Why the "There are so many interpretations of the Bible" claim is confused

[TheRocketSurgeon]

You know, I've heard people say I've taken certain passages of the Great Book of Myths and Murder "out of context" numerous times.  I've asked a few people to give me the same passages in context and it's amazing, isn't it (not really) that THEIR interpretations are usually different.

When the believers of said book can all get the story straight I *might* take them a little more seriously.

In the meantime, they'll all individually drive us batshit crazy as we try to guess which version this particular Christian will accept as "the correct interpretation of scripture", even if they're honest enough to tell us if we happen to guess their particular one out of the dozens of possibilities for almost any given passages.

And yes, what Robvalue said is exactly what scripture teaches. If I do not accept the words of this particular scripture (as opposed to, say, the Rig Vedas, Bahagavad Gita, the Qur'an, &c &c, ad infinitum), then we are bound to be tortured for not finding it any more plausible than the others that you Christians reject just as we do.

It is clear that your God is a monster, as described by your holy book. If I accept the stories that describe the genocide, slavery, and misogyny of that book, then I would be a monster for accepting it as it is written (most Christians have the decency to ignore parts that are so morally repugnant, like stoning our children for disobedience/disrespect to their parents, or murdering gays, or killing a woman who sleeps with a man who isn't her fiancee... aaaaaaaand sooooo oooooonnnnn!), and as we have discussed previously, it is just as morally repugnant to "offer a free gift" when the penalty of refusing the "free gift" is torture. Forever.

For those of us with honor and integrity, it would be better to suffer than to worship a being that says, "Accept my free love gift or be burned alive forever in the place that I created for people who defy my laws." 

For those of us with innate morality and decency, it would be better to burn alive than to support the worship of a being that wants us to submit and subjugate our own intellect for a predigested (and demonstrably wrong, by the way) version of reality, especially when that version of reality contains "divine commands" that have all the prejudices of a barbaric, desert warrior people from 3000 years ago.

For those of us who believe in real justice, not just "justice" as a synonym for punishment, the concept of eternal punishment for a temporal crime, especially when there is no way to know for certain that one version of the threat (since Islam's holy-book threats of hell are much more severe than Christianity's holy-book threats, you should probably take the Muslim Qur'an more seriously... I'm just sayin') is better than another, only to note that any threat of hell constitutes a threat and makes any such God the moral equivalent of an armed robber or rapist.

Is it free will, and free choice, to give your money to a person who says he will shoot you in the kneecaps if you choose not to give up your wallet? If not, then God is a criminal, and unworthy of worship.

Is it free will, and free choice, to submit yourself to the "free love gift" of a person with a gun who tells you, "let me love you... and tell me you love me back or else I will shoot you"? If not, then God is a rapist, and worthy of revulsion at anyone who makes excuses for such a being's behavior.

Is it free will, and free choice, to tell you that I have made a torture chamber in my basement, where I will send you if you do not choose to obey me? If not, then God is a psychopath, and anyone who volunteered to obey this being is almost as evil as he is, like the followers of Charles Manson.

We can read for ourselves what the claims of the Bible are, with regard to the nature of your "loving" God and his self-blood-sacrifice.

We do not worship muggers, rapists, or Blood Gods. We would be immoral, evil people if we followed such a being and tried to repaint this being in a way to sell to others as "kind and loving". The Christians who are decent people are decent almost exactly to the degree they manage to not be sucked in by the dogma, and simply use the faith as a prompt for their own inner goodness toward their fellow human beings while ignoring  the parts which command suppression, hatred, and domination (in prettier terms, of course) of anyone who is not part of the cult(ure) of Christian fundamentalism.