Religion can be blamed for some crimes committed by theists

"Yes, but by that logic person A in this situation is guilty of nothing. Person A bribes person B to kill person C. Person B kills person C. Person B is guilty, but person A is innocent. Is that fair? Person A represents religion, the bribe represents eternal paradise (or other specific rewards)." According to the dogma of faith for almost all religion, the so-proclaimed "reward" is given to those who do good throughout their life cycle (obviously the terrorist version of Islamic religion is an exception, but amongst everything, they have a very small percentage of the population of the world that believes in it). Also, I belive it would not be fair to the thousands of people involved in religion were to suddenly be prosecuted because of an individual. What if all those people went to prison for life? What if it was in a state with the death penalty (If the crime is drastic enough)? All those people would then be punished for something they had nothing to do with. And, according to your logic: Person A works for company B (This is a reasonable comparison for religion, since you are most likely depend on it to survive. This can also be true for the church that you attend, for a form of therapy). Company B says that immigrants are bad for business. Person A kills four immigrants (This is the same. Kill a few, and profits of the company increase, which means better pay for the average worker). Thus, Company A is at fault. That is not true. Company A is not responsible for the employee's actions. Just like religion is not responsible for its participants. "And at the same time people can be indoctrinated into religions, and when raised that way they can be influenced for it to become part of their reality."Right, and as they do wrong, society will take punishment upon the individual, not the entire religion. "Without Islam there would be no Jihads. Without Christianity there would not have been the Crusades or Inquisition."This argument means nothing. Why? I am sure when they started this religion they did not intend to start the Crusades or the Inquisition. I am positive that Orthodox Islamic religion did not intend to make the Jihad. All of the religions that I have just mentioned started out peacefully. Just because they were twisted into something else does not put the original thing at fault. My opponent has merely referenced a small portion of the religion spectrum. Many religious people do not look for an "afterlife" of sorts, but merely they believe in a diverse set of reincarnation beliefs. Those often pertain growing and learning as a person. They often do not have a heaven, and some of these people are monks. "If someone holds religion as the most important thing and they follow the passages in their "Holy Book" about committing those crimes then how can we say religion is not even partly responsible? We hold racial superiority as being partly responsible for slavery, so why not hold religion as being partly responsible for those crimes?"(Note: There is a grammatical error at the underline. I believe that means grammar points go to Con.) a) Not all religion follows a holy book of sorts. Sure, most factions have a holy book, but this is a small percentage of the religion spectrumb) Racial superiority? This is a red herring fallacy. I would then have to argue against this claim to prove his point false, and his point is also against the rules: 2.Stay on topic.(Note: Conduct points I think now go to Con.) My opponent is looking upon religion from this perspective: Religion has done bad things, thus they are responsible. Let us apply that logic to the real world. If a priest went up and told a congregation that food was meant for the rich only, and some of the congregation went and robbed a bunch of homeless people of their food. Who is to blame in such a situation? Well, the members of the congregation are obviously at fault. Does the priest deserve to get thrown in jail? Yes, because in this case, he was the leader. However, do we throw out the entire religion just because of the actions of the individual? No. That is not fair nor just to the members that were of the congregation that did not commit any crimes. Now, lets change a variable from the situation above to better represented what happened with the Crusades or the Inqusition: The ENTIRE congregation robbed a bunch of homeless people. This would still be unreasonable to throw out the entire religion. It was just one congregation and the leader that commited the crimes, and thus the religion is not at fault. If an entire religion is doing something against the law, two things are happeneing: a) bad leadership or b) The religious denomination is against the law and can not be permitted. Also, at the time, the Crusades and the Inquisition was accepted back in those years. That is why it had so many followers. However, even then not everyone was in support of it.