Pastor Says

[denuseri]

Well I am all for every religion dropping the more antiquated parts of its dogma. Might be why I converted to Bahai...shrugs.

In any event...I postulate that its not the fault of any "religion" in and of itself...but the miss use of religion by a few bigots to influence others into being homophobic and ass hatty....which if these people were indeed practicing what the Bible tells them to do...they would instead drop the meanie behavior and go about loving their neighbors and being pacifists.

Lets not forget the Nazi's and KKK and Neo-Naazi's and Communists etc....all had very staunch anti homosexual stands.

So did "pagan" Rome where as the Legions were concerned (pretty much a death sentence in the legions to be found out as a homosexual back then.)

[Thorne]

Well I am all for every religion dropping the more antiquated parts of its dogma. Might be why I converted to Bahai...shrugs.

Of the three Middle Eastern religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, ALL of their dogma is antiquated!

In any event...I postulate that its not the fault of any "religion" in and of itself...but the miss use of religion by a few bigots to influence others into being homophobic and ass hatty....

But that's just it, denuseri! Religions require their followers to believe things on faith, not on reality. This cannot happen unless you convince people that rational thinking is evil. And once you accept the irrational and unreal as true, you are easily misled by the evil bigots. So yes, it IS the fault of religion, or at least of the type of thinking which faith in a religion requires.

which if these people were indeed practicing what the Bible tells them to do...they would instead drop the meanie behavior and go about loving their neighbors and being pacifists.

Which parts of the Bible should they believe? The parts that tell them to love their neighbors? Or the parts that tell them to kill their neighbors and take their women and children as slaves? And aside from a few moral points which are common everywhere, even without religion, why should we rely on the insanity of late bronze age to early iron age shamans to determine what's right in the modern world? Do you really think it's acceptable that a woman should be stoned to death if she's found not to be a virgin on her wedding night?

Lets not forget the Nazi's and KKK and Neo-Naazi's and Communists etc....all had very staunch anti homosexual stands.

And let's not forget that, except for the Communists, they were, and still are, all heavily steeped in the Christian religions. The Communists simply replaced traditional religions with a cult of leader worship, the same kind of thing which is still happening in North Korea and Cuba. At least with the Communists, you knew that your god was real.

When your religion tells you that you have to accept what some person tells you about what your god wants you to do, because you aren't important enough for your god to actually tell you directly, rational thinking would tell you to step back and question his claims. Religious thinking tells you to just silence your doubts and say, "Sounds great, Pat! Where do I send the money?"