Quote Originally Posted by rebgirl420
I dont know, I always thougt it was a common sense thing.
Aren't stealing and killing also common sense things? I mean, there isn't a culture on the planet where it would be okay to kill your neighbor and steal all his stuff. Everybody knows killing and stealing are wrong, and yet God doesn't hesitate to mention them in the Ten Commandments. So why isn't a prohibition on rape anywhere in the Bible? Why do I actually find verses where God says it is okay to rape women from captured towns during battle? That just doesn't make any sense to me. And yet, it seems perfectly reasonable that the Israelites simply took their already existing laws and cultural traditions and said that God ordered them to have those laws and traditions. All other religions do the same thing, don't they? They take moral ideas that humans invented and put them into the mouths of their gods.
BUT I think that if someone does indeed rape or molest anyone that they should be killed in a horrible, atrocious way. Slowly too. But thats just my 2 cents
I am firmly against the death penalty, and I think in that respect I am more moral than the God of the Old Testament, who teaches not mercy and forgiveness but mercilessness and revenge. Any sophisticated moral system starts out with trying to understand why people do the things they do and trying to empathize with them; not brandishing people as inherently evil and not worthy of life.

Love. Don't hate. Even people who have done evil things still have some good in them. There is no such thing as a completely evil person. It is possible to change people with forgiveness and love, and to rehabilitate them into people who do not do evil things. I find it surprising how often Christians tout themselves as the sole guardians of that message, and how few actually practice it. If your Jesus-inspired moral system is all it's cracked up to be, an atheist shouldn't have to be telling you that mercy and forgiveness, not murderous revenge, is the way to confront evil in our society.