Easier to convince yourself? No, I do not agree; humans can just as easily have bad intentions and act on them in the complete absence of any religious teachings. If people want to do something badly enough, there is little to stop them from trying. If anything, since most religions actually preach against doing evil, the existence of religious beliefs (if the persons in question are sincere about them) actually makes it harder to act on bad intentions due to the creation of cognitive-dissonance.

Thing is, cognitive-dissonance may at times be enough to get people to step back, re-evaluate the situation and prevent them from doing that which goes against their teaching. However, if a person is dead set on doing something that is not consistent with their beliefs, then they are going to do something very interesting in response to this internal feeling of inconsistency -- they are going to take the message they have been given, bend it and twist it until they ultimately get it to (in their minds) fit and even support their cause!

Which leads me to my next point. If you had said religion makes it easier to convince others to do terrible things, yes, that is more likely a true statement. Once someone takes a religious message and corrupts it, they can find like-minded people within the same religious group to follow them. That, however, is a failing of the humans in question, not a failing of religion (which was point -- humans, not religion, are the problem).


And guess what? Religion is not even the driving force behind this atrocity in Paris!! What you see here is the work of one thing, one motivation that is purely human in nature: greed. You see, people in the Middle East are being massacred all the damn time. Things like what happened in Paris are par for the course over there, you just do not hear about it. And why? Because there are wealthy nations whose economies run on killing people. What these terrorist groups do in response is simply the natural thing for anyone to do when they are being pushed around -- they kickback. No religion required in this picture. All that is required is for people to crave wealth, enough to kill other people for it, and for humans to respond the way it is in their nature to. Religion is a peripheral factor at best, it is used to reinforce the motives of the players at hand. (Now, for the record, I am in no way defending terrorist actions such as these are justified. I see it just like a bullied student carrying out a school-shooting -- you understand why it happened, but killing innocent civilians is not the right solution).