"I believe God's word is as relevant today, as it was when it was written."

As do I. I just don't believe it has to be inerrant to be relevant. Especially since it has to be strongly interpreted in order for it to even claim its own inerrency. I must have missed your explaination of why we no longer stone witches. I have read it, cover to cover, and I don't remember any listing of lesser commandments that we can reject.

With palms together,

What I read is that what Christians call the Old Testament has "fulfilled" by the coming of their Savior, and that through him a "New Covenant" was made which superceded the old. In light of this, I find it interesting that these same people use the Hebrew Scripture as a source for what they choose to reinforce or disapprove of in a contemporary environment, but yet on those things they wish to disregard they use the New Covenent as a sort of excuse to disobey God's Law.

Be well.

But they can't really cite anything that lists what was superceded that isn't highly interpretable. In the end to non-Christians it looks like they are picking what they want to keep and discarding the rest by finding escuses in the New Testament.

Nothing wrong with that, nothing at all. That would be an acknoledgement that religion can grow and change under the inspiration of God. What most Christians want to propose, though, is that God stopped inspiring change in religion 2000 years ago, and everything since has been "interpretation". In reality there's nothing in the New Testament that revised the Old without the leave of those interpreting the Bible.

Interestingly there was a fellow named Marcion in the second century who was so upset by OT accounts of an "inconsistent,jealous, wrathful and genocidal" God that he rejected the entire Hebrew Bible. Reading the accounts of slaughter and mayhem in the name of the Lord in the OT he decided that the god portrayed there was a demiurge that he referred to as Yaldabaoth, who had created the world, but was the source of evil.

He was the first of the great 'heretics'. Independently wealthy and a bishop in the early church, his huge donations to the church were returned to him after his excommunication and he used this wealth to found a parallel church which actually survived for several centuries.

His other significance is that, in gathering together some of the Letters of Paul along with a version of the Gospel of Luke, he actually redacted what is the earliest New Testament Canon on record.

Interestingly there was a fellow named Marcion in the second century

I remember reading about the Marcionites in a History of the Christian Church course I took a couple years back. Thanks for the memory. I shall have to go look him up.

there were also the albagensians (sp?) and others who believed the OT God was really the devil, and that Jesus represented the "real" God having mercy on the creations of Satan. Unfortunately they also tended to be cults dominated by people who felt their very existance was a sin, so they advocated not having kids and suicide.

there were also the albagensians (sp?)

Indeed there were. They were also known as the Cathars, which is easier to spell

so they advocated not having kids and suicide.

Aforementioned suicide being effected by talking about their beliefs in a loud voice while the Inquisition was passing through town.

Aforementioned suicide being effected by talking about their beliefs in a loud voice while the Inquisition was passing through town.

That would be a good way to run afoul of the medieval thought police...

What gets me is that religious feeling is thought of as irrational thought.

But why does it 'get' you? It's hardly a surprise that some people who are scornful of all religious ideas will say that your beliefs are as stupid as they are untrue and that you are a fool for believing them. How can this touch you, unless you let it?

My own theory is that a touchiness on this subject by religious believers comes about because of a fear that there might be some truth in the barb. Things that we know to be untrue rarely hurt us in the same way. Now, this is not to say that your religious belief is lacking, or that your beliefs actually are stupid. On the contrary, the fact that you are prepared to entertain doubt somewhere in your religious thinking is simply a sign of sanity. We adhere to our religious beliefs because they are effective in our lives, but we don't have to ignore the fact that all of our most cherished beliefs are essentially unproven theories about the ultimate nature of reality.

I said it somewhere else before. As human beings we are an interesting mixture of individualists and social beings - and some of us are further to one side of the spectrum than the other. Some people have rich inner spiritual lives that require little in the way of external validation. Most people however are more social in their orientation, as much in their religious life as anything else. They therefore require for their spirituality an atmosphere of positive validation, in terms of a community of common belief within their own faith/church, and of negative validation in terms of an absence of disrespect and mockery from society at large.

I think the most effective way to deal with this 'problem' is to focus more on the inner life. That has to be the only place where you will ever find the strength and focus to "bless those who curse you" and "pray for them who despitefully use you".

I don't feel that way, Chak. When someone insults my intelligence after they find out I hold some religious belief or other, they almost always later use that as an excuse to degrade other unrelated opinions. Watch political satirists deal with the '700 club' folks. It isn't one aspect of them, it is a label they use to make a funny about anything else they might happen to support.

Take pornography. A well-dressed woman states that she opposes pornography and considers it harmful to our society. How would the average opinion of the argument change if she was a feminist, as opposed to if she was Christian?

Look at what association with Christianity does to the dialog about Evolution. All a traditional Darwinist has to do to squelch a peer who differs is brand his theory as "intelligent design". Poof, argument over. I've gotten the 'you believe you didn't come from no dern monkey' in such discussions here from people who have seen me write about religion.

I don't care if people think my religious beliefs are stupid. I don't like, however, for people to think I am stupid because of my religious beliefs. One brushes off one private aspect of my life. The other discounts everything that I am.

When someone insults my intelligence after they find out I hold some religious belief or other, they almost always later use that as an excuse to degrade other unrelated opinions.

That is stupid and unfair, although it is worth asking if those 'other opinions' are always so completely 'unrelated'. We tend to be strongly guided by our religious principles, and that moral compass probably subtly informs a lot of our opinions in general.

Watch political satirists deal with the '700 club' folks. It isn't one aspect of them, it is a label they use to make a funny about anything else they might happen to support.

But aren't some 'religious' ideas genuinely stupid? Like claiming 9/11 was caused by "pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, and the ACLU"?

Or claiming that the Disney Corporation hosting 'Gay Days' could result in America being hit by hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombings and "possibly a meteor."

Or saying "What we need is for somebody to place a small nuke at Foggy Bottom (US State department).

Or calling for 'demonic' Hindus to be kept out of the United States.

Or launching a televised nationwide 21-day prayer campaign asking people to pray for vacancies on the Supreme Court (which surely includes praying for deaths as well as retirements).

[All these 'jewels' - and there are many more - from the 700 Club, Pat Robertson and the Christian Broadcasting Network]

I don't like, however, for people to think I am stupid because of my religious beliefs.

Of course not. But some people do have stupid religious beliefs (see above), and it's not that much of a stretch to think that they do so because they are stupid people.

I know the difficulties: Who is finally to judge what is 'stupid'? Wouldn't some people think that any kind of belief in a transcendent realm, or the miraculous, or a sense of the numinous is stupid. Yes, probably some people would. But in the end, if someone's religious beliefs (however difficult to share or empathise with) allow them to have sensible, coherent, rational and intelligent views in general, it is hard to make the charge stick.

When someone insults my intelligence after they find out I hold some religious belief or other, they almost always later use that as an excuse to degrade other unrelated opinions.

That is stupid and unfair, although it is worth asking if those 'other opinions' are always so completely 'unrelated'. We tend to be strongly guided by our religious principles, and that moral compass probably subtly informs a lot of our opinions in general.

Yes, Chak, you seem to agree then continue to lump religious ideas into the "stupid" camp. I agree that there are some pretty blinkered religious people, whether they are jihadists or polygamists or followers of Fred Phelps.

But the automatic assertion that I am an uninformed, irrational, mindless, bigoted zealot just because I happen to believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God really steams me.

It upsets me because aren't "enlightened" people supposed to preach religious tolerance? Tolerance, not condescension.

Yes, Chak, you seem to agree then continue to lump religious ideas into the "stupid" camp.

No. A careful reading of what I wrote would show I agree to no such thing. Look at what I actually said:

But aren't some 'religious' ideas genuinely stupid?

- emphasis added.

What I am saying is that religion is basically no different than any other human activity or way of looking at the world: there are stupid religious ideas (and of course wise ones), just as there are stupid political ideas (ditto disclaimer), and stupid scientific theories (ditto disclaimer). That is not the same as saying that religion is stupid. That should have been abundantly clear. (I did, however, give quite a few examples of what I consider to be religious stupidity following on from Baker's reference to the 700 Club).

There is, however, one way in which religion is different. Stupid scientific ideas can easily be disproved, politicals ideas that are stupid soon show themselves to be so, although sadly sometimes only after the damage has been done. Stupidity in the field of religion is rather more subjective, but it is not entirely without the possibility of objective judgement. It can usually be shown which religious ideas advance the happiness of their believers and the happiness of others, and promote compassion and peace. Those that work against those laudable aims can be usefully discarded.

You also seemed to be disturbed enough by this to quote it:

That is stupid and unfair, although it is worth asking if those 'other opinions' are always so completely 'unrelated'. We tend to be strongly guided by our religious principles, and that moral compass probably subtly informs a lot of our opinions in general.

which actually means nothing more than to say that there is no automatic separation of our 'religious' and 'non-religious' ideas, particularly if we take those ideas seriously.

I've asked once before, and it's worth asking again: why does disrespect for your religious ideas shown (or imagined) 'steam' you so much?

The issue here isn't that some religious ideals are stupid, rather holding religious ideas at all is stupid. I've sat through too many "...who would believe in a god that would..." conversations to believe that it is all bad press from the zealots causing it.

If it were I could feel better knowing that it was ignorance on the anti-religious person's part. The people who hold those beliefs are a tiny minority. I don't believe that even a majority of Pat Robertson's viewers believe the stuff about God's wrath in the form of hurricaines. No more than anyone who watches Phil Donahue espouses everything he believes.

"I've asked once before, and it's worth asking again: why does disrespect for your religious ideas shown (or imagined) 'steam' you so much?"

Because we live in an environment where discrimination is a dirty word, even at a personal level. It is distasteful to us now as a society to write off people because of the color of their skin, or their sexual preferences, etc. Yet in so doing we have achieved a culture where religious belief, one of the foundation aspects of ourselves that is unchallengably protected, is commonly used to discount us as intelligent citizens.

How do you think people would respond if someone discounted the typically democratic votes of racial minorities? If someone said "Oh, sure, of course they vote Democrat, they're (whatever color). How then should we feel when people discount our political and social opinions when they find out we are religious? Of course it isn't because we think and feel and learn, it is because the 'Bible said so'.

If you can't see why we wouldn't take offense at that, you aren't giving it much thought. I have no doubt if someone asked you why a black man in America would get steamed over being discounted for his race. Well, religious tolerance is just as fundamental in the ideals of our nation as racial tolerace.