With a God like this, why did they need Satan?

[Yazata]

If you live in the United States of America, it is impossible to be a "moral atheist."

I live in the United States and I'm a moral atheist. Certainly as moral as the average Christian or Jew. So I and those like me represent counter-examples that render your assertion false.

No further discussion on that issue is necessary

Right. Your assertion probably doesn't merit further discussion.

 

[Imperfectionist]

On a side note. . . the last two Presidents that actually believed in a higher power were Kennedy and Reagan.

If they believe in a higher power, the Atheists go after them with a gun. It's why my friends and I don't think Dr. Paul will ever get into office. And if he does, expect gun play.

Every American president has been a believer. Every single one.

 

[Aqueous Id]

Every American president has been a believer. Every single one.

Why do Americans equate the election of a president with the election of a pope?

 

[Imperfectionist]

religion is shorthand for goodness. and the russians were not religius and they were our enemy

 

[Aqueous Id]

religion is shorthand for goodness. and the russians were not religius and they were our enemy

Well when Pope Captain America the First gets elected, we'll just have to go over to Russia and kick some ass and take some names. I think Sarah Palin has a back door key--and a moose gun--to get it done. So that makes her the next Secretary of Defense by default.

I see promise here, you're quite the ideas man. You should get into religion -er- I mean politics.

 

[wynn]

Other charming Biblical passages have God ordering that daughters who have premarital sex be stoned, that Jews who leave Judaism be killed, and similar things.

One can easily imagine material circumstances in which such harsh treatment of humans by humans makes sense.
Consider times of war, famine, natural catastrophes - it's a matter of martial law.

People have always tried to uphold the law, no matter what circumstaces they have lived in - whether in welfare or in times of extreme need. The more there is material need, the more crude the upholding of the law becomes. This is evident also in modern secular settings (think the Occupy protests and the way the police sometimes tried to stop them).

As for the stories of God killing all those people: I think they serve as a reminder that it was not the Israelites who could take credit.

People who are attracted to the Abrahamic religions tend to be very intent on enjoying material things, desiring to take credit for what they have and often see God as a kind of vending machine (as if God is supposed to serve them, not that they serve God).
So I think the Bible is trying to steer them away from those tendencies.

I think that this stuff is extremely problematic for those modern Jews and Christians who simultaneously want to condemn practices like these as savage and barbaric, but still hold tightly to the doctrines of Biblical authority and inerrancy, and to the idea that the Bible is somehow the ultimate "Good Book".

I think the Abrahamists have some problems with anachronism and decontextualization.