[pstuart]

That take presumes that the morals you've been taught came directly from the lips of God. Otherwise, it's other people making stuff up.

The Golden Rule is pretty self-explanatory and is a solid foundation for moral behavior. I don't rape, murder, steal, etc., not because I'm afraid of God's wrath, or that of the police -- it's because I wouldn't want those things to happen to me or my loved ones and am able to understand that others feel this way too.

Meanwhile, that moral absolutism give license to kill people for blasphemy. And there's plenty more horrible things that are done to others because God said so.

Everybody's entitled to have their own relationship with God (even as an atheist I do in my own way), and I acknowledge that there's plenty of good that comes from people practicing their faith, but that is easily countered by very bad stuff that is morally justified by their interpretations of scripture.

And this concern is everybody's -- because there's ongoing efforts to make the US into a theocracy and that would be a very bad thing.

[arkey]

Are you, by "scripture" referring to the Bible, or just in general for religious texts?

I acknowledge that a lot of people do very bad things and supposedly justify them with the Bible. But I suggest that if they did something bad, then their justification is wrong, and can't truly be based on the Bible.

I also suggest that when someone justified something bad through the Bible, it can most definitely be countered and corrected with the Bible itself.

[pstuart]

> I also suggest that when someone justified something bad through the Bible, it can most definitely be countered and corrected with the Bible itself

Then you're down to opinion vs opinion. Add into that the work that Bart Erhman has done on the veracity of the texts themselves, as well as the fact that the bible was assembled by committee (of men).

We're all entitled to our own beliefs, so I normally wouldn't care, except there are active factions trying to make the US be ruled by biblical law. So in that context, this act of interpretation is very much of everybody's interest.

[moshegramovsky]

Well said!