Understanding Religion's Relationship To Human Social Systems

  Why would Ben spend even a MOMENT trying to explain why "just maybe" God didn't bother to steer his people away from slavery? If his "God's logic" (and ethics) are presumed to be alien to our own, then why bother to defend his God-client before the court of public opinion ... at all? Ben should be consistent and just say "Maybe slavery is fine and we humans can't understand how it's perfectly fine". And then say that about literally all moral issues. If his "God" didn't condemn X, or if his God sanctioned Y (slavery, pedophilia, child-brides, genocide, unleashing a horde of ravenous She-Bears on large groups of disrespectful children, etc), then "who are we" to say X or Y are bad? It's inconsistent to assume his God knew a thing was bad but had secret reasons for permitting it, if Ben believes we-humans shouldn't even be deciding what is "bad". Ben cannot morally justify the abolitio...

  "In principal", I agree with all of that. HOWEVER, if a "God" wanted other and later peoples to conclude some "Jesus" existed and plans to judge us for our response to that claim (along with every detail that supposedly matters), then: it becomes his JOB (ethical duty) to make sure that evidence exists and is common knowledge. So if we're talking about Magic-Jesus, "absence of evidence actually IS evidence of absence". Whereas, if we're talking about a fallible, mortal, muggle-Jesus, the entire issue becomes trivial at best. Meanwhile, if I hear a story about some guy in the iron age who did a series of totally believable ordinary things, then sure. I'll just accept it as a historical account. And why? Because the story of human history is built from such accounts. It is (unfortunately) "the best we can do" to piece together the distant past. HOWEVER, ... if the only versions OF stories ABOUT so...

This is war. That war is being waged against the whole of humanity. And literally everyone is on that battlefield.  If you say to yourself "That's not my war. It doesn't involve me.",  you are lying to yourself.    Someone people can be  and  some people ARE  good people; while  being a Christian. It's very possible. It happens all the time. Some of the loveliest people I've ever known were Christians. This is partly why I never rail against "faith" in general, nor against spirituality,  nor against belief in a "Jesus".  But there is this other TYPE of "Christian" that is seriously dangerous. And we really do need everyone to realize the situation for what it is.   As one part of the natural ecosystem collapses, a domino falls.  Every form of life on this planet is interconnected.  Thus, I've talked a lot about the   attitudes, preachments, and actions that seriously hurt and threaten innocent individuals and the...

  ​   @ApPersonaNonGrata 8 hours ago (edited) I stopped about 60% of the way through this. I stopped at that point because the minutia of those divergent voices just isn't important. The most qualified voices in the academic community are saying this: Show less Reply · 7 replies @ApPersonaNonGrata 8 hours ago Pre-Ce and early CE "biblical" cultures didn't even have a concept like our modern concept of homosexuality. They didn't think in those terms. Religious-cultural rules referred to in bibles were prohibitions against "bottoming". It was fine for the man who did the penetrating. In their view, it was a sin for a man to be the catcher, because doing so violated the natural order of men as the dominators. Also relevant to this: Show less Reply @ApPersonaNonGrata 7 hours ago (edited) Yahweh was a sort of Frankenstein's Monster "God". He was made by savaging from parts of dead (defunct) gods (conceptualized gods local ...