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Originally Posted by asaris
Will -- I never said that the world was perfectly designed, only that it exhibited signs of design. And order doesn't imply lack of ruthlessness.
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Because you offered no evidence, I had to try and guess at what you were talking about.
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Originally Posted by asaris
As for never saying that theism causes injustice, what about the following:
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Religion doesn't cause the injustice, BUT it sure as hell facilitates it. Tell you what, why don't you name the worst crimes committed by atheists, then I'll list some made by theists. That would help me explain.
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Originally Posted by asaris
You also make the claim that non-fundamentalist Christians just pick and choose what to believe. This is simply false. Consider the claim that God created the world in seven days. This is actually the more recent belief -- Christians at least as far back as Augustine believed that passage of Genesis to be metaphorical. An interpretation of scripture that says some passages are metaphorical isn't the same as simply picking and choosing what you believe.
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What about God killing millions of people for not believing in him? Was that a metaphor for getting to know yourself or being kind to strangers? What about flooding the planet? What about the slaughter of the former inhabitants of Jericho, except the young girls for the Israelites to keep for themselves ("Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.")?
This big guy in the sky killed, or caused to be killed, millions of innocent people. God ordered, or approved of, the murder of civilians, of little children, of helpless old people, defenseless women, prisoners of war, and even livestock. It tells us that God approved the instructions to soldiers to keep the virgins for yourselves. The biggest problem with the Bible, Torah and Qu'ran is that we have people claiming that not all of it should be taken literally and that it's more to give you a moral compass....but God is hardly a good moral compass by today's standards. So theists are stuck. Either they have to accept that the Bible is true and that the creator of the universe is a cold blooded killer, or (and much, much more often) they pick and choose, which is what I was talking about.
So I guess the question is: is god a murderer, or do you pick and choose what to believe?