What makes you unbelieve Crash ?

Actually, mike, if you look at other forms of life, you can find mirror of our own tendacies, both good and bad. For example, war is not that uncommon a feature in nature. Ant colonies are notorius for it, and not just between seperate species either. Several primates species have also been known to engage in war. Usually its about territory, females, resources, ect, very similar to human reasons for war. Religion and ideals as reasons for war may be a new twist, but more often then naught, it is simply the rational humans use to engange in war. Other forms of violence can again be traced back to other species that engage in similar behaviors. For example, may mammilian species have examples of infanticide. Males will often kill offspring that are not their own in order to force the female to go back into breeding again. Additionally, it guarentees that those offspring won't be competing with the males future offspring either. Sadly, infantcide is common throughout the history of human wars. There are numerous examples in the old testament, where god commands the execution of entire populations (men, women, children).
(see Deuturonomy 20:16 and 20:17, see also 1 Samuel 15:2 and 15:3.) These were the two quick examples, I am sure I could find more if I took more time.

Actually, I can agree that the OT is a poor representation of christianity. Also, I put the post up to demonstrate that violence isn't so much a function of sin as it is biology. Violence is one those traits that is common throughout nature.
Additionally, by point of quoting the bible was to demonstrate how religion can be used as an excuse for violence. I am not saying that if their is a god, he would command others to violence. However, the OT does have such examples of men claiming that god ordered them to do great violence on others. As an example. As I said, man has no problem using the name of god, even to the point of saying its a command from god, as a reason to santify murder. Of course, Saul goes and attack and ALMOST utterly wipes out teh amelekites. What happens? According to the bible, god becomes angry that Saul didn't kill everything. (seems that Saul spared some cattle and the kind of the Amelekites, Agag.) Essentially, because Saul didn't kill Agag, he was striped of his kinghood over Isreal.Now, again, I hardly doubt it was god actually ordering the massacre (given that I am an athiest.). In fact, I prefer to believe that Samuel was just a cruel person who had a taste for wee bit of the ultrs-violence (he did kill Agag after berating Saul for not doing so, and striping him of his kinghood.). If you take the bible to be literally true, you have a bloodthirsty god who has no problem ordering the destruction of entire tribes.As for the bible, I seriously don't understand why christianity even holds to the OT. I understand that the teaching of jesus are contained in the NT, and therefore have little to do with OT. However, considering that the whole reason there are any christian creationists is the OT, it seems that the OT is fair play.Again, my point was to show violence in a context of biology. I brought up religiius and ethical reasons for was an example of how we try to justify to ourselves some of the violence. Frankly, I think it at least demonstrates that most people are uneasy about violence and murder and need some form of reason. Since my personaly experience and knowledge of religions is manily related to christianity, I picked an example from the bible.Of course, this is all off topic from the discussion between you and crash and has little to nothing to do with any of our beliefs, except in the most tangental way, which was to demonstrate that "sin" is not neccesary to explain violence and misery, when biology does that quite well on its own. I consider our repugenence of such violence, and our awknoledgment that our lives are better without it as a sign that our consciousness and humanity do have value and can help us deal with biology of violence, and hopefully limit its effects.

Invoking satan is akin to invoking god, neither are falsifiable ideas. Even then, if god created teh angels, and satan was one of them to began with, is he still not responsible for the creation of evil? Of course, to me, it is irrelevants since I don't see any evidence for either, and conclude that based on the given evidence, neither probably exists.

Well, it has drifted a bit off topic, which was why was Crash an unbeliever. If crash felt he answered that question, there isnt much point in continuing this particular thread.

Ringo, I was directly responding to Born2preach's question. Please focus on details and don't generalize. Sheesh. Overreaction. Also, the topic has wandered quite a bit, that isn't always bad, but if there are specific questions and points you want to address, a seperate thread might be the best way to communicate that point.