This argument is invalid because these behaviors are characteristics imputed to religion by its detractors and are not definitional characteristics of religion.

The Bible and the Koran are the definitive texts for the most popular religions. They are defined by them. These texts are filled with genocide. They are filled with orders, commandments to murder people who do not believe as they should or who otherwise break rules described in the book.

I don't know if you've read the Bible or the Koran, but to suggest that the religions that rely on these murder-filled texts have gotten their violent reputations from religious detractors, instead of the very texts that formed the religions, is like saying it's the anti-war people's fault that we lost in Viet Nam and that we're losing in Iraq.

Look, I'm not even an atheist, and I know there are lots of good religious people, but let's be real about religion's history and how, in too many cases to count, it has inspired people to do evil things.

"In case you slept through your Humanities classes, or the entire series on the Philosophy Science, Postmodern thought pretty much debunks the hegemony of perceptually-biased thinking."

When was there ever a "hegemony of perceptually-biased thinking?" Except for the worlds of science and technology (where perceptually-based thinking has worked better than any other kind) magical and emotional thinking has generally ruled the day in every other aspect of living.

It's too bad Chris doesn't believe in a God, or an afterlife, or all this supposedly silly yearning religious people express for the ineffable.

Don't feel bad for people who don't believe in these things. Most of us are very happy and in love with life. ;)

...he took broad swipes at Mother Teresa without ever talking to her or spending some time in one of the more than 700 homes that she had established around the world

As someone who couldn't disagree more with Hitchens regarding recent events and thinks his latest effort is misguided, he was spot on about Mother Teresa. You don't have to meet someone to read documented accounts of their works. The fact is that Mother Teresa used billions of dollars to set up convents to spread the word of fundamentalist dogma, not to heal the sick (she lobbied all over the world to outlaw not just abortion, but contraception). And when she was told that millions of dollars she'd received from savings and loan thief Charles Keating had been stolen, she refused to return it. She explicitly believed that suffering brought us closer to Christ and so deliberately avoided alleviating it, while she chose to receive only the best medical care when she needed it.

But don't my word for it.

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/shields_18_1.html

http://members.lycos.co.uk/bajuu/

Again, I'm not an atheist and I know that there are many, many wonderful, selfless people out there who are inspired and guided by their faith. Mother Teresa was most certainly not one of them.

...I know that there are many religious people who do good things in the world. These two demonstrable truths can and do co-exist.

I posted two articles with first hand accounts of Mother Teresa's fraudulence and barbaric, fundamentalist attitudes. In case you missed them here they are again.

http://members.lycos.co.uk/bajuu/

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/shields_18_1.html

She publicly lobbied to outlaw abortion and even contraception. That is simply totalitarian. There is lots of evidence demonstrating clearly (to those for whom evidence matters) that she was uninterested in alleviating suffering (as she explicitly believed it brought people closer to Jesus) and that she didn't use the billions of dollars given to her to help people, but to build convents.

Again, I believe that many religious people do good things, but that horrible woman certainly didn't.