OK, listen, I will give you a Bible, and I will give you a yellow highlighter. I want you to go over it, and highlight all the verses that you take literally, and leave out the symbols and exaggerations etc.

It's very hard sometimes to discuss the Bible when people pick and choose. Take this issue for example: Christians say homosexuality is wrong, and they point at some verses in the Old Testament for example. When we show them that there are also verses in the Old Testament telling us that touching pig skin is also immoral, they somehow come up with a way to ignore such verses. They want to have it their way!

Now you're telling me about writings that are just the product of the "Semitic mind". But that's exactly what I think about the entire Bible, including the miracles attributed to Jesus for instance. They're all just the product of the Semitic mind. It's mythology. It's not history.

And regarding the subject of this thread, what I was trying to say is that it doesn't matter whether the atrocities of Joshua are historical or not. What matters is the fact that the Bible blesses and commends such crimes.