Atrocities Committed In The Name Of God*

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Radicalized Depravity

I’ve often wondered whether people who commit atrocities in god’s name would find other grounds to rationalize terrorizing and destroying innocent lives if belief in a supernatural weren’t a thing. Is religion the true catalyst for such radicalized depravity that would not otherwise occur or are some people inherently evil and religion just a convenient excuse?

My questions are oversimplified and naïve, I know, because even religion-based terrorism — likely the most prevalent kind — is accompanied by other dynamics such as ethnic, racial, cultural, political, geographic, and economic differences. But as the principal genesis for many — but certainly not all — hostilities, religion often sets a scene and puts in motion influences that define other factors. Removing god, at least in some instances, would likely reduce both purpose and degrees of radicalism: people may not have the same need or find the will to fly airplanes into buildings, detonate suicide vests, behead infants, mow down hundreds of revelers at a festival with machine guns, kidnap hostages, use children and hostages as shields, slaughter families in their beds, or commit genocide.

A simple answer, which will offend many, may be the one Christopher Hitchens gave when asked to imagine he was walking in a strange city at night, and as a…