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• Thursday, October 2, 2008 11:34 AM

  @jamiso

  Yet today, using the exact same book and religion, you would chose to read it differently...

  That is only proof that religion falls in line or evolves with our norms and morals, NOT the other way around

  We also do that with .... the constitution. The Right the Privacy was a recent interpretation of an old text. One of the major - MAJOR - arguments for a great number of more humanitarian interpretations of the constitution is that these principles are inherent in the original document, but had not been addressed until now.

  I took Dr. Benway's comments to mean that our particular moral system has been shaped by the particular religions we are used to. For instance, child molestation and incest were no problem during the Roman Empire. Nor homosexuality. If Constantine (a weirdo in his own right) hadn't converted, my particular views on morality would have been shaped from a different history. Even though I am agnostic. As you point out, morality often comes from those who oppose religious leaders. The particular things we oppose them generate our moral history. The Bible itself is a document of these types of changes. Jesus, John the Baptist, the apostles (whether real men or figurative) are offered up as an evolution of growing moral awareness.

  Many people make the constitution argument about the Bible. These people are not the same as those who read the book as a syllabus of the history of the world and the future. I must have missed the poster who came into this forum and claimed that the Bible is the literal word of god. I have no problem pointing out all the crap in the Bible in that case. I saw that LeftWingPharisee (who is Jewish) corrected a translation, as someone who can actually read the original text. There are some people I saw who posted that they believe in a higher power. As an agnostic, I think that is inherently unknowable. But talking about David's census (which BTW is directly contradicted in the two books that talk about it - Samuel says God incited David to do it, Chronicles said Satan did. Is God Satan?) is kind of a moot point.

  —asage Read asage's other letters
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