Follow up to modernism lecture

Although I was disappointed that we didn't have a screening of James Joyce's Ulysses, I thought the documentary that we watched on Utube about the parts of the brain and its functions was a perfect follow up to the lecture before on Freud. As we looked at the type of physcological problems that the brain itself developed, and then the week after we explored the brain and its functions. It would have been interesting though if the material could have gone a little further, for example we could have looked at examples or cases where these pyscological conditions have caused people to act in extreme ways damaging to themselves or others.

The videos of the self afflicted wounds and people voluntarily being crucified was surprisingly unnerving, however this is not the first time I have seen or heard stuff of this calibre being enacted. At the worst end of the spectrum is the actual practice of sacrifice in India to Kali the Goddess of destruction, which at its worst two hundred years ago a boy would be sacrificed everyday at the temple in Calcutta, and I know this is going off topic slightly but I truly believe that religion is the root of all evil. If u look at the crusades, the genocide in Yugoslavia etc, all of these events are the product of religion.
However I do understand the theory of self mutilation in religion, it helps the sufferer to understand Christ's pain, and grow disciplined from their suffering, however doesn't this clash with the whole idea of self mutilation or acts of impurity against the body being a sin. It seems to me that their are a lot of contradictions within religion.