I think this is an excellent question.

I agree with you that point one is self-affirming because the very premise of religion (any supernatural religion) is that there are things that science cannot know.

I don't have hard evidence for you on number two because I don't think there is any. I tend to agree that many wars, if not most, would happen with or without religion.

In the mideast, for example, Allah or no, there's oil in them thar deserts, and we want it. For that matter, everybody wants it. I think the religion is an easy tool for the governments to use to recruit willing soldiers, and perhaps it makes the wars easier to wage, but to suggest that the mid-east wouldn't be a hotbed except for religion is politically naive.

It's my personal belief that religion IS politics, so you don't have to work hard to convince me that people would still kill each other all the time without religion.

However! And this is a big caveat... I think the two things that make it extremely easy for leaders to send their countries into war are

1) lack of education

2) religious fervor.

Since 1 leads to 2, and we've got statistics to back it up, it can be theorized that with higher education and discouragement of religious fervor, wars could be reduced in severity and/or frequency.

So, like most things in the world, my opinion is that it's not cut and dried. Yes, religion has been a justification for many wars, but kings set on wars will make wars, and most of the religious wars have been less than completely religious. No, I don't think quite as many people would have died if religious zealots had not been so eager to rush off in service of god. In the end, I think the world would be somewhat less violent without religion, but primarily because of the inverse relationship between religion and education.

You make good points, which is why I said that I think there is a link between education and violence, but not a direct parallel.

The unabomber, after all, was an extremely intelligent man.

Hitler and Stalin were presumably pretty intelligent.  The question that pops into my mind immediately is, "What were the education levels of the populace, and how much of a gap was there between the upper levels of the military and the lower levels?"

I have never doubted the capability of very smart people to do great harm.  I've only said that it becomes less probable when the majority of the population is also reasonably educated.

As for the atheist question, I've never understood why the existence of Hitler (a quasi-Christian) and Stalin does anything to prove the existence of god.  The fact that both Christians and Atheists can be good or bad seems to prove that there is no measurable benefit to being Christian.  Therefore, it hurts the Christian argument. 

i think your both right. What i meant about hitler/stalin/mao is of course not that the theist argument is true. But before the 20th century, it was easily arguable that in the course of western history religion was the only way to justify torture and genocide. It's a very common argument in Enlightement literature.

So i'm not talking about the internal logic of the argument but about how it is felt and symbolized in popular thinking. In Europe, the end of the 19th century was characterized by a very strong anti religious wave, which was mainly motivated i would guess by that observation that religion was the only avaiblable way to justify horror. And now, in the same way, the populace (especially in america) has this disgust of atheism because of damages atheists leaders did, and feel that there is a correlation between both. Because of the weakness of the argument, my point is that it should not be used to much, even by atheists against religion.

If you accept my first statement (which i think you mostly do), then my point is mainly one of rhetoric. I feel it's not a good rhetoric move to emphasize the violence generating factor of religion, in a blunt way i mean, and that nowadays the argument is much less "fashionable".