of genocide (as opposed to the classical geneocide, which is more about killing off native peoples, in the new and improved genocide, you can kill off populations of your own country! woo hoo!). The countries that first showed how well you could kill off portions of your own populations were pretty much athiestic. Calling religion evil seems overly simplistic to me. We humans seem hell bent on screwing ourselves over. Religion has been used as a tool and a justification for many evil things. Yet so have many tools. In addition, in states were we see an active reduction of religion, we usually see a replacement that is all together more evil... such as the state party.