Quote Originally Posted by jdmarcus59
you said " dude, since when has religion ever made sense? why
bother trying to make sense of it now? if you dont belive in the bible why waist your time even talking about? if you saw dog crap
on the side walk, whould you go home and then get on your computar and waist your time talking about dog crap? that no one
cares anthing about?
That analogy is a bunch of dog crap. Who are you to tell us non-believers that we shouldn't voice our opinions on the content of the Bible? I live in a country where the Bible's most fervent supporters are saying it is the foundation of our society and ought to be the foundation of our legal system, and yet they say we who do not believe in the Bible should just shut our mouths. Well, fuck you if you hold that opinion.

The Bible does indeed have a huge impact on our culture. There's no denying that. Why bother discussing it? Why bother discussing other literature that has cultural influences? Why bother discussing any religious text that you don't believe in? Well, why the fuck not? These documents are important, and their contents have serious consequences for how their followers will act in our society. I can talk about the Bible, I can talk about the Qur'an, I can talk about the Buddhist scriptures all I want, because these things genuinely interest me. Not only do the mythologies themselves interest me, but also the psychological phenomenon of people actually believing the mythologies in the absence of evidence and even in the face of contrary evidence.

It's really fascinating the mental gymnastics you theists use to justify these ancient scriptures and their ancient moralities in the presence of a society which has progressed morally far beyond these scriptures. Really, it is. You can learn a lot by studying the religious mind, or the mind of someone engrossed in a conspiracy theory, or the mind of someone who genuinely believes they have psychic powers, and how they deal with the criticism of their claims. This is one criticism I have never seen reasonably answered by someone who believes that God had something to do with the laws laid down in the Old Testament: why are rape and slavery explicitly approved of by this so-called "highest moral authority"? It just doesn't make sense. If you believe in objective morality, that morality cannot change. If rape and slavery are evil now, they were evil when God was endorsing them in Deuteronomy and Exodus.