Thanks for this, I find more interesting to make a critique of the critique than to stay within the critique itself. The latter falls into semantics and ad hominem too easily.

But there's some things you say I cannot really agree with, or I think unnecessary.

History is full of wicked acts, and I think when the practice of a belief allows people to act wickedly, the belief is liable. A set of beliefs that could not be criticized would be one that doesn't allow people to act wickedly in a regular basis. Now, I can guess one comment you could make at this point is - "People who act wickedly often do so for their flawed human nature, not for their beliefs" but there's many cases where atrocities have been commited in the name of dogma. And dogma is not only a human flaw, independent from the belief; it's written explicitly in the doctrine itself.  

Let me use Christianity as an example. Not to kick back the thread to square one, but because it's where the topic comes from and we know it better than other religions. In the dark ages, the crusades or the invasion of America (not to mention when the ancient hebrews decimated their neighbors) the Bible was often invoked. Selectively, you'll say. Hand picking what agreed with their needs and psychosis and overlooking the messages of love and compassion. But nevertheless, they invoked the Bible.

A belief that contains contradiction is worth of critique, and believers who murder people by the book are either a symptom of the fact that - 1) The beliefs are murderous, or 2) There's contradiction in those beliefs.

In either case, I think using the history of religion to critique the religion itself is perfectly valid.

I agree with your intentions if what we want is helping people to discuss these things in a civil manner, but again, logically speaking, if we know the doctrine we're believing in, an attack to the history of the Christian god implies an attack to God.

But of course the problem happens when we're having an argument and not thinking logically, and our motivation is guarding our beliefs in spite of what our reason might say. Certainly we can do that, but then we're not really having a proper argument, we're just having a clash of egos. And that what's we want to avoid because it's not leading anywhere.

I guess my point is that if we want to avoid personal, emotional confrontations when discussing things like religion, the guidelines are more simple than this, and as you say afterwards, it's about not taking personally the observations of the other, assuming the other will do the same, and reasoning.

The problem seems to be the identification of the self with the belief, and for that I suspect the only true way out is breaking or transcending the self, but that would be another topic.

Agreed completely, we should focus on improving our selves and not our beliefs. Maybe because beliefs seem to be a consequence of us, not a cause.