Raúl Santos
Here’s an interesting website I found while searching Google for an expression with the word “atrocities” in it: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/atrocity.html
From the website:
NOTE: These lists are meant to identify possible problems in the Bible, especially problems which are inherent in a literalist or fundamentalist interpretation. Some of the selections may be resolvable on certain interpretations--after all, almost any problem can be eliminated with suitable rationalizations--but it is the reader's obligation to test this possibility and to decide whether it really makes appropriate sense to do this. To help readers in this task, these lists are aimed at presenting examples where problems may exist given certain allowable (but not always obligatory) assumptions. It should be kept in mind that a perfect and omnipotent God could, should, and likely would see to it that such problems did not exist in a book which s/he had inspired.
Here are a couple of passages:
GE 3:1-7, 22-24 God allows Adam and Eve to be deceived by the Serpent (the craftiest of all of God's wild creatures). They eat of the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil," thereby incurring death for themselves and all of mankind for ever after. God prevents them from regaining eternal life, by placing a guard around the "Tree of Eternal Life." (Note: God could have done the same for the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" in the first place and would thereby have prevented the Fall of man, the necessity for Salvation, the Crucifixion of Jesus, etc.)
EX 7:1, 14, 9:14-16, 10:1-2, 11:7 The purpose of the devastation that God brings to the Egyptians is as follows: to show that he is Lord; to show that there is none like him in all the earth; to show his great power; to cause his name to be declared throughout the earth; to give the Israelites something to talk about with their children; to show that he makes a distinction between Israel and Egypt.
And perhaps my favorite, a small note right on top of all these passages:
Note: In the Bible, words having to do with killing significantly outnumber words having to do with love.
:)