Right, I've been sucked in when I promised myself I wouldn't be. I'm really interested in religion as a concept. and particularly biblical archaeology and history. All religions are fundamentally a means of understanding the world, how we came to be here, and what it all means. As most religions are many thousands of years old (or developed from concepts that are many thousands of years old) they represent attempts by people without a modern understanding of science to explain these things. The second function of religion is to supply a set of rules by which people can live a good life. Mostly these are variations on the theme of be nice to other people (or "be excellent to each other" as Bill and Ted said). The Ten Commandments are an excellent example. Moses was given them when he was trying to get the Jews out of Egypt. If you think about it, they are a simple set of rules to keep a large number of people happy and to prevent arguments amongst them if you're responsible for moving them a large distance. Sometimes, though, the rules in these ancient texts fall out of relevance (often they stay relevant though) in the modern world but because they are in these texts people forget what they were originally intended for and want to cling to them. On this basis, my opinion is that all religions are right and all religions are wrong. They are just different ways of explaining the big questions. The Bible isn't fiction. The Old Testament especially contains a lot of stories written by people who had a different view of the world to us. Recent archaeobotanical and palynological work has led to a theory that the story of Adam and Eve actually represents the collapse of an ecosystem in which food was plentiful, leading to the inhabitants of this particular area having to leave and adopt agriculture as a means of food procurement. Much of the New Testament could be described as spin. There is sufficient documentary evidence for us to be sure that Jesus was a real person. The story of his birth is interesting. There was a census. There was a strange astronomical event that scholars from the east came to the Jerusalem area to study. They just didn't happen at the same time. In some cultures, women were considered to be virgins until they gave birth to their first child. All of those things were put together later to make a more interesting story. Having said all that, the parables about living a good life remain applicable whether or not you believe in the existence of a God. Religion is fundamentally a good thing. It's only a problem when people use it as an excuse for poor behaviour. But people use all sorts of things as an excuse for poor behaviour, including football, and most of us don't think that's a bad thing.
The thing that gets me about Jesus, they know to the day when he was born supposedly by using star data but they knew how old he was when he died but his death is anywhere within 6 weeks
He was born anytime between 6 and 4BC. No one is sure. His date of birth isn't mentioned in any of the gospels. The dates that his birth and death are celebrated not only differ around the world but are generally accepted to have been positioned so that they occur on dates when the festivals of earlier religions took place.
Personally I think the judge is spot on. He could have just made them a ****ing cake then kept his personal religious views to his private self but he’s clearly made a point based on his personal discrimination . They have the legal right to be gay, get married and be christian like many gay people and religious leaders actually are and have celebratory cakes made like any ****er else. Even the pope is starting to update these archaic things.
I'm no scholar in these matters,but it seems to me that,over the last 2000 years at least,and probably well before that, a significant number of those who proclaim devout religious belief appear to ignore their own scriptures, espousing certain virtues on the path to a better life,in favour of a total intolerance towards those who hold a different set of beliefs to their own.
If not, it certainly stretches the truth. Man walking on water, red sea parting, man rises from dead, man changes water into wine...
The concept of faith, church ( in the community sense of the word) and I guess some sort of moral compass, or set of values by which to live your life is a good thing. I'd definitely agree with that. Where I struggle is being told who I can fall in love with, when I can have children, when I can have sex etc etc Guidance v Control
This is what I've tried to explain in my original post. Some of it is stories that come from people who had a different understanding of the world to us (and often these were very old stories that had been passed down through generations before being written down, so may have changed slightly in each retelling) and some of it is the deliberate shifting of true events around to make a better story. Parting the red sea is an interesting one though. There are various theories about it. One is that a peculiar, but known and observable, weather phenomenon occurred in a narrow and shallow part of the red sea. Another is that its a mistranslation from the original texts and that it was a 'reed sea', literally a sea of reeds, that they walked through. Some of it may well have been made up, but there are plenty of theories based on plausible evidence for some of these events. That's what makes it such an interesting subject.
This is more likely, as with the rest of the stories - largely mistranslations and uneven accounts of real events. Nothing wrong with having that faith of course, I just don't understand blind faith.
In the original post too. Some of this is rules that were there to help a largely illiterate society (or, in the case of the Ten Commandments, a temporarily nomadic society) thousands of years ago. The circumstances under which those rules were written no longer apply so the rules aren't relevant. People just like to cling on to them because they are in these texts, and therefore consider them the word of God.
This is basically my point. The general message of be decent to each other is a good one. You can't, and shouldn't, take every bit of the bible literally.
I suppose it's the bit in bold that is the issue. So in 2021 the Pope declared that same sex relationships were a sin. I cannot accept that ancient texts and beliefs still stand now, nor that there isn't scope to update them. That's before you factor in the mass hypocrisy of priests abusing altar boys.
I suppose that's the thing, isn't? They probably do need to be updated but it's very difficult for the Catholic Church especially to deviate from what's been dogma for so long. That kind of thing with priests is exactly what I mean about religion being used as an excuse for poor behaviour. It doesn't make religion wrong, just the people who are hiding behind religion to do bad things. My stance isn't particularly pro-religion, by the way. It's just an interest in it as a concept.
So it was illegal at the time of the request, but prosecution started and hundreds of thousands of taxpayers money wasted... Unbelievable Jeff
Because it's his job to make cakes? Nobody was asking him to become a homosexual and engage in gay sex were they?
As its his own business, surely he has the right to say no. A tradesman doesn't accept every job they get asked to do.
