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

What I already said. You don't know what you are talking about.

What you already said does nothing to address the point. Your theology is made up. It isn't Biblical.

And there's Origen who wanted to go off to be martyred with his father, but his mother prevented it by hiding his clothes.

Yes, it is Biblical, and again you don't know what you are talking about.

I missed this earlier post but it's raising the same objections others are raising so I guess I should try to answer it. Apparently many don't see the difference, and with all these cases coming up I do keep thinking, Wow, we should be protesting a lot more stuff than we are.But there is nevertheless a difference. Gay marriage is not just a garden-variety sin, as I keep trying to say. It's not the sin of divorce or the sin of fornication or cohabitation without marriage. If I were a Christian OBGYN nurse I couldn't support a doctor's recommendation of abortion but I don't know how Christian nurses deal with such situations. Something to think about.HOWEVER, gay marriage isn't just a sin against a specific law of God, it's a rewriting of God's law, a complete alteration of God's ordinance of marriage. In the other cases we know the law and we know the sin against it. In this case we're changing the law to obscure the whole category of sin. It goes with redefining homosexuality as not a sin but a normal sexual variation.That's how I've been thinking of it anyway. I suppose if someone asked me to as a baker to make a cake to celebrate someone's occasion of adultery and have it sent to the hotel room I'd have a problem with that, but that isn't going to happen, is it?If you rewrote the Ten Commandments to say Adultery is Permitted, Stealing is Permitted, Murder is Permitted, that's more like what is implied in this new law of Gay Marriage though it's still not quite a perfect definition.

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If you rewrote the Ten Commandments to say Adultery is Permitted, Stealing is Permitted, Murder is Permitted, that's more like what is implied in this new law of Gay Marriage though it's still not quite a perfect definition.

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Of course,no law is being rewritten. It is simply that the law of the land disagrees with the rules of your religion. In that sense it is no different than the example you omitted -"Worship of other gods is permitted". Which is also the law of the land and has been since the Bill of Rights was passed.The real reason, of course, is that "Christians" wish to place themselves above the law, or the rules of employers. For many years they have gotten away with claiming privileges that the law does not permit. But this has been slowly changing and every loss is met by howls of outrage.Gay marriage is a victory for liberty and justice over the hate and lies of the "Christian" right. Of course they hate it! They threw everything they could at trying to stop it and still they failed. Well tough. They can just accept that they are not entitled to special privileges. That they don't get to override laws they don't like. And if they can't stand that the too bad for them.

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:

It's funny how recognising "demonic" Hinduism as a valid religion, and it's adherents as entitled to accommodations respecting their religious beliefs is acceptable. Apparently Faith sees worshipping demons is the "good" sort of sin that deserves public acceptance and support, unlike gay sex.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Of course the Bible also says "worship of other gods is permitted" although only under proscribed conditions like common courtesy.

You have the same problem with the Bible as you have with science - you won't accept the evidence. I have shown what is Biblical and you deny it. And as usual, the only argument you have is denial.

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

You have not shown what is biblical. As usual you just made up your own personal individual definition and try to impose it on two thousand years of theology to the contrary. You don't know what you are talking about but you don't care do you, anything to contradict the truth that's been hammered out for centuries. Just like jar. Make it all up but accuse US of doing that. What a shoddy bit of lying argument.

I've QUOTED the Bible. If the Bible isn't Biblical enough for you, what is? Ah, two thousand years of second-hand commentary is more Biblical than the Bible, in your world.

It took 2000 years of theology--and the lust for secular power--to transform Christian communities into what you see today.Edited by Omnivorous, : -s

Typical massive hypocrisy from a cherry picken evangelical.
News flash.. Abrahamic faiths don't get to define marriage and even if they did you're doing wrong!Here is real Biblical Marriage.

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Biblical marriage is a man arranging to buy a girl from her father for an agreed upon purchase price (Genesis 29:18).
Biblical marriage is a wife giving, regardless of her maid servant's wishes, her servant to her husband as a wife for sex and procreation (Genesis 16:2-3, Genesis 30:3, Genesis 30:9, etc.)
Biblical marriage is a raiding party murdering the fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters of a people but saving the young virgins because they want wives [i.e. women to capture and rape, legally] (Judges 21:10-14)
Biblical marriage is a raiding party lying in wait to capture more women as wives to legally rape (Judges 21:20-24)
Biblical marriage is a victim being forced to marry her rapist with no hope of divorce [but don't worry — her father is suitably compensated in cash for the trouble, and this is only valid if the woman is not already another man's property...so relax, no property rights are violated by this arrangement!] (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
Biblical marriage is selling your daughter as a slave to be given to her owner or owner's son for sexual exploitation as a wife [though denied the minimal protections of a wife] (Exodus 21:7-11)
Biblical marriage is one man taking multiple, even hundreds, of wives and concubines (see: David, Solomon, Jacob, Abraham, etc.)
Biblical marriage is a woman as property whose own happiness is inconsequential, but whose property status is absolute (see: David and Michal)

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Dear Christians who oppose gay marriage because it isn't "Biblical marriage"...Practice what you preach!