I think I'd say that religion is ethically neutral. It's people who do good deeds, and it's people to who commit atrocities. But to indicate that religious people are either likely or unlikely to commit misdeeds because of their religion, is just wrong. If they don't use religion as their excuse for doing right or wrong, they'll invent another reason. But the real reason is that they've chosen to do what they've done, by free choice (albeit under the influence of myriad factors).

-Joe-

    I respectfully disagree. People like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Major Malik Nadal Hasan probably do fit that pattern, alienated misfits who have been seduced by cycnical ideologues into using religion as a rationalization for their desperate actions. On the other hand I have no doubt that the men who flew planes into buildings did so purely out of the awesome strength of their faith and would never have done such for any other reason. I'm NOT laying this on the head of all Islam or attacking religion in general. I feel that the good and ill done in the name of religion are in near equal proportion, close enough for argument sake to being impact, if not ethically, neutral. But surely, those 19 men DID commit misdeeds because of their religion. Great faith untempered by liberality scares the hell out of me.