Cherry-Picking Scripture.

This issue comes up quite often -- and that is people being selective with verses to further their own agenda, and at the same time ignoring other verses which do not. If you wanted to hate homosexuals, this can be done very easily -- in-fact the Bible states that they should be stoned to death. While you may be a bigot, God can be used as a scapegoat to help justify unjustifiable hatred of others. If you are a friendly person that likes to help others -- well this can be easily supported by scripture -- however you may want to ignore much of the old-testament, and look towards Jesus. But Jesus' teaching have not always been used for good purposes -- slavery is something which Jesus seemed to support. He even taught that a person should not only be an obedient slave, but to love their slave masters as well -- but this is something which 'nice Christians' try to ignore.  If you wish protest war, you need not look further then the '10 Commandments', which let people know it is wrong to kill others (otherwise we would have had no idea) -- ironically this is found in the Old-Testament. Of course the rule not the kill others is a part of the Bible that many Christians in history loved to over-look. Some today even use the rule not to kill others to justify killing abortion doctors (ironic).

If a person was to use the Bible in it's entirety as a moral compass they would find themselves spinning in circles. The contradictions make following the religion impossible, which forces people to cherry-pick the ones that sound the best to them. This quote sums this up quite well...

"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means." - George Bernard Shaw

 There is a reason why many modern-day Christians ignore the nastiness of the Old-Testament -- they do this because killing babies and genocide does not reflect their inner-morality. They view things such as rape and slavery as bad, but they certainty did not get such views from scripture. Chimpanzees should know that murder is okay, they haven't had God tell them it's not.