I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you are saying, can you rephrase it?
Ok.
Let's take my example for a highly religiously motivated action, anti-abortion terrorism. Now the primary cause of this is clearly religious, but if you examine actual cases of it the situation becomes far more complex. First, belief that fetal life is sacred is not explicit anywhere within the religious doctrines and in fact there is nothing inherently religious about the belief. Which is why some of the most heinous acts of anti-abortion terrorism could be performed by someone who
"prefer(s) Nietzche to the Bible." Further, the belief that abortion is condemned by God does not seem sufficient to motivate people to commit such crimes, rather there seem to be political motivators as well and people who commit these acts are often disaffected from society and bitter exhibiting antisocial tendencies and in some cases psychosis. Most of these individuals are troubled, such as Scott Philip Roeder who came to religion through his anti-government sentiments and not the other way around.
Which is to say, that the causes of such actions are so complex that to suggest that even the majority of them would not have happened if religion was not in the picture is to oversimplify. In most cases we have absolutely no way of knowing, but it's worth pointing out that the majority of those cases were property crimes, however in many of the most severe cases it seems likely that the person was unstable already, whether or not they were so unstable as to commit their crimes is also, however, impossible to say.
As for the second point, it has nothing to do with excuses and everything to do with human nature. In terms of governmental atrocities? I do not think they would be lessened at all because nationalism will still exist, and nationalism has been linked with nearly every case of governmental religious violence I can think of and has shown itself just as capable of travesty as religion is on it's own. In terms of terrorist acts, there would likely be some dropoff, but perhaps not as much as you'd expect. Because, as above, even without religion many of the factors involved in such acts will remain, and those factors which are religious are often not directly religious (as in an explicit consequence of religious belief, in general, not of any particular religious beliefs) or inherently religious (as in requiring religion to exist). The closest to these I can think of that is inherently religious is belief in an afterlife, and it is still possible without religion, at least under my definition of religion (which is that supernatural beliefs are not inherently religious). Which means that in absence of explicitly religious factors the factors that were most important to the terrorist actions would remain the same. I do not think there would be any change in violent or non-violent civilian crime.
Sorry if I came off that way. I feel it is more plausible that religion was not the main factor for Hitlers actions, but just a very strong tool to sway the masses to accept his actions. But I don't discount the possibility that he did this for religious reasons.
When I said God was backing it, I was showing the viewpoint that religious believers would have. No, one thing did not cause the holocaust, but without religion, I don't think it would have happened. Religion is a very strong force. You have a massive community who all share similar beliefs, and the major religions believe there is an all knowing, morally correct being watching over you. There is no large, heavily assimilated community connected to the idea of a superior race or anything like that. Maybe to the discrimination towards Jews at the time, but then how much of that was due to religion?
How do you mean due to religion? Because in the strictest sense that would mean "related to the religious beliefs of the Jews or the perpetrators of the crimes against them" in which case I'd say that antisemitism has historically had little to do with religious beliefs, with one particularly prominent exception. To support that, just look at antisemitism during the Black Death, clearly not religiously motivated at all. The only case where I can think of antisemitism being explicitly linked to religious belief is the one where Christians blame the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus. As far as I'm aware that hasn't really manifested as a motivator for wide scale antisemitic violence, but I could easily be wrong on that score.
Also, you're wrong about there not being an assimilated community based on racial superiority. In fact there are plenty of those (though they are not popular on the scale that religion is) and further nationalism (which is popular on the scale religion is), a belief system very similar to the idea of racial superiority, also has such groups. It's sad, but I don't think the Nazis even needed to use religious propaganda to get people on their side, certainly they attracted some people they otherwise might not have, but I think it would have been sufficient without that. It's also worth pointing out that in the late thirties Pope Pius explicitly denounced Nazi racist ideology and acceptance of Nazism even among German clergy was not universal. If the Pope tells you one thing and the Archbishop another people are forced to conclude on their own, and I don't think any factors that would have made them conclude on the side of antisemitism were related to religion. They were related to seeing wealthy Jews, they were related to cultural tensions, they look different, talk different, act different, and they were related to the astonishing breadth of Nazi antisemitism which took myriad forms through just as many justifications.
While Hitler's personal beliefs would be important, I have no way of knowing what they were, so lets stick with religion regarding the population.
That's fine, I was just pointing out he was completely misrepresenting your argument.