Is religion a force of good or evil in the world today: Reflections

I recently had the opportunity to see Michael Shermer debate Dinesh D'Souza on the subject of whether religion was a force of good or evil in the world today. The debate was held at the Grand Canyon University in Phoenix.
I thought that this would have been a rather easy debate for Mr. Shermer, as I have seen him speak on this before and he is usually a well versed speaker. What I did not know was that the Grand Canyon University is a Christian College. In fact during the opening announcements they made it very clear that this debate was set up as a training tool to teach the Christian audience and students how to defuse Atheist arguments.
D’Souza went first, and very soon digressed to attacking Mr. Shermers Atheism. He went on to insinuate that atheism was the root cause of all the horrors of the 20th century. This pretty much set the tone for the rest of the debate, with Mr. Shermer defending atheism, and little room to debate the original subject.
Instead of critiquing the debate I wanted to offer my reflections on the subject as almost a third debater.
Just to establish it, I consider myself a new atheist, as defined by Richard Dawkins, Micheal Shermer, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennet, and Sam Harris. I am unapologetic about my non belief and do believe that fundamental religion is the greatest danger to our world today. As in the case of Mr. Shermer, I come from a religious background, raised Catholic, Baptized Baptist, Dabbled in Judaism, Islam, Wicca, and Bahi.
Is religion a force of good or evil in the world today? Wiki defines religion as “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of and the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a supernatural agency, or human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, spiritual, or divine.” and ” The word religion is sometimes used interchangeably with faith or belief system, but religion differs from private belief in that it has a public aspect. Most religions have organized behaviors, including congregations for prayer, priestly hierarchies, holy places, and/or scriptures.”
There are countless examples of the crimes of religion against humanity in the past, the crusades, the pogroms, the hundred years war, I would dare to say that before the rise of the nation state any war was based on religion. As D'Souza points out, the nation states rose, wars began to become more about property and less about ideology. He also pointed out that our societal morality in the western world was based on Christian morals. I also agree with him on this point, but am quick to add that like a city, we build upon the old and revise that which is no longer relevant. This is the process of science.
But what about religion today, how is it benefiting the world? Let’s look at some examples. The recent disaster in Haiti brought about much charity. But mixed in with that were evangelical Christians who instead of distributing food, or water, were handing out bibles. Or the silence in the moderate Islamic communities in regards to wife beating, female mutilation, or terrorism. Even George W. Bush, while President told the French prime minister that he was battling “Mog and Maygog” in Persia, just before launching his war against Iraq. And do I really need to go into the policies of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church?
Mr. D'Souza believes that it is atheism that is the root cause of evil in the world today, not religion. He of course cited the slaughter caused by Marx, Communism, Pol Pot, Castro, and Mao as his example. This of course shows a profound misunderstanding on his part as to what he thinks atheism is. Atheism is just merely a disbelief in a god, or supernatural force at work in our lives. It is not a religion, an ideology, any more than not believing in the tooth fairy is. To compare it to religion is like comparing a car to a banana.
To be fair, there are moderate religions that do much work in charity, and eradicating poverty and suffering in the world. As Mr. Shermer said, Religions do both good and bad. It just seems that they are behind the curve when it comes to updating our collective morality, such as in homosexual rights.
My contention with religion is that the faith required you to believe in a god, deity, saints, savior, can also blind you to the reality of the world. The young earth creationists disregard the mountains of evidence for evolution, because their book tells them it’s incorrect. Islam wholesale ignores science and science education. The pope and his complete ignorance on condoms and conception is not only stupid, but is downright deadly in aids ridden Africa.
It is the faith behind the religion, the driving force behind it, which seems to be the cause of this evil. In religions that no longer take the word of their book or books literally, and their faith is reduced to merely a faith in a deity, it seems that they are relatively benign.
I believe Mr. Shermer lost the opportunity to express this to the Christian audience. Unfortunately it seemed he was kept on the defensive with the half truths and redirected arguments of his opponent.
What I would warn these religions of is the danger of faith, the importance of rational thought and accepting the reality of the world around them.
Perhaps the fight of the new atheist should not be the eradication of religion, as some have perceived it to be, but the education of the religious.
As Carl Sagan put it- “For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”