Originally posted by: Socio
What I would like to know is how can someone strap bombs on helpless mentally handicapped people, blow them up and possibly equate that to being righteous to any god that has slightest bit of benevolence?
Well, in any religion this COULD be considered righteous, depending on how you interpret the words, pretty much like how Jesus said to kill your children if they smithe their parents in Mark 7:9-10 and how he critisises the Jews for not doing so int Matt 15 (and those are clear words, not interpretations)
These men/women were infested by the spirit of satan and got clensed?
Justification can be found in any scripture for just about anything, there are many pages and many interpretations of each word on each and every page.
I am certain that by using the original Arameic translated to Greek, to English you could come up with texts like "monkey may has no banana" and with some interpretation make it illegal to masturbate.
Then it would be removed by some church because everyone masturbates and they cannot really keep them from doing so, while "handicapped people are infested by satan" would stay and become the norm.... Think about it, it's not like it's an uncommon belief among Christian sects that invalids or retarded people are that way because they have embraced satan.
Now the step from that to using them in the name of God is quite a tiny one.
I can PROMISE you that if you get a sect of Christians into a poor enough environment they will start chopping of childrens limbs with machetes to cure them in the name of God, right before they bleed to death.
Of course, African Christians don't count, do they?