Yes, religion is used to justify a host of human ills and excuse others, but it also plays a modern role that's more dangerous and insidious: It's too easily blamed for human ills.Why more dangerous? If we all believe one manifestation of human neuroses is responsible for our problems (or even a good chunk of them), we deceive ourselves into believing that by fixing or removing religion we can solve those problems.
That's like thinking you can cure influenza with an antihistamine. And a lot of very intelligent people fall into that trap.
All human behavioral problems are equally represented across religious and non-religious mentalities (to the extent that any human can be non-religious). If religion sometimes participates in antisocial behavior, it's a symptom, not the cause.[1]
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Religion is an easy target, and its adherents often invite criticism, but it we didn't have religion, we'd invent something very much like it.c0
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And of course the same symptom can indicate widely different conditions, some benign. If you're sweating, you may be hot, or you may have the flu, or you may even be nervous. A diagnosis takes into account a variety of factors. Unfortunately, if someone has their mind made up about something, they often stop at the symptom: "I know many ignorant people that believe in God, therefore the next person I meet that believes in God is ignorant too."
If there's enough people that will nod and agree, there's no reason to examine our opinion more closely.
The believer, agnostic and atheist all suffer from this, none more so than the zealots.
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