(Off-topic) You could probably edit out the drug war bit.

(Note) This was originally supposed to be a comment in response to the same post ciphergoth was responding to. After a while it bloated into something not directly related to the original post and so I just saved it somewhere until it was more relevant. I think it actually fits this post better but the whole thing is only slightly related to the topic.

God is not just wise, nice, and powerful - he is all knowing, omnibenificent, and omnipotent. Heaven and Hell are not just pleasant and unpleasant places you can spend a long time in - they are the very best possible and the very worst possible experiences, and for all eternity.

This is strictly only useful when talking to someone who believes that specific set of beliefs. What if the religion believes in an evil God? A God that can be tricked? What it believes we are the Gods? Any or all of these could be just as irrational, but they are instantly excluded from the argument and any theist who does not perfectly fit the example can just shrug it off and say, "oh, it does not apply to me." That does not seem particularly useful, but I watch communities of rational atheists stand and nod their head like the ultimate truth has been spoken even though it only applies to a strict subset of theistic beliefs.

There are huge swaths of major religious theory that are blatantly irrational. Some world religions even take the irrationality as a core feature and emphasize its own inability to be rationally processed. There is, however, a strong tendency to look at these logic evils, denounce them, and then throw the rest of Earth's theology into the same category of "obviously stupid".

(Minor point) I am not saying that the rest of Earth's theology doesn't belong in the category of obviously stupid. I am saying that I watch a lot of people (not necessary people here) start throwing things into that bucket irrationally. Whether they end up there eventually is irrelevant.

The most prevalent examples are posts that apparently assume folk-Christianity as the one religion. To unfairly pick on someone, your post is an example. To claim that "theism" works a certain way and then only give one, albeit common, example of theism is a little shortsighted. Your point is wonderful and useful, but it does not apply to all of theism.

The problem is not that you found something irrational about theism. The problem seems to be that much of what is said about the invalidity of religion is assumed to be true or rational. In other words, I see this:

Belief A is a known problem and has been denounced by the throngs of rationalists.
Belief B looks suspiciously similar to Belief A and is denounced out of hand by the same throngs.

To express this pattern with a non-theistic example:

Pascal's Wager is a known problem and has been denounced by the throngs of rationalists.
Arguments for cryonics looks suspiciously similar to Pascal's Wager and is denounced out of hand by the same throngs.

This pattern is directly addressed by Eliezer's The Pascal's Wager Fallacy Fallacy and is also talked about in Roko's Rationality, Cryonics and Pascal's Wager.

In the case of cryonics, Eliezer and Roko argued that cryonics deserves another shot. In the case of theism, I am not saying any particular belief deserves another shot, I am just reminding the community as a whole that "irrational by association" is a fallacy.

(Side topic) One possible response to this, in my opinion, is that theism is rotten at its core. Theism, all variants, have been denounced as irrational and nitpicking over specific examples just slows everything down. Someone who is a theist happened to miss the memo. I am not suggesting nitpicking everything because most of it does not matter. This was true in the example of your post: nitpicking really has little value since the point he was making still stands. Generally speaking, one-off comments do not have a scope was intended to cover challenges to the assumed truths about theism, which is why I avoided posting this comment until you made it the subject of a full post.