Interesting thoughts throughout, Leej. One caveat: when people feel strongly enough about a cause to sacrifice their lives in protest, we can hardly wonder that some will want to do maximum damage on the way out. The degree of religious fanaticism is not necessarily the determining factor here. Jan Palach incidentally was another who took the benign option and killed only himself. (Tomorrow is the 37th anniversary of his death.) This was followed by another 30 or so attempts at self-immolation in Prague and elsewhere in Czechoslovakia, some of which were successful. As far as I know, they were not devout adherents of any religion.

Dawkins was surely quoting the American Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg. I trust he made this clear? Weinberg said:

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion."

Apologies if this heen pointed out already. I've skimmed the thread fairly quickly - especially, I'm afraid, some of Little Hawk's peculiar philosophising. Anyway, Weinberg was making a good point, in strong terms, notwithstanding that it is a broad generalisation against which exceptions may be cited.