Dragonlich

Chavos, without a "religious injunction as to the supreme value of human life", Atheism cannot possibly be used as an excuse to kill anyone. The reason: there is no such thing as organized atheism, thus nobody to implement any policy. In fact, given the overall level of atheists' ethics, I'd say you're just plain wrong.

You seem to claim that only religious people have enough moral value to stop "ends justify the means" policies, even though, in the past, these policies have mainly been enacted by religious people. For example, Hitler did not kill the Jews because he was an atheist and they were not; in fact, he wasn't even an atheist- he was very much into occult beliefs, and would often search for clues in ancient texts. Hitler killed the Jews because he hated them, period. His system of government made this easier, because it shares the three things I said about religion.

You also mention the many non-monotheistic religions as being different. That may be so, but they're still inherently non-rational - any belief system that prefers belief over evidence is non-rational, after all.
They're also still authoritarian, because there are not too many religions without at least some holy books or holy men - without authoritarianism, nobody would even consider following them, now would they? Perhaps the term is a bit overstated... Let's put it like this: in any religion, people prefer to listen to the holy books/holy men instead of listening to their own mind; in many religions and cultures, this gets turned into "the priest is always right". Besides... you're still *worshipping* a god/multiple gods/animals/rocks/whatever, aren't you? You're still a lesser being compared to these things; they have authority over you. I know this is kinda hard to apply to worshipping a rock, but still: you're depending on the rock to help you. Worshipping a god can easily turn into blind obedience to anyone claiming to speak for a god, as history has shown countless times.
As for the "we're always right" part: being open to other ideas does not mean that this part doesn't apply. After all, you're not being swayed by those other ideas: you know you're right, even though they might have some good ideas too. If you'd know you're wrong, you'd follow another religion, now wouldn't you???

Finally, the "kill religion, before it kills us" part... true, very true (if by "us", you mean mankind in general). And it's not quite as dangerous as you seem to think it is. I want to remove religion from this planet, not by force, but by education. Religion is bad for you. It leads to extremism, and this leads to war. It's the 21th century, science has moved beyond anything religion can offer in terms of understanding. We need independent rational thinkers to move beyond the age-old cycle of violence, and religion has shown that it will often increase violence (or even initiate it), instead of stopping it.