Aloha Paola,

Thank you for your comments. I always learn something when engaged in a dialogue with people who care passionately about their ideas—even if we never reach agreement on the topic. So let me offer a couple of additional thoughts.

You dismissed most of the examples that I gave of religions that have not engaged in violence and which appear to have made a net positive contribution to humanity by noting that they are offshoots of the Abrahamic religions. You then suggest that as such, they share the same “mentally ill god.”

I would counter that their god-concepts have evolved considerably—which is precisely why they have advocated for peace and tolerance. Their theologies differ substantially from any literal reading of the Hebrew scriptures.

I can also make a case that the editors of the Hebrew Bible never intended for it to be read literally—just scan the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis, which are different versions of the creation myth. The two accounts contradict each other, offering very different chronologies … it is highly unlikely that they would have been placed side by side if the editors wanted the accounts to be read literally.


Be that as it may, our thinking about virtually every human enterprise has evolved over time. The great majority of people don’t reject the idea of government because the executive, in earlier times, was typically an absolute despot with the power of life and death over his or her subjects. Nor do we insist, in the field of economics, that all legitimate trade should be based on the barter system. Why, then, should we reject the entire religious enterprise because the god-ideas held by our ancestors were primitive in a number of respects? And for that matter, why are we citing only the evidence that the Abrahamic god was violent, and not weighing that against his attributes of justice, mercy and universalism, which are also part of early Abrahamic theology?

My other thought takes us back to my main disagreement with your thesis. You have laid the blame for our violent, intolerant history at the feet of the Abrahamic god—and I concede that countless horrific acts have been carried out by people, ostensibly in service to that particular deity. I have suggested that individuals moved by the all-too-human lust for power have perpetuated these crimes, merely using religion as a convenient pretext. To support that argument, I will repeat what I stated earlier (and what you have not yet responded to): the 20th century witnessed the greatest acts of genocide ever committed by human beings—and they were carried out by men like Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot. None of those men were motivated by religious faith. They were driven by a lust for power—absolute power.

I will go one step further and suggest that we humans rarely act purely or even primarily on our beliefs. We simply aren’t that rational. We act on our urges, our wants and desires, and our emotions. The “reasons” that we cite to explain our actions are the product of our prodigious capacity for rationalization. Religion is not the author of our evil deeds—just another excuse for them.

Again, thank you for your comments. It is certainly a provocative topic.