Actually, I can agree that the OT is a poor representation of christianity. Also, I put the post up to demonstrate that violence isn't so much a function of sin as it is biology. Violence is one those traits that is common throughout nature.
Additionally, by point of quoting the bible was to demonstrate how religion can be used as an excuse for violence. I am not saying that if their is a god, he would command others to violence. However, the OT does have such examples of men claiming that god ordered them to do great violence on others. As an example.
Samuel said to Saul,"I am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people Isreal; so listen now to the message from the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death mean and woemn, chlidren and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'" - 1 Samuel 15
As I said, man has no problem using the name of god, even to the point of saying its a command from god, as a reason to santify murder. Of course, Saul goes and attack and ALMOST utterly wipes out teh amelekites. What happens? According to the bible, god becomes angry that Saul didn't kill everything. (seems that Saul spared some cattle and the kind of the Amelekites, Agag.) Essentially, because Saul didn't kill Agag, he was striped of his kinghood over Isreal.
Now, again, I hardly doubt it was god actually ordering the massacre (given that I am an athiest.). In fact, I prefer to believe that Samuel was just a cruel person who had a taste for wee bit of the ultrs-violence (he did kill Agag after berating Saul for not doing so, and striping him of his kinghood.). If you take the bible to be literally true, you have a bloodthirsty god who has no problem ordering the destruction of entire tribes.
As for the bible, I seriously don't understand why christianity even holds to the OT. I understand that the teaching of jesus are contained in the NT, and therefore have little to do with OT. However, considering that the whole reason there are any christian creationists is the OT, it seems that the OT is fair play.
Again, my point was to show violence in a context of biology. I brought up religiius and ethical reasons for was an example of how we try to justify to ourselves some of the violence. Frankly, I think it at least demonstrates that most people are uneasy about violence and murder and need some form of reason. Since my personaly experience and knowledge of religions is manily related to christianity, I picked an example from the bible.
Of course, this is all off topic from the discussion between you and crash and has little to nothing to do with any of our beliefs, except in the most tangental way, which was to demonstrate that "sin" is not neccesary to explain violence and misery, when biology does that quite well on its own. I consider our repugenence of such violence, and our awknoledgment that our lives are better without it as a sign that our consciousness and humanity do have value and can help us deal with biology of violence, and hopefully limit its effects.