I assume that what you are referring to are some of the laws encountered in the Old Testament, which were part of a legal structure designed to apply to the Israelite nation (and no one else, point of interest). From a Judaism perspective, the law is supposed to apply only to Jews - those who are part of the religion and the race.
Yes, because murder and genocide make perfect sense as long as you restrict them to a particular place and time! And there are such things as "races" and it makes sense for them to be units of moral analysis. And obviously "she must marry her rapist" (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) is a totally sensible rule for an ancient culture, and neither the Greeks nor the Chinese had figured out anything even remotely better by that time period. Yes, obviously, it was totally fair for Moses to be talking about slaughtering the Amalekites (and their children, and their cattle; Deuteronomy 20:16-17) at the same time in history when Demosthenes and Epicurus were debating about the proper form of democratic government. And no one today takes those ideas seriously, and certainly there aren't millions of Americans who use passages from Leviticus (18:22 and 20:13) to argue against gay marriage.
And of course Jesus came to change the rules; that's why he put it so plainly in Matthew 5:17-19:
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
\end{sarcasm}
Witness what religion does to a human mind; it makes an otherwise intelligent and reasonable person defend the obviously indefensible, because they cannot bear to accept the obvious fact that what they were told isn't true. Suddenly genocide becomes "a different time" and rape becomes "their culture", because the thought that so many people's precious beliefs are false is simply too much to bear. Contradictions in holy books are somehow seen as a good thing, because they let you take whatever meaning you want and declare the result infallible (when it's obvious from basic logic that contradictions in beliefs are always bad).
Of course no religion is harmless. Delusions are never a good thing. Some religions are more harmful than others, I'll grant you that; but if you want to know why Islam is particularly bad, it's because it actually follows the book. Jews and Christians have largely given up on the crazy evil books, and so they can behave (mostly) like reasonable human beings. Muslims haven't, and that's why they do things like hang gay people and keep women covered head to toe. Confucians are an interesting case, in that their books contain falsehoods, but are not genocidally insane, so that counts for something. Jain are also crazy, but crazy in a way that makes them relatively harmless---like the Amish. So if I could make every Muslim in the world suddenly turn Jain, I would; but I'd rather turn them atheist. What's more, I find it's easier to make people atheist, because the rational part of their brains already wants to.
As for what evil means, no, it has nothing to do with religion (other than the obvious fact that religion makes assertions about it, just as religion makes unfounded assertions about literally everything). Evil is found in human suffering, particularly when it could be easily prevented. It is found in death and destruction, especially when we are in a position to avoid them. Am I a utilitarian? Yes, I suppose I am---if you are not, you must be saying that your decisions can't be made to fit a Von Neumann-Morgenstern decision utility... and isn't that a lot like saying your decisions are irrational? If you meant to say that human beings rarely engage in intentional evil (accidental and negligent evil is far more common), that's actually a very good point; but then, this is just one more problem with religion, because religion often asserts that our enemies are servants of demons whose only goals are pure evil.
The net amount of human suffering would be decreased if people abandoned religion altogether. If they continued to believe in religion and stopped being hypocrites, no... I stand by my previous claim. They would burn people like me and most of the rest of Less Wrong at the stake. The war between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland would flare up once again, and really if theology is as important as people say, even Baptists and Methodists should be torturing each other over doctrinal differences. It is only a lack of religious fervor that defends civilization as we know it; and if given the choice between fanaticism and hypocrisy I wholemindedly express my preference for hypocrisy.
George Orwell saw the descent of the civilized world into totalitarianism, the conversion or corruption of one country after another; the boot stamping on a human face, forever, and remember that it is forever. You were born too late to remember a time when the rise of totalitarianism seemed unstoppable, when one country after another fell to secret police and the thunderous knock at midnight, while the professors of free universities hailed the Soviet Union’s purges as progress. It feels as alien to you as fiction; it is hard for you to take seriously. Because, in your branch of time, the Berlin Wall fell. And if Orwell’s name is not carved into one of those stones, it should be.
Orwell saw the destiny of the human species, and he put forth a convulsive effort to wrench it off its path. Orwell’s weapon was clear writing. Orwell knew that muddled language is muddled thinking; he knew that human evil and muddled thinking intertwine like conjugate strands of DNA:1
Orwell was clear on the goal of his clarity:
To make our stupidity obvious, even to ourselves—this is the heart of Overcoming Bias.
Evil sneaks, hidden, through the unlit shadows of the mind. We look back with the clarity of history, and weep to remember the planned famines of Stalin and Mao, which killed tens of millions. We call this evil, because it was done by deliberate human intent to inflict pain and death upon innocent human beings. We call this evil, because of the revulsion that we feel against it, looking back with the clarity of history. For perpetrators of evil to avoid its natural opposition, the revulsion must remain latent. Clarity must be avoided at any cost. Even as humans of clear sight tend to oppose the evil that they see; so too does human evil, wherever it exists, set out to muddle thinking.
1984 sets this forth starkly: Orwell’s ultimate villains are cutters and airbrushers of photographs (based on historical cutting and airbrushing in the Soviet Union). At the peak of all darkness in the Ministry of Love, O’Brien tortures Winston to admit that two plus two equals five:2
I am continually aghast at apparently intelligent folks—such as Robin Hanson’s colleague Tyler Cowen—who don’t think that overcoming bias is important.3 This is your mind we’re talking about. Your human intelligence. It separates you from an orangutan. It built this world. You don’t think how the mind works is important? You don’t think the mind’s systematic malfunctions are important? Do you think the Inquisition would have tortured witches, if all were ideal Bayesians?
Tyler Cowen apparently feels that overcoming bias is just as biased as bias: “I view Robin’s blog as exemplifying bias, and indeed showing that bias can be very useful.” I hope this is only the result of thinking too abstractly while trying to sound clever. Does Tyler seriously think that scope insensitivity to the value of human life is on the same level with trying to create plans that will really save as many lives as possible?
Orwell was forced to fight a similar attitude—that to admit to any distinction is youthful naiveté:
Maybe overcoming bias doesn’t look quite exciting enough, if it’s framed as a struggle against mere accidental mistakes. Maybe it’s harder to get excited if there isn’t some clear evil to oppose. So let us be absolutely clear that where there is human evil in the world, where there is cruelty and torture and deliberate murder, there are biases enshrouding it. Where people of clear sight oppose these biases, the concealed evil fights back. The truth does have enemies. If Overcoming Bias were a newsletter in the old Soviet Union, every poster and commenter of Overcoming Bias would have been shipped off to labor camps.
In all human history, every great leap forward has been driven by a new clarity of thought. Except for a few natural catastrophes, every great woe has been driven by a stupidity. Our last enemy is ourselves; and this is a war, and we are soldiers.
1George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” Horizon, 1946.
2George Orwell, 1984 (Signet Classic, 1950).
3See Tyler Cowen, “How Important is Overcoming Bias?,” Marginal Revolution (blog), 2007, http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/08/how-important-i.html.