Absolutely. However, the distinction I was trying to make is that the suffering inflicted in the name of religion generally grows out of a specific religious ideology - eg, Roman Catholicism, in the case of the Inquisition. After all, once in the grip of the Inquisitors, confirming your belief in god wasn’t enough to save you. You had to conform with all the details of one particular brand of theism, such as belief in transubstantiation. And the 9/11 bombers were no doubt unimpressed that many of the people they slaughtered were, in fact, fellow theists. They were the wrong type of theist.

Theism, like atheism, is a very basic statement. It takes more complex ideologies to drive people to savagery and sustain oppression. Religion has the capacity to do this as, like all totalitarian regimes, it applies the test of belief. Atheism, being essentially a negative statement, doesn’t have the capacity to support this.