Dear Mr. Rana,

Thanks for your kind and generous words although I don't think that I am worthy of them. Please accept my apologies for the delayed response. 

You have stated that the imaginary scenario I presented was misleading since people being killed by other people should be categorized separately than killings carried out by god since god is the giver of life and it is his right to take away whatever he gives. The main focus of my imaginary scenario was not the who but the what. Killing a single individual, let alone an entire town, for something like homosexuality is unjustifiable in my opinion. If someone agrees with me and thinks that homosexuality is not a capital crime (in fact not a crime at all) worthy of annihilation of an entire people than they should condemn the act regardless of who carried it out. That was the purpose of my building that imaginary scenario.

The idea that god has the right to take back what he gives for whatever reason is problematic because it invokes the question of god's motives. If something like homosexuality is such an irritant to god then, theoretically, he has the power to modify the human biology and/or psychology to stop homosexuality from occurring. Even I can think of some design modifications that can be engineered to rule out this "problem". What are god's motives not to have adopted those alternative designs?

My friends frequently tell me that without a religious moral code, there can't be a concept of justice and morality. Unfortunately, even if I agree with the notion, which I don't, I cannot bring myself to agree with the kind of justice god delivers to people according to scriptures. The concept that god has blessed me with life and I am under contractual obligation to follow god's whims without questioning his motives otherwise he reserves the right to terminate his blessing and subject me to eternal damnation is eerily similar to the kind of justifications slave masters used to offer. I refuse to accept it because I don't remember signing a contract.  My humanity forbids me to think and act like a slave. In my opinion, the collective weight of all the presumably great moral codes of various scriptures doesn't come even close to the weight of a single line in the constitution of USA: "The pursuit of happiness is an inalienable human right" because that's a moral principle that's liberating and not enslaving. All scientific, technological, philosophical and socio-political human endeavors of past centuries have worked towards one common goal; liberation of human mind. Let us embrace this liberty by unleashing our thoughts and stop flying back to our cages.

In the final analysis, it really doesn't matter whether there is a god or not and whether the scriptures are his divine word or not. Overwhelming majority of us has already made religious scriptures irrelevant in our daily lives either by completely ignoring them or by interpreting them in a way that they agree with what we think. We latch on to the concept of a god mostly on emotional grounds. None of this should be an obstacle for all of us, believers and non-believers alike, to act on Dr. Tahir Qazi's advice i.e. move forward with education of common principals of humanity and justice.

Regards,

Rafi Aamer