Namaste,

On what basis do we decide that certain religions are evil? If one points to certain dubious verses in that religion (verses that exhort followers to kill, plunder etc.), couldn't that be explained away as figure of speech, such as jihad is an inner battle, and that slaying enemies means slaying enemies like anger, jealousy, greed, and so on?

Besides figure of speech, context could also explain this away. Muslims, for instance, could argue that since Mohammed was facing many attacks from his enemies, his language merely reflected the reality of his situation. Obviously, a person who's being unfairly attacked is going to say, "Defend yourself, deceive your enemy" etc. etc. He isn't going to say, "Be a nice chap and get thrashed."

Finally, we have translation problems. The same verse could be translated in many different ways, since not many people are familiar with the language. This also leads to confusion.

So there are three problems - we can mistake metaphor for reality, get the wrong translations, or miss context altogether, upon which we could wrongly conclude that certain religions are evil.

Bottom line, it is impossible to prove that any religion is all bad or all good, since one argument can easily be countered with another. It's all about interpretation, since it's impossible to discover the absolute truth with just a few verses from a book.