Atheists oftentimes make silly ignorant claims when discussing, debating, arguing, or ranting, with/about Christianity.  I'll be upfront, atheism is, in my opinion, entirely ignorant in the first place--considering a complete and absolute denial in a deity... then again, at least atheists take a stand (unlike agnostics), too bad they're standing for a void.  But oh well, I'm not here to rail against the base beliefs of atheists... I'm here to rant about the silly and ignorant claims that they often make about the Christian God.  (Let it be known, these claims are oftentimes used by non-atheists in effort to attack Christian theology, but the statements made suggest a contempt for the idea of a deity, so I therefore label the arguers of such positions "atheists")

Okay, so essentially the argument concerns the "morality of God."  They usually make claims akin to:  "If God [of the Bible] is so moral, why did he drown everyone in the world, including innocent children?"  "If God is so perfect and holy, why is there evil in the world?"  These types of things are essentially the age old "problem of evil" or "the problem of pain."  Greater men than me have discussed such things in greater detail and with more understanding than I, so I'll not delve into matters too deep for a blog entry.  But the misunderstanding that the argument comes from is this:  comparing the morality of God with the morality of man, and the definition of "morality."  To Christians, morality is based upon the Law which has been given by God and which has been kept by Jesus the Christ his only begotten Son.  To most modern atheists, morality is varied and relative.  At least this is how I see it; while atheists would generally agree that killing others and stealing for greedy purposes is wrong, they wouldn't necessarily agree on the moral wrongness of fornication, abortion, or blasphemy.  But because these things are forbidden by Christian holy texts (and doctrinal texts: I.E. the Didache), so Christians, in contrast, see them as morally wrong.  No surprise there.  Okay, so is there a difference between a Christian and an atheist in their view of the immorality of murder?  Yes.  The atheist (maybe I'd be better off with secular humanist) would say that it is inherently wrong to kill man and this he applies to his "God concept", so when God (a presumably all-powerful being) brings calamity and death, he is guilty of murder.  The difference with the Christian view is this however: God has forbidden man to kill man.  Christianity holds that God (as Creator) is also the master of death, he chooses who will live and who will die.  To a Christian, anybody who dies, dies as a result of God's will (oftentimes we hear or say "God's taken him" when someone dies.)  Inotherwords, it's the prerogative of God to take life.  It's his job, if he doesn't do it, it doesn't happen.  So at least with a Christian view, the attack that "God is a murderer" is simply ridiculous and ignorant.  If you would want to argue about a deity outside of the Bible, fine and dandy... I don't know, nor would I want anything to do with a "blank" hypothetical deity who is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and claims to be omnibenevolent but hasn't revealed himself.  Sorry, but I had a semester of that in basic philosophy and I wouldn't waste my time over it ever again because it's absolutely pointless.

Oh, and another good ignorant (perhaps chiding) attack at the God of the Bible is that "he had sex with a 13 year old virgin girl... oh how moral"  (reference to the Blessed Mother of Jesus obviously).  The silliness in this is the whole thing about "virgin birth."  I've heard of some Mormon sources actually refering to physical copulation... but that's totally and absolutely heretical and unChristian anyway, and it's unlikely that was what was being referrenced anyway.  The Christians have always held to the idea of Mary's virginity at the birth of Christ.  (Some Christians go so far as to say she remained virgin until her assumption to heaven, but I believe neither that nor that she was assumed.)  I don't know... it's one of those things that bugs me... just the stupid ignorance of the comment.  Oh well...