People sometimes raise the idea that religion is necessary for human
goodness and kindness. However, humans were long ago programmed genetically
through competitve evolution pressures, to cooperate and help each other.
Groups that hang together can out survive groups that don't. Sports teams
made up of star players, can often be beaten teams made up of lesser players
they use better teamwork than their opponents.

It's sometimes argued that people need the idea of God in order to make them
behave properly. However, even if that were true, it would have no bearing
on whether there really is a God or not. If religion actually made people
more ethical, then there should be less crime in regions where religion is
important in people's lives. However, studies on this question seemed to
indicate more crime occurs in areas where religion is important. In the
Middle East, the average Moslem person is much more religious than average
over the world, however I doubt that they are more moral or that we should
start imitating their social behaviors.

The Bible is an accumulation of documents that has evil things in it, but is
not systematically evil. It's more strange than evil, per se. It's a chaotic
assemblage of disjointed writings which have been altered over time by
translation from one language to another, and by selective editing for
purposes that existed during the various times that the translations and
editings done.

A few examples of problems and just plain weirdness in the Bible.

The story of Noah involves God mass murdering most of the humans on Earth,
and killing off almost all of the other animal life, also. The fact that the
story doesn't deal with microscopic forms of life, is an indication that
"God" didn't know about its existence.

Another story involving god's mass murder is the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah. The hero of this story is Lot, a nephew of Abraham.

Two male angels were sent to warn Lot to leave the city before its
destruction. Lot welcomed the Angels into his house, which was subsequently
surrounded by sinful townsmen who demanded that the Angels be turned over to
them so they could be sodomized.

Lot protected the Angels by offering his two virgin daughters to be used by
the crowd, instead of the two male angels. The male angels saved the day by
striking blind the marauding crowd that wanted to sodomize them.

Lot's household escapes along with their apparently God blessed animals, but
Lot's wife gets turned to salt by God, for committing the sin of looking
back at the destruction of the city. The story continues and gets even more
perverse.

(By the way, the region this event supposedly took place in is an earthquake
zone, and due to its geology, has been prone to developing thick evaporite
deposits (salt beds) which erode out to forming interesting looking vertical
"pillars".)

Lott and his two daughters wind up living in a cave, isolated from other
people. Lacking male attention, the girls decided to get their father drunk
so he would have sex with them, which he did, getting both of them pregnant.

Something similar to the Lott story shows up in Judges 19. Here, a girl
concubine is handed over to a mob instead of a male visitor, and she is gang
raped all night by the mob. After this ordeal she crawls to the man's door
who turned her over to the mob, and then she dies. Upon finding her there
the man cuts her body up into 12 pieces and sends her into all the coasts of
Israel.

Another example of God's penchant for weirdness and mass murder is the
killing of children through plague in Egypt when the Israelites were trying
to leave the Pharaoh's service.

The book of Numbers tells of how God incited Moses to attack the
Medinanites. The Israelite army killed all the men and destroyed the citys,
but they failed to kill the Medinanite women and children. This infuriated
Moses and he gave orders that all the boy children should be killed, and all
women killed unless they were virgins.

These biblical stories advocate genocide. They set precedent for it and put
God's authority behind it.

The book of Joshua all about genocide. The wiping out of populations so that
the Israelites could claim the land for themselves, under God's orders.
That's essentially the same thing as Hitler intended to do, and did
partially for a time, in his invasions into Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union.

According to Leviticus 20, offenses meriting death: cursing your parents;
committing adultery; sex with your stepmother or your daughter-in-law;
homosexuality; marrying a woman and her daughter; bestiality; working on the
Sabbath.

According to the Bible, if a man finds his wife is not a virgin at marriage,
he can have her stoned to death.

The Bible is a strange book - it's not a guide for actual human history, or
ethics for humans.