darth_ender said:

Let me at least state that it is often easy to judge another people of an ancient culture by today's standards. Let's assume that God (with a capital G, even if we don't believe in him, because he is a proper noun) really does exist. Let's assume that mankind will be around for another 300 years without any Second Coming of Christ. With that assumption we can safely assume that mankind will have drastically changed his understanding of right and wrong, good and evil, of morals in general. I ask you, do you think God would judge mankind today by the standards of humanity's 300 year in the future morality? I think not.

That all has nothing at all to do with what is being said. You quoted Jesus talking about the Sabbath, being a day that God himself commanded capitol punishment for failed observance to. It has nothing to do with ancient cultures versus modern cultures and their understandings of right and wrong. A man collected firewood on the Sabbath, and God told Moses he was to be stoned to death. I found it ironic you'd use a verse on the Sabbath to explain your understanding of God's desire for us to be happy. Again, I doubt much happiness was found by that man, his family he was trying to keep warm, or the countless people to come after him who were stoned for breaking this law.

Just because God commanded the stoning of ancient adulterers and Sabbath-breakers doesn't mean that God ever approved of cruelty or senseless killing. Again, he was working with a culture and people who saw the world very differently than we do today. He gave commandments that they could understand.

So, you're saying God was forced to order these people to be brutally murdered, because they were too dumb to understand anything different? It never crossed his mind not to make up silly laws forbidding them from doing anything on a certain day and commanding his people to kill each other when that law was broken?