Arrest highlights clergy's role in Rwanda genocide

(CNN) -- Against the chilling scale of the Rwandan genocide, the events that unfolded on May 7, 1994, at the Kibeho College of Arts appear as a blip of horror.

Eighty Tutsi students perished at the hands of their teachers, fellow students and security forces. They died that day, according to the Rwandan government, because of the groundwork laid by one man: Emmanuel Uwayezu.

That he was an educator and a priest made the act that much more inhuman to his accusers.

The story goes on to relate:

So far, four Catholic priests have been indicted by the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Human rights activists say the small number of indictments do not accurately represent the church's role in the genocide.

By failing to issue swift condemnation, the church opened the door for slaughter in the name of God, according to the global group Human Rights Watch.

No editorializing from me is really necessary, here. And no, I'm not targeting the Catholic Church specifically. I joke about my "religion-bashing rota", but the reason I, and I guess a lot of atheist bloggers and writers, concentrate on this type of story is to show that, rather than being an active force for good, religious organizations and the fallible people in them are capable of not merely error, but horror when given the power to shape opinions in the "name of god." The majority of Catholic faithful worldwide, obviously, are not people who would by any stretch of the imagination support a genocide--that is not their god. They believe in a god of peace and compassion. The problem is that religious authority is a tool that can be used in different ways, and this, unfortunately is one of them.

I usually cringe when atheist vs. believer debates get into the "whose side has caused more harm" pissing contest because instead of the debate being a battle of ideas, it starts turning into an argument about body counts and "No true Scotsman"-type claims about who is "not a true atheist and "not a true Christian." To me, that argument always seems actually irrelevant. There seems to be something very dark in the human make-up that enables people to "go along for the ride" with horror, and psychopaths will simply opportunistically use any ideology of the moment to drive them. That it seems to be a part of human nature doesn't excuse it--but application of rational thinking, investigations of claims, and dissent, are the antidote to this poisonous aspect. In this instance, it appears that religion helped steer the horror ride, and that is the sort of thing that especially New Atheists are trying to point out: the type of thought involved in religious or magical thinking isn't helpful. It doesn't stop horror, but it can fuel it, precisely because it isn't rational. It lends itself to a cause, such as ethnic cleansing, and takes away the last moral qualm by adding, "And God is okay with that"--where just a mere thinking human would not be.