[Fozzie_DeBear]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

So, this is patently false and your usage of passages from the Old Testament is grossly misleading at best or utterly irrelevant at worst.

In the first place, I don't presume to speak for all religions "anywhere they exist," but as a religious person I suspect I am eminently more qualified to address the supposition than are you. I was raised in a pretty conservative Evangelical household and was never led to believe by my parents, pastors or teachers that atheists were evil—at least not any more so than anyone else. In my upbringing atheists were to be pitied for having been grossly misled, and it was incumbent upon us as "believers" to enlighten atheists to the truth of the gospel and salvation. I presently do my best to teach my children that all people deserve our respect and good will regardless of their religion, culture, or rejection thereof. I don't personally know a single individual in my own vast network of practicing Christians, Jews and Muslims who would endorse any such hatred against atheists. This is a straw man and you should know better.

Second, your citation of ancient invectives utterly fails in the light of the socio-religious context of the day in which these were written. Without going into much detail, (1) "blasphemy" is NOT synonymous with "atheism"—it was the careless usage of the name of a deity in a culture that subscribed supernatural significance to the act of "naming." (2) The rejection of a verdict pronounced by a judge or a priest is actually a piece of primitive civil legislation with an unfortunately barbaric consequence. This is the antiquated equivalent to modern charges of contempt or abrogation for a governing civil or judicial authority and again, it has nothing to do with atheism. (3) The third passage is most absurd, since it is an invective precisely against something exclusively religious (performing a cultic act on behalf of another god than YHWH) which presumes theism—NOT atheism.

Yes. It is true that religion inflames tribalistic instincts that threaten our peaceful coexistence as a species, but you are only exacerbating the problem with your tired, ignorant, drive-by straw-man depictions of "religion."

Am I the only one that thinks that, in general, Christianity would be upgraded if it dropped the Old Testament? It seems like the Bronze Age ideas it espouses are where the VAST majority of socially troubling behaviours originate from. If everyone just took the New Testament as the only lessons that matter I think Christians would be MUCH more chill.