Report Inappropriate Comments

I see that there are several hundred "no" votes. That is encouraging; but I would like to address a few remarks to the others.

Loyalty is not morality. Morality comes from recognizing that we are all in this together. Loyalty to a religion merely reflects one's alignment. In the case of Christianity, and many other religions, loyalty is maintained as an absolute good. The Christian god abandons those without loyalty, to predation by the chthonic Jesus, Satan. This does not absolve the deity from the act of torture, any more than one might expect absolution from a court for hiring a hit-man. The only real excuse for this behavior is the convenient fact that neither the Christian god nor its devils actually exist.

Religion limits clear thinking. It sets a precedent for truncated thoughts: if one may not question the god's intention or morality, one may find that it is convenient to fail to question other immoral acts, notably war, or economic and social injustice, for example, American apartheid. In this case some of the adherents of Christianity are indulging in immoral, violent, degenerate, threatening behavior, evidently without thinking clearly enough to realize that they are acting like sadistic fools. Or devils, if you will.

If we are to move forward as a society, we must abandon such intolerant cowardice.