Oh, yes. while writing that I was strangely reminded of the passage in which the Christian author C.S. Lewis defended belief in God in the Silver Chair. A reminder - the protagonists have been captured by a witch who rules a dark and miserable underworld, and she is trying to persuade them that that is the only world. Puddleglum, a Marshwiggle, argues that she may be right that her world is the only one, and that their memories of the real world, and Aslan, are purely imaginary, but that if so, it is very strange that their play world is better than hers. Of course, in the book, their world real, as is Aslan, and we all root for him as he stamps out her enchanted fire.

Here, by an odd reversal, I was arguing that the real world, in which people decide that genocide is evil for reasons obvious to most, is better than the Bible world, in which god ordains that it is appropriate. The god who made that order (and note that I have dropped the capital, which I use only for the God revealed in Jesus) was as imaginary as Lewis' witch and as arbitrary as any other Bronze Age deity.

If you want the Bible to be the arbiter of morality, you have to show that it is worthy of that status, and it isn't. I know I am falling into the trap of Marcion here (you probably don't), but the early writings were made by men of their time who were feeling inadequately towards an understanding of what God could be, and are not reliable as guides to anything. Have you actually read the thing? Leaving out not having read Darwin, not having taken on board what the Bible is actually like is a serious failing if you are going to claim that without it, anyone's morality is without standing.

Penny