Hello Vance, thanks for your response and you certainly got me thinking. You are certainly right to point out the genocide against the Canaanites in the Old Testament and the fact that we don't typically consider it evil. Evil, in this biblical context, seems to be defined by whatever God says it is. There is something quite troubling about this. Mostly it seems because despite the certainty that so many express, can we really know the mind and will of God? Our ideas about God and what he wants and expects of us have certainly changed and are in a constant state of change. It's hard to see how Christian leaders would be able to rally followers to "liberate" Jerusalem today as they did in the Crusades. But, if our ideas of what God considers good and evil change, is there such a thing as moral realism, if defined as something solid within the very fabric of the universe? Any thoughts?