Here is an interesting article from the LA Times.
The author initially pins the Religious Right to the door when he says that they pay attention to portions of Scripture, but then ignore other portions. It is very convenient, and exactly what the Religious Right accuses those who disagree with their interpretations of doing. Their accusations are hypocritical. If they want to use Lev. to condemn homosexuals, then they must pay attention and abide by the rest of the verse(s) – they must call for the death of homosexuals. They won’t, at least for now, because they know that it won’t play in Peoria. If they are successful in forcing the Constitution to conform to their particular religious notions, then perhaps that will be the next step to the final solution of preparing this nation born of God for Jesus’ return and protecting Western Civilization from destruction and God’s wrath. Who knows?
The other consideration is the Religious Right’s misuse of Scripture, or the mischaracterization of the purpose of Scripture. The Bible is a book that deals with the heart of humankind – what we struggle with, fear, take pride in, and all that results as all these human conditions and emotions work themselves out in the temporal world. The Bible contains all that is necessary for SALVATION, not all that is necessary to do science, for civil government, and so forth. The Religious Right uses the Bible to force its sociological, anthropological, physiological, theological, et cetera, viewpoints on the populous. They attempt to force the Bible to be what the Bible is not, to the determent of the cause of Christ! In the long run, they will not succeed, because Scripture cannot sustain the weight that the Religious Right is attempting to place upon it. We will see that they are wrong, but how much harm is done in the mean time?
So, read the article…
Holy Terror
Religion isn’t the solution — it’s the problem
By Sam Harris, Sam Harris is the author of “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason,” published this month. He can be reached at www.samharris.org
President Bush and the Republicans in the Senate have failed — for the moment — to bring the Constitution into conformity with Judeo-Christian teachings. But even if they had passed a bill calling for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, that would have been only a beginning. Leviticus 20:13 and the New Testament book of Romans reveal that the God of the Bible doesn’t merely disapprove of homosexuality; he specifically says homosexuals should be killed: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death.”
God also instructs us to murder people who work on the Sabbath, along with adulterers and children who curse their parents. While they’re at it, members of Congress might want to reconsider the 13th Amendment, because it turns out that God approves of slavery — unless a master beats his slave so severely that he loses an eye or teeth, in which case Exodus 21 tells us he must be freed.
What should we conclude from all this? That whatever their import to people of faith, ancient religious texts shouldn’t form the basis of social policy in the 21st century. The Bible was written at a time when people thought the Earth was flat, when the wheelbarrow was high tech. Are its teachings applicable to the challenges we now face as a global civilization?

Continue reading →