People who use...

Religion to justify what they do. I'm talking about extremism here. Like a suicide bomber who will blow up a school full of girls because god told them it was wrong for girls to go to school. Like a man who will shoot someone because they provide abortions to women and god told them it was ok to do this. Here's my question. If religion didn't exist, or wasn't as popular as it is now would these things still happen? If people could no longer use religion to explain away horrible acts of violence against others would these acts continue just with a different excuse? Or would they stop?

People will use anything as an excuse. But, what they won't do is shoulder the blame. And who gets the blame in this situation? Not the person doing dispicable acts. The only one who gets blamed is God or religion as if either had anything to do with the stupidity of the person's acts. And yes, there would be stupid people doing stupid things to people and hurting others even without religion. That's the nature of humanity/the beast, however you want to look at it.