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Well, people get what they want to hear/read out of religion. Take the old testament, you have enough instances of God-sanctioned large-scale murder to justify

• TomGullen 12y ago
  If you take my personal ethics out of the equation, I don't think I could say that one interpretation is more valid than another. I just agree with one interpretation more because it more closely aligns with my views ("do what ever you want if you're not hurting anyone else"). When religious folk say that the other religious folk are misinterpreting religious text x, I can't help but think they are in no position to make that judgement fairly unless they have their own sense of ethics that overrides the ethics fed to them by their religion. Their view is simply another interpretation of their texts on the broad scale of interpretations of their religious texts. If their ethics are therefore not derived from their religion, seems like a large chunk of the utility of their religion is an illusion. They are not good or better people because of their religion, their ethical foundation is already formed inside them regardless of what religion they pledge membership to.
• orbifold 12y ago
  At least for Christians what counts most are the teachings of Jesus and apart from a few predictions of purgatory of the wicked the gospels preach peacefulness and non-violence. Of course when Jahwe was just a tribal god, they had to invent lots of stories on how he was much more powerful than other gods, who didn't even exist because there was only one god and it was theirs.