[Matt R.]

Did you get molested by a priest or something? I can handle healthy debate, but it's pretty clear you have some personal agenda with Christianity. When you start comparing my education in religion at a Catholic school, when you know nothing about the school and what was taught, to Tom Cruise's education and/or fanatical religious opinion, you go from having a civilized debate to being insulting, and, well, looking like a [censored] idiot.

Most of the things you mentioned like the Israelites vs. Midianites are about the Israelites getting vengeance for years of oppession. The Israelites had to take refuge in caves because the oppression was so severe. According to Deuteronomy, God told Moses that it was time for the Israelites to rise up against the oppression.

Since you think this is so wrong, I assume you think it is okay for a group of severely oppressed people not to fight back, am I right? The "atrocities" that Moses spoke of later (not God) were attributable to Moses. God is not Moses. Christianity does not worship Moses. Further, from my admittedly brief skimming of those chapters, it appears you were very careful about how you chose your words. You make it sound like God advocated the raping of little girls. The only passage I saw was Moses speaking about how the men were to take the women hostages as their wives. Again Moses said this, not God. I'm willing to bet that this was VERY common practice in those days in the aftermath of war. This book was written thousands of years ago. I never claimed every little word applied equally today as it applied to the culture of, you know, a very long time ago. Why do you think it should?

Again, I go back to my original claim that Christianity's fundamental teachings never advocate an unjust war. You seem to conveniently gloss over the word "unjust", despite my emphasis on this word at least 2 other times. The Israelites were fighting back, plain and simple.

You need to get it through your head that Jesus never advocated violence unless it was just. He spoke of God exacting punishment on the wicked. You seem to think murderers should get off scot free. If the creator of the universe is not capable of determining proper justice for sinful/immoral actions, then I don't know who is.

The main teaching of Jesus in regards to societal interactions is "Do unto your neighbor as he/she would do unto you." *Everything* else he teaches is a consequence of this, and the idea of loving God. I really, honestly have no clue how you could possibly think Jesus was an advocate of random violence, or unjust war. His one quote of "I come to bring not peace, but the sword" was completely antithetical to his other teachings if you take it at face value. Do you think, maybe, that there was more to it than that one sentence? Or are you content at taking that ONE SINGLE SENTENCE from his entire body of teachings and claiming "Oh, look he wants to kill everyone who isn't a Christian!!" One valid interpretation is that Jesus was predicting that his desciples would not be well received and would encounter violence by those not willing to receive Jesus' message. He was warning about the persecution of Christians. If you read the entire passage surrounding this one sentence, this seems very reasonable.

You know that Jesus spoke in parables constantly right? Why would you take this one sentence, when it is essentially completely opposite to his primary viewpoint, at face value? He *constantly* spoke in symbolism and metaphor. Why do you dismiss his use of metaphor in the one instance that it makes most sense to do so? Oh right, because you don't want to. It doesn't fit your interpretaion of Jesus as a bloodthirty warlord.