One could argue that some the worst things happen precisely when you think you have god on your side. In the paraphrased words of Christopher Hitchens, "The suicide bombing communities and the child genital mutilation communities are almost entirely faith-based."

This is false, see http://cpost.uchicago.edu About half of all suicide bombings are secular. (I don't know about child genital mutilation)

Yes, but it's taboo (this will get downvoted hard) to point out that neither the Christian nor Jewish communities are involved in such activities.

(Not that Christians and Jews as a group are sinless, of course.)

Christians and Jews are pretty heavily involved in child genital mutilation.

Yes, but circumcision doesn't seem to have any long-term effects on genital function. Yes, there are arguments back and forth in the medical community, but it's not an obvious mutilation.

I have found in life that when people say obvious, they really mean unexamined. If you have the courage to honestly know the damage done, you will see mutilation.

You are wrong sorry. Plenty of Christian mutilation of female genitalia is permanently disfiguring and removes their ability to have pleasure during sex. Any mutilation is horrible just because it isn't so bad does not excuse it at all.

I'm sorry, but I've never heard in all my decades of life about female mutilation among Christians. Can you point to some credible evidence?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3507121/ By all means

>Practice of FGM has no relationship with religion. Muslims and Christians practice it, but it is more widely spread in Christian predominated parts of Nigeria.[2]

Any sort of theistically-based morality can degenerate into that, of course, but it's hardly the mainstream way that adherents of any of the major monotheistic faiths think or talk about God and His commands. On the contrary, the typical (and orthodox) way that God is understood to be connected to morality is to say that just as God is the ground and source of Being, so God is the ground and source of the Good. God requires righteousness from His creation because He (as the Good) is the goal or τελος of that creation, and you simply can't be what you were intended to be without that goodness. Of course, failing to be what you were intended to be comes with problems, but the failures are organically connected with the problems, just as the rewards are intrinsically a part of the success.

That's one theological approach to some of the more difficult problems in religion (especially modern Christianity). Is it really widely held though?

It's a natural interpretation for anyone familiar with the Euthyphro, but most people have not read Plato.

I haven't generally seen strong evidence that adherents have actually adopted the beliefs professed by apologists. Surveys routinely find adherents generally fall closer to literalists.

Gallup found that 70% of Americans believed in the Devil, similar numbers for hell.[0]

It might be tempting to wash this and say, "no, all those people just meant a metaphorical devil." But if you step back, it strains credulity a bit to argue that people, when asked if something existed, would respond "yes" to mean "not really, only in an allegorical sense."

Mostly though, of all the rationalizations offered for odd religious views, I just haven't yet seen any good evidence that most adherents have actually adopted these more nuanced views.

[0] http://www.gallup.com/poll/27877/Americans-More-Likely-Belie...

As a fairly traditional religious type, I'm not too worried that, say, the folks in my Bible study can't explain the theological basis for natural law, any more than I'm worried than the folks who use my software can't explain how a compiler works. You can gain value from something without being able to explain the details - though it's also true you can do yourself quite a few favors by trying to understand at least a couple of levels down, whether as a Christian or a computer user. (And by the way, reasonably nuanced philosophical perspectives are by no means incompatible with belief in supernatural evil: just ask Thomas Aquinas, or, for that matter, I suppose, me. :-)

I completely agree that people don't need to know all the nuances of something to get some value out of it, in the general case. I read your response to api as suggesting people held a more nuanced view than I think they actually do. My mistake.

More importantly:

> reasonably nuanced philosophical perspectives are by no means incompatible with belief in supernatural evil...

There are a lot of ways to take this, so just to be clear, are you saying that you believe an all-loving and omnipotent god created a willful being of pure evil?

Sorry for the delay, just now saw this.

My clarification to your last question is to fall back on the traditional understanding of evil, going back to at least Plotinus: evil is real, but it's a derivative reality, parasitic on good. So you can't have a being of pure evil: it's sort of ruled out (in this understanding) by definition. What you can have is a being that, through the good of free will, chooses lesser goods - in this case, itself - and in the process corrupts itself and effectively revolts against its Creator. Evil, yes, but not pure evil, and not originally created as such.

It's not as if this line of defense doesn't have its holes, but it's plausible enough that I don't think it can be dismissed out of hand. And it also explains enough that, given my other philosophical and theological predispositions, I tend to think it (or something like it) quite probable.

Well there are different ways to raise children, and while the theological arguments are fine, I was really wondering about the parents. I suspect, but can't prove, that every child at some time or another lies, cheats, steals, and generally tries to circumvent what is perceived to be "ridiculous" constraints on their behavior. And while a church might provide "rules" for behavior, I firmly believe it is up to the family to provide "why" for behavior. I spent many hours explaining the why of rules to my kids. And yes, some of that why came from teachings like "love thy neighbor as thyself" but most of it was common sense about making everyone's lives as enjoyable as possible rather than one person's life that enjoyable.

I'm sad these guys didn't learn that.