"And you've taken the quote very much out of context."

I cited a Bible verse, I've not 'taken' it anywhere. But if we're talking about 'context', the context is that even if slaves don't realize they're doing anything wrong, they should be beaten if they do something wrong.

The standard defense is that it's not talking about *literal* slaves, it's talking about us as God's slaves. And that Jesus might only have been referring to beating servants or bondsmen, not slaves.

Thanks for that, traditional defense, that makes it all better.

If you'd like to cite the verse in the Bible where Jesus condemns slavery, or indeed offers mild disapproval of slavery, or sympathy for those who were slaves, at a time when a third of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves, please feel free.

I think it's in the same bit he makes it clear what his policies on homosexuality and abortion are.

Sorry, did you say something? My attention was being distracted on account of me sucking off a foal.

Poe's Law states that any sufficiently advanced form of Christian fundamentalism is indistinguishable from a parody of Christian fundamentalism.

You have the perfect right to be ignorant and racist, and if you really think the problem is both simultaneously that the problem is all the illegitimate babies being born *and* abortion, then far be it from me to bother arguing.

No, it was Jesus.

Luke 12:47.

You can't make any ruling about what Jesus would think of universal health care or globalization or carbon emissions or quantitative easing or 'PC or Mac?' or whatever, and my point about 'projection' is that it's a peculiar impulse to even try.

Every generation reinvents Jesus and reinterprets the Christian message. They tend to do it by saying Jesus would like things the way they are, but a little bit nicer.

In the early Middle Ages, God was a benevolent King, Jesus was a perfect Prince who doubled as a justice of the peace, Heaven was a golden castle and we were all their serfs. One of their key justifications for this was because Jesus said everyone should be nice to their slaves. That was one of the passages quoted most often by anti-abolitionists. It's not a passage, though, that's quoted all that often these days.

Oh good grief, there's more projection in that post than at a six week film festival.

No, no, no, no, no.

That 'all you have to do to get to Heaven' stuff is a peculiar, recent American variant of Christianity, one that no American Christian from before about 1950 would recognize, one that is simply not what the vast majority of Christians alive today believe, and which has no Biblical basis.

It's culturally and morally illiterate Christianity, one that throws away two thousand years of teaching and theology in favor of a quick fix. The central irony of evangelicalism is that it's offering exactly the 'easy, feelgood' solution it accuses the modern world of doing.

If you haven't seen it already, do yourself a favor and watch The Power of Nightmares on YouTube. If you haven't read it already, then do yourself a favor and read this series:

http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/118585.html

If you think all you have to do is say 'I believe in Jesus' and click your heels together and God reserves you a seat in Heaven, and that's literally all there is to it, then you simply don't understand the central tenets of your own religion.

Carl Sagan mentions it in Demon Haunted World, I think. I'll have a look and try to find the reference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvN5IPLGs9c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnbsvUpUsdw

'Fox News leans to the right more than a man whose right leg just got blown off'.

... is the cry of every reactionary since the beginning of time. Literally. One of the very oldest Sumerian tablets we have - this isn't a joke - says that people aren't worshipping the gods like they used to and so civilization's in real trouble.

Fundamentalism is a rearguard action, both the Christian evangelicals and their Muslim lookalikes. Personally, I like women being able to vote and drive cars and own property and stuff and the idea that you don't get beaten up for being black or gay. If that makes me a liberal, then so be it.

Focus on the Family ... heard that name somewhere. Ah, yes:

http://coloradoindependent.com/25840/focus-on-the-family-narrator-charged-with-luring-teenage-girl-for-sex-on-net

It matters because of the reason given in the article - textbooks, nationally, will end up including what Texas wants them to include and leaving out what they want leaving out.

Enough is enough. It's time to stop being tolerant of creationists, treating it as a joke or just a problem in the Deep South.

This is the Guantanamo Bay of American domestic politics - the thing that only very, very, very, very stupid people don't see is shaming America's reputation. Why does that matter? Because those top Asian research scientists are going to Europe now, or staying in India and China and Japan.

There's no debate here. We don't teach Narnia in geography, we shouldn't teach Adam and Eve in biology.