[Burkean Buckleyite]

Actually, God is used to justify making up your own rules (e.g. “God says Kill The Infidels!”) far more often than atheism is.

[2banana]

Actually, God is used to justify making up your own rules (e.g. “God says Kill The Infidels!”) far more often than atheism is.

40 million dead in communist China says you are wrong
30 million dead in communist Russia says you are wrong
5 million dead in communist North Korea says you are wrong
3 million dead in communist Cambodia says you are wrong
etc.

And PS - don't equate the God of Christianity to the god of islam.

[James C. Bennett]

Hitchens already answered most of the arguments raised here:

This is a concluding statement by him, watch the entire debate in the related links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-k1Jr0fp0dE

[betty boop]

Actually, God is used to justify making up your own rules (e.g. “God says Kill The Infidels!”) far more often than atheism is.

You can't be serious. Atheist systems destroyed tens of millions of people in the last century. To say that individual liberty does not survive in atheist systems is a truth known to any serious student of history.

In other words, at bottom, atheism has no defense of Life and Liberty.

RE: the jihadi who says his "god" tells him to destroy infidels — what kind of God promotes this kind of irrational hatred? What kind of God promotes such incredible dysfunction in the relations between the sexes that is universal in the Islamic world?

In this case, Burkean Buckleyite, you may be correct that "God is used to justify making up your own rules." But we cease to be speaking of God and authentic religion at that point. We then are speaking only of disordered and disorderly men....