The evil of ignoring or dismissing (which is effectively condoning) the Bible God's evil commands and teachings which are also the commands and teachings of the vile creatures who created those scriptures

The Church regards a book allegedly created by God through men as infallible on faith and morals. That book is the Bible and its words though not dictated by God all the time (though there are many examples of dictation) are regarded as being the same as God's words.  Even those who deny verbal dictation hold that even if the Bible is not all the words of God its words in practice amount to the same thing as being God's actual words and that this is God's teaching.  Jesus taught the Old Testament had no errors. God in it commands that gay men be tortured to death by stoning.  So the doctrine indirectly backs him up.  The Church and the Bible writers themselves explicitly and implicitly are remarkable for approving of the past violence engaged in by divine command. Jesus refused to apologise for it or repudiate it. He even regarded Moses highly though Moses claimed God gave him the nasty commands. The followers of Jesus need to think about kettles and pots if they criticise Islam or if a violent new form of Christianity emerges.

If a book contains threatening doctrines such as original sin, divine retribution, a Messiah with an abusive tongue like Jesus', everlasting damnation and ridiculous sins such as masturbation and thinking outside the boundaries set by the Church being seen as huge sins it should be recycled for toilet paper. Nobody has the right to risk the peace of mind of even one child or vulnerable person with such ideas.

For the atheist, suffering is never a necessary evil. For the believer it is for God puts up with it, so we are told, for his purpose. Faith violates the principle that if something can be seen as an unnecessary evil then it should be.

Believers refuse to take responsibility for helping somebody to believe who then goes and say stones pagans to death. Their attitude is intolerable and unworthy of respect.

Man ignores all these problems because man doesn't care enough about having good principles. Man is happier to do evil indirectly than directly for he is more likely to get away with it and when man enables evil he tends to feel good about it. The peaceful believers are making it possible for the violent ones to be inspired by religion and use religion to shed blood. It even gets to the extent where a faith endorses abortion despite believing God creates a new person at conception.

If you are a good person, do not degrade your goodness by following Christianity which is the worst case of endorsing violent scriptures or Islam the next runner up. You are not an island and you influence others even when you don't intend to. Think of them and walk out of those faiths.

Christian religious education tells children the Christian scriptures (Bible) are true for they are authored by God and must be accepted by faith. Most schools engage in the devious tactic of not telling the children the whole story.  They are not told about the violence supposedly commanded by God. To manipulate people to venerate evil books is itself evil.  To say to a child, “God wrote the Bible” is to tell the child in an indirect way that God was right to command all that evil. It is to say, "If God told us to, we would still be engaging in violence at his command." To manipulate a child into a system that indirectly/directly or explicitly/implicitly sanctions violence or approves of a God who is not against murder and violence in principle is outrageous and disgusting is not a bad enough word for it. The poison could infect the child for life and indeed is violence itself. Childhood is a time when we are easily programmed. If the child grows up to be non-violent then how can this happen when she knows of the bad scriptures and indeed venerates them as being of divine authorship? She might make the mistake of thinking they are not literal or clear. She might not have thought much about it. But whatever, it means her peacefulness is accidental and not due to the religion as such and certainly not to the scriptures. She is good in spite of her scriptures and religion. She could be better if she dumped them for the good is often the enemy of the best. If she finds out the truth she will become hardened to the thought of religious violence as endorsed by the scriptures because she has been culturally programmed to honour those writings as unerring and sacred. She may even feel it is okay if she engages in it!

Empathy is the ability to understand somebody thoughts and ideas and fears and emotions and feelings from their own perspective. The book Christianity is Not Great points out that those who condone Bible and divine cruelty have a lack of empathy which "keeps believers from accepting the truth about their faith." They don't seem to care that God never clearly condemned slavery in the Bible. They argue that the Bible spells out principles that imply slavery is wrong. But the point is that they might not be meant to imply that it is wrong even if they do. "If you were a slave ... wouldn't you wish the Christian God had clearly condemned slavery? God's defenders simply lack empathy for these people. They refuse to feel their pain." The book asserts then that their faith works like an anaesthetic and deadens the pain and sympathy they should feel for the slaves.

Now a person might be horrified at the thought that a divine power lets the innocent suffer horrendously even little babies. It makes her sick. Her head might tell her God has a plan but that should have little effect on the horror she feels. So how do believers cope? They work on feeling good or at least a bit better about condoning and approving of this God that allows the unimaginably evil to happen. They condone it and it protects them from how terrible they should feel. It is no wonder then that violent scriptures by violent gods are so honoured.

The book Christianity is Not Great pleases me so much for it shows atheists might need to concentrate not so much on, "Why does God allow evil to happen and how can he be good when he lets it happen?" but on, "Why does God command evil in the Bible and even murders and still get adoration from Christians?"

Christianity is Not Great invites us to exercise empathy and be horrified at the God who commanded terrible things in the Bible and at Jesus who saw nothing wrong with these deeds. "It is not enough to raise the NO True Scotsman argument to dodge accountability. These ideas exist in the Bible. If you proclaim allegiance to the Bible, you claim responsibility for its content and the injustice it perpetuates in society" from Christianity is Not Great.

Believers in the Bible are taking responsibility for its contents and what it asks people to do. They are also taking responsibility for the attempts made by theologians, clergy and others who attempt to condone and excuse and make light of the evil commanded by the God whom the Bible claims is its ultimate author. If you really understand suffering and how terrible and intolerable it is, you will not lightly say, "It is God's plan." You would need to be willing to fix all that suffering if possible before you would have the right to say such a thing. The comfort some (not all!) get or say they get from people telling them God has a plan is misplaced.

It is outrageous how anybody can say religion is only about peace. Christianity allows war in certain circumstances knowing fine well that war makes many people uncontrollable and soon there is child murder, rape, torture all because the chances of getting away with it are virtually certain. Both Christianity and Islam facilitate terror - it might be sort of limited but that does not make it any better. And both the Bible and Koran Gods commanded violence. Airbrushing violent religious teachings does not help at all and is refusing to deal with the problem properly and honestly and can lead to violence against those who broadcast the truth and oppose scriptures and holy books that glorify evil. Even if religiously motivated killers are disobedient to say Christianity or Islam, the question is, how wrong (from a biblical or Koranic perspective) is that disobedience considering God supposedly endorsed violence anyway in the scriptures? Perhaps it could be seen by believers as being wrong but not a serious sin considering violence is not intrinsically wrong? I am proud to follow no scripture and is it any wonder? I don't want to enable anything that enables or could enable grave violence to be regarded as less bad than what it is.

We must remember too that evil has to look good to succeed so don't chip in with, "But the Christian is such a nice person despite his belief in the Bible." Human nature is notorious for enabling evil with a smile. A truly decent person does not even contemplate honouring an evil book as the word of God. He throws it away. The good bits are a reason for rejecting it not accepting it. Something that advocates good and teaches good and then teaches its opposite is worse than something that means well but does little else but damage. Evil needs to be softened by having lots of good put into the mix. That way it does more harm than shamelessly blatant and undiluted evil.

We need to stop worrying more about the evil we directly enable or help to happen and realise that the evil we indirectly enable often is worse and more toxic. The Bible led to Protestant terrorism in Europe. Catholics and Protestants are both to blame for this for both advocate acceptance of the Bible as the unerring word of God.