If you look beyond Christian and anti-Christian polemic, you do not need to invoke religion to explain cruelty.
Like kindness, it goes with being human.
(John Gray)
I guess he means you don’t need to talk about Satan or man’s fall from grace to explain cruelty. It’s just man’s nature to be cruel or kind, and cruel and kind depending on mood, circumstance etc. Then again, I suppose he might well have thought that man is God’s creation without believing in Satan or the fall but that’s a bit a la carte.
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion."
Steven Weinberg/Christopher Hitchens
@Matias No, it's based around people doing certain acts as a result of outside influence and not them doing certain acts when outside influence is ignored. The FAE is the result of ignoring outside influence. Weinberg highlights outside influence. He does not ignore it.
Everything else you typed is subjective opinion and contains no arguments. I especially loved the objective good/bad criteria you apply to actions while at the same time highlighting the subjectivity of the good/bad criteria in people. The same way the subjectivity of cruel and kind are portrayed as objective by John Gray.
@Matias ROFL As the prison population in the USA is overwhelmingly religious it seems religion is failing miserably at making evil people do good things. As the "violent neighbourhoods" or low income neighbourhoods are overwhelmingly religious it would seem religion is also failing miserably at stopping evil people doing evil things there as well.
What Atran should have written was "With or without religion, you'd have bad people doing bad things and good people doing good things. But for evil people to do most evil, it takes religion."
@Matias Appealing to Atran's authority and backing it up by appealing to your own authority is not something I'm going to be taking seriously anytime soon. Propositions and arguments stand on their own merits and not the merits of the person making them.
Yes, we have the capacity for both. What makes man decide to be cruel rather than kind is the question I would like to pose?