One week after the Boston Marathon bombing, is revealed faith lethally dangerous nonsense?

AS London Marathon runners today remembered the victims of the Boston bombing, so we can only hope that in time we may discover what exactly prompted the deadly attacks.

Interrogators are waiting to question Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who lies in a serious condition in hospital after being captured on Friday following the massive manhunt when two women and an eight-year-old boy were killed in blasts close to the finish line of the marathon.

Older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev died during a gunfight with police in Boston on Thursday night, and the motives for the attacks are endless - a premeditated, well-organised attack, or a smaller, isolated deadly assault.

One report has suggested the FBI were apparently aware of Tamerlan's radical support of Islam since he had been interviewed in the wake of the September 11th attacks. However, the FBI decided not to pursue the case any further.

As the finger of suspicion predictably, though not necessarily accurately, pointed towards Islam, NBC News reported that Tamerlan made six visits to what is described as "a known Islamic militant" in a mosque in the Russian republic of Dagestan. Of course, time may show that religion had no part to play in this dreadful crime which caused shockwaves because of the killing of innocents in such a public arena.

The outpouring of solidarity among London Marathon runners, with the 30-second silence and the wearing of black ribbons, only demonstrated the special bond which unites runners, whatever their sex or age, whatever their nationality, whatever their skin, whatever their religion.

I was in church this morning listening to the running-mad vicar of Christ Church in Swindon, Simon Stevenette, extol the virtues of our wonderful sport. Wearing a ropey pair of well-worn running shoes for the beginning of Holy Communion, the vicar spoke about the disciplines of marathon running in his address to the junior congregation and what Christians could learn from this single-mindedness in pursuit of their faith and their love for Jesus.

We even sang the best running-based song in the hymn book, Sydney Carter's "One more step along the world I go....from the old things to the new....keep me travelling along with you."

Assuming religion, and that still remains a huge assumption, had a part to play in the Boston attacks, I wonder sometimes whether the Islamic world would have demonstrated the same restraint and tolerance had a radical Christian terrorist committed an atrocity in the Arab world in the name of their religion. We saw the outrage and protests prompted by the uploading of an anti-Islam film on YouTube and the publication of Muhammad cartoons in French and Danish magazines to recognise instantly the deep-rooted passion.

And I am then reminded of a quote by Richard Dawkins, the Oxford author famed for his popular science books on evolution, along with his views on religion, atheism, and cultural evolution. This quote was pointed out by my friend Jenny, a newspaper cutting stuck to her kitchen mirror to serve as a constant reminder about the futility of religious extremism.

Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. 
Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. 
Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. 
Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. 
Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. 
Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition.
And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism.
Let's now stop being so damned respectful!

Whatever our beliefs, or not, revealed faith, as Dawkins describes it, is extremely dangerous. Revealed faith may not necessarily be the seeds of the carnage which was reaped in Boston seeing dozens of innocent people maimed - 176 bystanders and runners were injured - yet as an uncontrolled entity, which we have seen tear apart communities across the world, from Sri Lanka to Syria, from Karachi to Kenya,  it is absolutely lethal.

Those who carry out such acts are not believers, but patently psychotic.

They do not carry the courage of their religion, more the folly of their own personal beliefs - whether it is Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist or a murderous act perpetrated in the name of their nationality, tribal belonging or sexuality. Instead they merely insult the purity of their beliefs.

They are an invidious poison for which there is no place in our society and for which there is seemingly no antidote either.