Thank you Vort for that clarification. It seems to me that the statement "God has always protected his obedient people from his disobedient people" is even more ridiculous then I originally thought. It re-confirms my feelings that religion is setup to disavow God from all of the ugliness that happens to humanity. We can't blame God for the destruction of 6 million Jews, the vaporization of communities from tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes and the like. But, it's ok for God's obedient people to commit genocide, even of women, children and of livestock, as the old testament has clearly stated.
Then, of course, we have one group of people fight another group of people, both claiming that they are the chosen ones of God and will fight to the death to prove it. It all seems ridiculous to me, when we have other pressing needs such as a child dieing of starvation in this world every 5 seconds, diseases inflicting abound, especially in the poorer nations. It would nice if we could all put this quibbling aside and get to the issues of feeding and making people healthy.
