Reply #22: Dawkins actually makes a couple very good points on this.

[laconicsax]

The first I'll just quote from The Devil's Chaplain.

The reason organized religion merits outright hostility is that, unlike belief in Russell's teapot, religion is powerful, influential, tax-exempt and systematically passed on to children too young to defend themselves. Children are not compelled to spend their formative years memorizing loony books about teapots. Government-subsidized schools don't exclude children whose parents prefer the wrong shape of teapot. Teapot-believers don't stone teapot-unbelievers, teapot-apostates, teapot-heretics and teapot-blasphemers to death. Mothers don't warn their sons off marrying teapot-shiksas whose parents believe in three teapots rather than one. People who put the milk in first don't kneecap those who put the tea in first.

The second, in The God Delusion, that I'll try to summarize without mangling it too bad, centers on the idea that teaching children the idea that faith is a virtue, blind faith the highest of all, plants the seeds out of which fanaticism grows. People who commit heinous acts of violence in the name of whatever god they believe in do so because they were taught, typically from very nice, moderate teachers, that serving their god is the highest duty and that they will be rewarded in heaven for their service--especially if they themselves give their life in the process. Under this guise, the ends will always justify the means--something which has a tendency to lead to abhorrent behavior.

It is through the idea that by dying for your god, one becomes a martyr and is richly rewarded in the afterlife that suicide bombings become palatable. It is though the idea that service to God supersedes all else that the murder of non-believers, heretics, and sinners is not only justified, but carried out with total indifference to whatever 'earthly' penalty may be suffered as a result. This may have actually been shorter had I just excerpted the whole chapter summary I took it from.