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Most atrocities are (physically) committed by ill-educated and angry thugs.
Violence is committed by violent people. Yes.
Religion is used as a political tool to inspire such people into their devilish thuggery.
Sometimes. On other occasions people do just genuinely and deeply believe that this is what some omnipotent omniscienct creator actually wants them to do. I'm not aware of any evidence that this had political motivations (other than "everything's politics mannnnn") and, given France's reluctance to get involved in wars in the Middle East, it seems a questionable assumption.
So religion as political dogma could be held to account, but not religion in a theological sense.
I don't know what you mean by"religion in a theological sense" can't be held to account. Going with the definitions I can find, that means "religion can't be held accountable in terms of the nature of God, God's attributes and relationship to the universe, nor in terms of religious truth". Is that what you meant, or do you want to clarify.
It doesn't really matter, therefore, that religion is involved, because everybody subscribes to a dogma of some kind or another.
If any other dogma was involved we would criticise (or at least scrutinise) that dogma accordingly so the nature of the dogma matters a great deal. Why should religion (or a specific religion) be exempt from that criticism. The notion that "these are just nasty people who would have done nasty things anyway" is just a load of handwavingly unprovable tosh. We are talking about specifically this attack, which, unless you want to go through some amazing mental gymnastics, had a strong religious conviction as a cause and wouldn't have happened if these men subscribed to an different dogma.
ffm-
On that first point you understood me correctly: by theology I mean the nature of God, ones relationship with the sublime, the very nature of things, etc.
The rest is doctrine, and it is doctrine that is often politicised, or used for political ends, and is political in its nature (it seeks to instruct).With regard to the second point, I did not say that religion should be exempt from criticism, just that to criticise a particular religion because it underlines the manifesto of a 'few' fanatics would be to miss the point.
I mean, the people here staunchly defending the right to broadcast this grotesque voyeurism are being dogmatic in their own way - their dogma being the freedom to choose what they watch. If, say, they start gunning down censors, one wouldn't necessarily jump to the conclusion that the 'belief in the freedom to choose what one watches' was an ignoble aspiration (even if one did consider it misguided, myopic...).
The_Kindness_of_Trees
Excellent - the complexity of it all proved in three foul swoops!
Not that I understand the Estate Agent and Gene Wilder references.
Most atrocities are (physically) committed by ill-educated and angry thugs. Religion is used as a political tool to inspire such people into their devilish thuggery. So religion as political dogma could be held to account, but not religion in a theological sense. It doesn't really matter, therefore, that religion is involved, because everybody subscribes to a dogma of some kind or another.