Any crime can be committed by religious and non-religious people alike, it doesn't fancy any specific type of person. A non-religious person can plead innocence and claim a psychiatric illness caused him/her to commit that terrible crime. With religious folk doing the crime, they'll claim their beliefs guided them to. However, a non-religious person couldn't claim a belief possessed him in order to save his hide, other people may see through that. With religion it is a free pass I think. It's like discrimination against their right to believe in something, and it so happens to be in their holy book, they are only following orders and become very loyal/faithful to their beliefs. It's what makes this much harder to lock someone up.
But religion can inspire, taint and possess a person fully, and with emotions it's a very dangerous mix. It can be an excuse and leverage to drive a person to do inhumane things to men and women without consequence or remorse. If people were educated more about the dangers of religion and encouraged them to be more human, look out for their fellow human etc, it may reduce the frequency of people acting in violent ways (perhaps). We teach our children the consequences of doing wrong things that hurt and insult someone else, but with religion, they can be taught to do the wrong things, even kill and torture and that would be alright then be encouraged to do more bad things.
It depends on the individual, how much corruption, violence or ignorance they've been exposed to. If religion is to blame, then every religious man and woman on the street would be killing us at every turn.
- Ange Pange
