It‘s an unlikely match, I know, but I have a friend who is a Jehovah‘s Witness. One day, after overcoming a certain amount of embarrassment on both sides, he asked whether he could try to persuade me to let Jesus into my life. I promised him a fair hearing. Some of what he said made sense, but the story fell apart for me when he claimed that in biblical times „people were a lot more moral than they are today“. I argued that half the Old Testament appears to be a record of divinely inspired genocide, as God‘s people sought to exterminate the other tribes they encountered.

„Ah yes,“ said my friend, „but there was a lot less fornication.“