FAITH IS BEHIND VIOLENCE, CHRISTIAN FAITH DOES THIS IN A UNIQUE AND ESPECIALLY DANGEROUS WAY

Faith is bad for it can be the key to violence so easily.  It is also bad for it often is the key.

The key opens a lot of Pandora's boxes.

How?

By not encouraging or helping people to care about religious truth.  For example, Catholics have mostly history based doctrines that are controversial and children are carted to the baptism font without their parents being allowed to make an informed decision.  Religion is not based on suitable evidence which is why holy books with evil rules and good rules will cause people to do harm ideas and doctrines become very flexible when there is no evidence to help you interpret them. They are still forcing you to consider an evil interpretation and maybe follow it.  Even the Quakers as peaceful as they are are giving you that choice by giving you the Bible.

By insinuating that even if faith inspired violence is forbidden, it is not that evil as God has commanded it in the past. Some Christian and Muslim groups are fond of bloodletting. If they are behaving contrary to the Christian or Muslim religion, the fact remains that the God speaking in the Old Testament and the Koran and Muslim tradition authorises violence.  That leads to the sects thinking, "Okay let us endorse and dish out this violence.  If we are wrong, it is not that big of a deal for violence is endorsed by God in the scriptures anyway."  And it does not matter if the sect is authentically Christian/Muslim or not.  

What matters is that it claims to be a religion and we should take it at its word.  Is the religious attitude the problem?  Is religion the problem? Is the sect merely a symptom of what religion does to people's heads?  Does "good" religion pose a risk? Is it luck or forces external to the religion that we have to thank when nothing has happened?

By teaching that other religions are the enemy. Religion often says it only intends to over people a uplifting message of divine love and does not intend to offend or down other religions. But what is claimed to be the best in terms of spirituality or morals or doctrine by default does down other systems. Moreover, if you are Christian and you think you have the only true religion, you will feel that God is on your side as you wage war against another religion, especially one that is nearly completely different. The Christian Church teaches that war is only fair if you feel and think God approves!
 
By teaching that evil is good that is not good enough. The Church has always taught that evil is a lack - evil is good but not as good as it can be. The Church says that evil is not real and that is the basic reason why you can believe in an all-good and all-powerful God though terrible evil exists. The downside of the doctrine is that evil so often can easily pass for good or good can easily pass for evil. How can you trust yourself or anybody else in difficult situations such as when the question arises, "Do we need to declare war and would it be for the best?" The doctrine easily leads to evil warmongers passing themselves off as tortured saints.
 
By teaching that God has the right to take responsibility for violence by letting it take place thus if God commands violence we must obey for he knows best and he uses evil to bring good out of it. All who have engaged in holy war have believed this. Though God can be used as an excuse for war, it is plain that the God concept in itself implies that war for God might be necessary. God is by definition the power that turns evil around and who uses evil to make us better people. Now atheists can fight harder and be more keen on blood letting if they think or feel the war they wage will result in much good. They tell themselves that their goals and intentions are good and that spurs them on to greater evil doing and cruelty. If atheists can be like that, the risk is greater that a religious person will think or feel they are doing good by waging war than an atheist will. The reason is that the religious person feels God approves and blesses and accompanies him. So faith in God can lead to warmongering easier than atheism would and can lead to warmongering that surpasses atheist warmongering in brutality.
 
By teaching that as humankind is corrupt and prone to error and godlessness we must fight for God to safeguard the truth.

By teaching that the Holy Spirit live inside you and guides you to interpret the Bible. This means what you think the Holy Spirit comes first even if it is not the Holy Spirit or even if there is no Holy Spirit. And what if there is a Holy Spirit and he is not in you at all? This doctrine that one is one's own prophet makes a hypocrite of you if you claim that you follow only the Bible. As the Bible God does endorse violence, private interpretation and the hypocrisy and lies it involves can lead to you thinking you should wage war for God. President Bush did that! Innocent lives in Iraq were lost as a result. The Koran does not claim that God must live in you to help you interpret the book. It leaves you to decide your own interpretation. That means the Muslim of peace has no right to criticise the Muslim who endorses a bloodthirsty interpretation. The moderate Muslims are enablers by principle whether they mean to be or not.
 
By teaching that evil godless nations deserve destruction for they only draw their citizens into everlasting suffering in Hell, the place of eternal punishment for sin. The Bible God threatened Israel with retribution if it failed to keep all his commands which included the law that certain sinners such as heretics and false prophets and fortune tellers and homosexuals must be tortured to death by stoning. Jesus demanded devotion to the Bible's version of God and claimed to be his only Son. He claimed that those who sin risk eternal torture in Hell forever. Christians say that the torture there is self-inflicted but not a word of the Bible so much as hints at that. It is God's torture chamber for the Bible clearly teaches that God is okay with torture as long as you act on his orders.

By advocating an all-pervading religious attitude - religion is bad because of the religious attitude. Religion is meant to be something not that you do for a few hours a week but is about your whole life 24/7. Religion is essentially a collection of people united by their religious attitude and that attitude is to direct all they do so all they do is religious not just the stuff that is obviously religious. For example, for a Calvinist Christian, being industrious down at the power plant is as much religion as is singing a hymn on Sunday in Church. A religious attitude is the treatment of any leader or book or whatever as infallible or to be obeyed without murmur in the major issues - it is superstition though it may not look like it. It is a mistake then to argue that if religious people are poor and then resort to terrorism to get more rights or to protest that this is about poverty not religion. Hitler should be seen as a religious leader though he may have looked like a secular one. He said he had faith and that is enough to prove that his heart was not secular and his secular actions were not really secular.

By teaching that you must follow your conscience even if it is mistaken for you have to follow the best light you have. William Lane Craig wrote, "To say...that the Holocaust was objectively wrong is to say that it was wrong even though the Nazis who carried it out thought that it was right". Christians like Craig then won't admit it but they would agree that it is objectively wrong to make people disobey their erring consciences and it is also objectively wrong for the Nazis to do what they did. So it follows that if you stop the Nazis you consider this regrettable for it is interfering with their consciences.

By letting members do evil things and exercise hateful propaganda. An excellent example hails from Hitler's speech, April 12, 1922. Hitler referred to Jesus as his Lord and Saviour and spoke of how Jesus seized the scourge to put the Jews out of the Temple and became an example of how to deal with Jewish poison. The Church never debunked this speech or warned Hitler. It did not even condemn his evil book, Mein Kamph. Harmless books ended up on the Index of Forbidden Books but this one did not. The Church did nothing as he rose to power. Hitler was never excommunicated. People may tell themselves that Hitler was misusing Christ. We have no reason to think Hitler was only using Jesus for political ends - what if he really believed his own speech? It shows the danger of belief in Christianity. And Hitler did get considerable religious and political support from the Churches.

Some of these things apply to most religions.  Some apply to all.  Even one of those is a serious matter and enough to justify slamming the religion.  

APPENDIX: CATHOLIC JOHN WATERS' HYPOCRISY ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY

When Christianity points to the violence in its Bible to get people to kill and maim and wage crusades liberals say, "Christianity is all good and those atrocities have nothing to do with Christianity." Christians like them for saying that. But the likes of Waters never returns the favour to say, "Though most abusers are homosexuals homosexuality in itself is good and those homosexuals are no reflection on it. What happened has nothing to do with homosexuality." No he is so vile he would rather blame homosexuality instead of a manmade faith that has no magic or even natural power to improve human nature in any special way. He does not realise that homosexuality can only happen between adults. An adult and a person who is too young for sex is a different matter. The priests will enable his lies and vitriol by giving him communion on Sunday.