The accusation that religion is a mask for mental illness has never been redressed. It’s little wonder why. Every day, countless people are harmed in the name of religion. Often, the victimizers think they are on some grand higher mission, when in reality their delusion is constantly reinforced by a system of belief that confuses fantasy with reality. Virgin birth, flying horses, talking snakes, all of these idiotic beliefs belies a deeper, and fundamentally more troubling fact: that faith is a refuge for dangerously inflated egos that justify all their terrible actions with a otherworld mandate.

Today’s psycho on the loose is a yet unnamed muslim man in his 20’s. He attacked 3 women in the city of Paris with a pair of kitchen knives. Their wounds were not fatal, as a fast acting nearby witness named Mohamed-Ali Bouhadjar sprung into action, and managed to tackle the perpetrator to the ground after another witness threw their suitcase at him. An off duty police officer then held him down until backup arrived to cart him off.

Mohamed-Ali Bouhadjar, 26, who filmed the video and posted it on Snapchat, told Reuters: “When I saw him stab a woman in the back, I started shouting: ‘Come on, let’s stop him.’ Several people stepped in.

“One person threw a suitcase ‌at him. He dropped the knives. At that moment I grabbed him, swept his legs out from under him, and we pinned him ​to the ground.”

I think this incident is a perfect example of the duality of religious belief. A man stabbed random strangers, convinced that he was being commanded by god to do so. A witness, likely a muslim himself, would no doubt claim the same inspiration behind his brave actions (he could be an atheist, or another denomination, to be fair). It also shows that even when we are defended by the righteous believers, people still inevitably get hurt. Those women could have easily died, and who knows how many more could have been victims.

Providing a shield for dangerous mental illness is inherant in all faiths, and as such, will always remain a threat to human civilization. What if this young man had access to a more deadly arsenal? Would he have hesitated to use it? Can the good believers protect us from the calamity some other, more equiped psycho will inevitably cause? There is a reason why in law enforcement, providing shelter to a criminal makes you complicit in their actions: you allowed this to happen by the nature of the belief, and no amount of “modernization” can purge the faith of it’s rotten core.