Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage them to grow up?

So, just to check: if a Christian is "required to participate" in a ceremony involving worshiping false gods with burnt offerings and the adoration of heathen idols, that's not a problem?

It was a yes-or-no question. Would you like to take another run at it?If a Christian is "required to participate" in a ceremony involving worshiping false gods with burnt offerings and the adoration of heathen idols, that's not a problem?

"Arrested"? Sacked, surely? I'm fairly sure that that's what happens when you refuse to do the job you're paid for. I'm always happy when you give us up-to-date information on what God's thinking. Has there been any change in his position on usury?

That's just weird. "Fraud or entrapment"? Why not arson, champerty, and uttering counterfeit money? Though not you personally. And now someone else who isn't you faces something even worse than lions. She's being required to do the job she's paid to do. This could only happen to a Christian. Atheists don't even have job descriptions, they just turn up to work and do whatever.

Imagine if a government clerk who was a Quaker started refusing to issue gun licenses as a matter of conscience ... you'd soon see how much the religious right gives a damn about her "religious freedom" to not do her job.

In breaking news, government clerk Muhammad bin Ahmed has refused to issue a zoning permit for a Christian church. "Legally, their papers are all in order", he explained "But Allah knows a higher law. I cannot be required to participate in the grave sin of shirk, against my sincerely held religious belief that I don't want to do my job", adding "Where's my paycheck?"It is expected that conservative Christians will come out in his support, since they are of course people of principle and not just a bunch of homophobes looking for an excuse.

Well ... a Quaker doesn't have to join the army and then refuse to fight, so as to actively disobey human law in favor of what he considers God's law. He can just not join the army. If instead he joins the army and demands that he get the pay and the housing allowance and the uniform and the pension but shouldn't be expected to fight ... well, what would you think of that? Does that make him a brave martyr sticking up for his principles or just an asshole?

... not quite sure why you say that.

But if you look very closely at the background of that picture, there are lions.

And this will lead to worse things: people working on Saturday, for example, without being stoned to death for it. The open practice of usury. One shudders to think. The law does say that adultery is permitted. Also not honoring your father and mother, the worship of false gods, the ownership of idols, taking the Lord's name in vain and working on Saturday, and you can covet what you like. It's already happened. And Christians make about as big a fuss over that as they did with that massive campaign to abolish usury which we all have heard so much about. Ah yes, "garden-variety sins". While this term sees its fullest theological development in St. Augustine's treatise, Pfft, Adultery Ain't So Bad, the concept it has its origins in St. Paul's Epistle To Them There Faggots:

Hey, did you hear about the atheist mailman who refuses to deliver Christmas cards?NO, ME NEITHER.

Yeah, it's too much to expect the Bible to just come out and tell us what's right and what's wrong. Hey, does that sound like the sort of thing God would do? Nuh-uh. But if we read between the lines ...Only trouble is, people reading between the lines have ended up with even more diverse ideas than people just reading the text.