> For all its many failings, I think this is one of the benefits that religion (an particularly the form of religion popular in Europe during the the last 2000 years) can provide.

Europe was home to the most horrific religious violence in human history. From the pogrooms of the views to the spanish inquisition to the horrors of protestant and catholic rivalry. Even nazism drew upon centuries of european religious past.

> By having a notion of some god, and a cannon, you can have a list of ideas that everyone considers good, and it makes such demagoguery a little more difficult.

Actually it makes such demagoguery much easier as it makes it easier to demonize others - infidel, unbeliever, christ killers, apostate, etc. Religion does half the work for the demogogue.

> Europe was home to the most horrific religious violence in human history.

I'm not sure this is true. There has been a lot of horrific religious violence in human history, most of it hasn't been well documented.

Even if it is true, it's not a useful fact. Pre-enlightenment Europe had more religious violence than post-enlightenment Europe because all official violence in per-enlightenment Europe had to be religious. I'm not a historian, but I'm pretty sure post-enlightenment wars in Europe were significantly more violent than the per-enlightenment wars.

I don't see that at all. You can still end up in a theocracy with an inquisition for everyone who doesn't follow the dogma.

Religion is perfectly exploitable for this and has been more often than not in history.

It's exploitable, sure, same as any shared ideology (twist it to your purposes, burn the heretics). But unlike ideologies that don't purport to be objective from humanity, religion carries the seed of its own undoing. Much like Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the church door, an abuse of the ideal can be countered by the ideal. I can't think of any non-religious ideology that has done that; countering those abusive ideologies requires ascribing to a different ideology. Nazism didn't defeat or replace Nazism, but Christianity has defeated Christianity before.

But that said, I agree that someone saying "God is on my side" is inherently problematic in a different way than just "I have the most power to enforce my will". Of course, I don't see that as a value judgement on the existence of religion; after all, regardless of my, or society's, beliefs, the power behind the individual is still there, or not, regardless of their claim of God's support.

>> By having a notion of some god, and a cannon, you can have a list of ideas that everyone considers good, and it makes such demagoguery a little more difficult.

I'm an agnostic whose beliefs wrt good and evil correspond much more closely to those of many of my Catholic or Jewish neighbors than those of my extended family who are Baptists or Evangelicals or whatever the hell it is they're doing.

I doubt this is unusual at all.

> By having a notion of some god, and a cannon, you can have a list of ideas that everyone considers good, and it makes such demagoguery a little more difficult.

Where do events such as the Spanish Inquisition or the Crusades fit into that idea?

Those are appropriate examples as in each of those, popular and political movements were checked by the shared morals of Christianity, and the desires of kings were moderated by widely accepted church teachings.

  s/cannon/canon/g

Most scoundrels throughout the history you invoke, clung tightly to their Christian identity. The millions of peasants subject to the predations of the Church over scores of generations didn't praise the Lord for their good fortunes. That Hitler wasn't particularly Christian himself, probably was because Christianity was already a tarnished brand in early 20c central Europe.

“s/cannon/canon/g”

Never seen this before. Simple, elegant, and doesn’t make the poster feel bad. I’m stealing it...

Religion works this way: you make a false statement, and punish anyone who does not agree with it. From there you can derive and enforce any other false statement (Principle of Explosion). People in power routinely used this mechanism to make false statements allowing them to take what they want at the expense of others.