[Clodhopper]

Agree with a lot of this. Though I don't think the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a matter of religious war, it was race war.

Religion, like a gun, is neutral but dangerous. It is the use made of it which is good or evil.

So religion can breed ignorance, as a look at any fundamentalist cult will show; but it can also conserve and spread knowledge, which is what happened with the European Christian Church after the Fall of Rome.