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I was just discovering this by reading The Brick Testament, and going back to the actual text on Project Gutenberg. You just pointed me at Evil Bible, which is even better -- I was thinking I'd compile something like that myself.

Mostly just posting this to give evilbible an advantage with search engines (you didn't link to it), but this is interesting. Thanks.

I don't know of any other religion in the world, that outright preaches violence as a direct approach to anything offensive.

Indeed, Christians aren't that great either. I wonder how many of them have read these in The Bible:

God orders the murder of all the worshipers of a different god in their very own church! In total God kills 371,186 people directly and orders another 1,862,265 people murdered.

The God of the Bible also allows slavery, including selling your own daughter as a sex slave (Exodus 21:1-11), child abuse (Judges 11:29-40 and Isaiah 13:16), and bashing babies against rocks (Hosea 13:16 & Psalms 137:9).

For more see here.

I wonder how the Catholic League would respond to a South Park episode that reenacts the unsavory bits of the Bible.

Don't misunderstand the Bible and reject it because people have twisted it. Read it.

I hate to be rude, but I just couldn't let this one pass. The best antidote for Christianity is to sit down and read the Bible. Yahweh is a vengeful, murderous tyrant, and refusing to believe in transubstantiation doesn't change that. It's not about literal interpretations of scripture vs. figurative interpretations. It's about Yahweh's behavior.

Imagine that during Saddam's upcoming trial, it comes out that, on his orders, soldiers marched into every town in Iraq and murdered the firstborn child of every family which did not have a picture of Saddam in the window. You would justly call him evil. A child murderer. You wouldn't try to make up excuses for him. It would be clear as day.

Yet this is just what Yahweh commands in the story of Passover.

And this is just one example of hundreds. Even the most forgiving reader who actually reads the Bible will come away with the correct impression that the being described within it would not be worth worshipping even if it did exist. (If you'd like to get a start right now, go ahead.)

http://www.evilbible.com/

Jesus wasn't the super nice guy that mainstream christian teaching would like to have everyone believe.

What would Jesus do?

Correction. It was George H. W. Bush(aka Senior) who said this. It was in 1987, while he was vice-president.

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Here is a particularly nasty quote:

Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. "The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him." (Deuteronomy 13:13-19 NLT)

[the links] failed to differentiate adequately between those things that God commanded to have done, and those things that people did anyway

That's the problem with dying. You can't control what nuts will put in your mouth. And, it's also the problem with trusting a heavily-interpreted, censored, selectively-propagated ancient work. You have no way to know what's legit and what's been invented for some other nefarious purpose that the originator may have never intended or even dreamed possible.

It's possible that someone recorded his message wrong, but the following 300 years had quite a bit of scrutiny on those writings which claimed to be from Jesus' disciples, and we can hardly do better ourselves.

Ah, but were it only scrutiny (and would that we could actually know!) and not the aforementioned comandeering and prostituting of what was probably a pretty decent collection of books at some point. In any case, if you trust the bible as it exists today, that site is quite clear in pointing out how god provoked, commanded, or reacted to each incredibly barbaric action in His name (or, at least, whoever allegedly wrote whatever He allegedly said at the time -- He was much more glib back in the day, no? -- which brings us back to the credibility problem outlined above).

You can be a deluded nut and still be a pretty decent guy -- just like Jesus!

Maybe it has less to do with a problem with Jesus, who by many accounts seemed like a pretty decent guy, and a not-bad philospher to boot, and more to do with the insanity that has surrounded the bible and organized religion since the poor fella bought the farm.

Hmm, I didn't know evil was the opposite of confidential. Interesting.