How does religion explain birth defects?

[Loki_999]

I think the consensus around here is, if there is a God, and there is an afterlife, then we would prefer to be in Hell than in Heaven, given the choice between obeying a mad and tyrannical deity and hanging with Lucifer by the Lake of Fire listening to some Hendrix and smoking a fat reefer.

Wow, atheists are very crazy then.

But trust me, Hell is not a good place to hang around in. There's a lot of fire and torture happening there if it exists.

Well, you see the problem is that the text's you take to be the truth were written by those on the side of God. Now if we had some text's written by those who followed Satan/Lucifer/Devil/Shaitan then maybe you would get a different point of view.

You see history is written by the winners, and poor old Luce lost the war. But if you consider how he is portrayed in the Bible or the Koran, back at the start he comes across as a fairly decent guy (or angel or djinn if you prefer). So, he had a bit of a dispute with Yahweh/Allah, told God that he was doing it wrong, and got shit-canned for it.

In return God also runs some very bad PR against him that gives him and his new home a bad name.

For all we know, Hell may be the better place where there are non-stop parties and fun. Heaven on the other hand is more likely to be a totalitarian dictatorship with a mad ruler who demands constant worship for the souls trapped there.

Yup, if I believed that the Abrahamic god actually existed then I would be doing my best to get into Hell. However, as I (and all atheists) do not believe in God (Yahweh/Allah), gods, or any other divine entities, then we don't need to worry about these things. The only think we really need to worry about is who do we trust to clean our hard drives of all the filthy porn we have accumulated if we happen to die unexpectedly before our families start dividing our possessions.