Shallow atheism

Similarly, when Holy Writ ostensibly says, in all apparent seriousness, that it is OK to commit genocide, or that children should be mauled by wild animals if they mock a prophet, or that a son should be stoned to death for defying his parents, then it is rational (and prudent) to take such passages, at least prima facie, to say what they seem to assert. My claim, and, I think, Jeff's is that much of the Bible is prima facie atrocious, and, as such, should be taken as actually atrocious until and unless apologists can meet the heavy burden of proof of showing that the apparently atrocious is not. We then add that they way they seem to attempt to avoid the apparent conclusion is by intellectual and moral contortionism that only exacerbates the problem. 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2014/09/26/books-like-this-should-be-a-warning-signal-to-inerrantists/

This is a typical specimen of Parsons' muddleheaded thinking. He fails to draw a rudimentary distinction between meaning and morality, exegesis and ethics. To classify these examples as "atrocious" (i.e. atrocities) isn't a descriptive interpretation but a moral evaluation. 

I don't have a problem with taking the passages as "saying what they seem to assert"–although Parsons' misrepresents some of the examples in question. The deeper problem is when Parsons' conflates his moral characterization of what they assert with what they assertion. What's his objective basis for value judgments in the first place? Quoting Thomas Paine's colorful rhetoric begs the question. 

Parsons is yet another example of an atheist who has never come to terms with atheism. He stops short of where it logically leads. He begins and ends with his gut-reaction.