Finn Laursen, of the Christian Educators Association International has taken up the fight for religious moral absolutes that brought civilization wonderful things like the Inquisition:

This type of behavior should not shock anyone in this postmodern culture that promotes a philosophy of no absolute truth and therefore no absolute right and wrong.

Actually, Finn, I’d say that society in general frowns upon premeditated murder.  The relativistic viewpoint could possibly justify these kids attacking their teacher if she was horribly abusive or if they were sent back in time to prevent her from giving birth to the next Hitler, but that’s getting into a realm of fiction a bit far-fetched even for someone who takes the Bible at face value.  In this case everyone can agree that the kids are a rotten bunch who should be thrown in the juvenile equivalent of the clink, whether or not your moral compass happens to come from an ancient legal code that is morally dubious by today’s standards.

When parents don’t train their children to have a clear moral compass, the young can be expected to make unethical decisions. The next line of defense is in the schools where we are in a culture war, and our schools are the battlefield.

Should I even bother to mention that this little plot would become perfectly ethical according to the Christian scripture if their teacher was a homosexual, wasn’t Christian herself, or was menstruating without voluntarily exiling herself to a tent in the desert where she would be forced to make burnt offerings of sweet meats to the Lord her God?

Children today are continually confronted with ideas contrary to the principles of Scripture, and  contemporary public schools are often void of such truths. The fruit of these dynamics are apparent. If children are not nurtured with God’s perspective, they can and will be easily deceived.

And here we come to the crux of the problem.  The Bible is not an ethical guidebook.  The Bible doesn’t provide a moral compass for people.  The Bible is a mishmash of poorly matched stories told by unreliable narrators usually hundreds of years after the events they are covering supposedly took place.  Most of the rules that the Bible lays out are horrible and completely ridiculous by today’s standards.  Christians need to stop harping about Biblical principles and leading their lives according to Scripture, because living according to Biblical principles and the scripture just leads to hatred and intolerance.

The Bible is a handy guidebook if your idea of moral behavior includes incest, murder, sexual repression, and deity-sanctioned genocide, but you’ll have to forgive me if I prefer my society to lean towards moral relativism.

Technorati Tags: moral relativism, christian living, scripture, christian ethics

This is most important — insist, as heatedly as any extreme fundamentalist, that the Bible must be read in the most naively literal sense in all passages, and therefore the tiniest mistake or scribal error invalidates the whole thing and any religion based on it.

My problems with religion are leveled squarely at the fundamentalist flavors of every major world religion out there today. You can feel free to believe the Dawkins argument that tolerance of moderate religion lends credibility to the more extreme elements of that religion, but I like to embrace a more live and let believe philosophy as long as that belief doesn’t involve suicide bombing, shooting up abortion clinics, kneecapping Catholics or Protestants for wandering into the wrong neighborhood in Dublin, or any other number of religious practices that wouldn’t be considered acceptable in polite company. Religious fundamentalists, unfortunately, are usually the source of most of those nasty glorifications of God that I just mentioned.

And where does this absolute certainty in the goodness of suicide bombings and religiously motivated murder come from? A literal interpretation of the Bible or whatever holy book you prefer, of course! So here is my proposition to religious groups out there who are tired of hearing from atheists who insist on a literal interpretation of everything in the Bible: We’ll stop taking everything in the Bible literally the instant that you afford us the same courtesy, and not a moment sooner.

(Of course even admitting that the Bible isn’t meant to be taken literally and attempting to “interpret” the good book can lead to some pretty wacky and wildly divergent belief systems, but it’s still a step above believing that the murder of homosexuals is justified because God said so in Leviticus.)

Biblical literalism is the root cause of a lot of the religious cancers that are currently poisoning an otherwise rational and secular Western society, so don’t think for an instant that I’m not going to give up the easy pot-shots that come from a literal interpretation of the Bible for as long as people insist on living their lives by that same literal interpretation.

Biblical literalism has led to dubious religious interpretations that glorify intolerance and murder. Biblical literalism has led entire segments of the population to reject scientific teaching because their pastor told them that God snapped the universe into existence 6000 years ago in a happy-go-lucky time when man and dinosaur coexisted in harmony. There’s a compelling argument to be made that our adventures in the middle east for the past half a century have as much to do with the belief that Jesus will be coming back there at any moment to throw everyone who doesn’t believe in him into a lake of fire as they do with oil supplies, as well as a whole host of other ideas that have no business in modern society.

So you can bet your crucifix that lampooning the practice of Biblical literalism wherever it rears its ugly head is going to continue to be a vital and justifiable part of the debate against religions that condone the practice. As long as religious sects that promote Biblical literalism continue to try and shove their beliefs down the collective throats of everyone around them, as long as religious groups try to legislate based on their own narrow interpretation of the divine, that narrow literal interpretation will continue to be justifiably dissected and refuted by individuals with a more rational mindset.

Technorati Tags: Bible, Christianity, Islam, Biblical literalism, atheism

Gay rights groups have understandably taken umbrage to this hate filled environment, staging vigils where Simmie was shot and lashing out at the local Christian churches that unapologetically spew hate because they think one sentence in Leviticus 18:22 is justification for discriminating against an entire subset of the population.

Pro-gay activist Matt Foreman summarized the situation quite nicely:

“People aren’t born hating gay people. They are taught to hate gay people. And who’s doing the teaching? It’s coming from pulpits right here in in Broward County every Sunday.”

Now for the kicker I know you’ve all been waiting for. Christians don’t like it when people call a spade a spade, and they’re demanding an apology from Matt Foreman for his intolerance!

Reverand Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission (does a majority religion really need an anti-defamation group to safeguard their good name) had this to say:

“Foreman is guilty of gross Christian bashing, the very kind of bashing he says he opposes against homosexuals.”

and

“Radical homosexuals like Foreman are quick to exploit this tragic situation for their own political purposes and in order to bash Christians. Matt Foreman owes the ministers of Broward County an apology.”

Let’s set aside the delicious irony of an avowed conservative Christian infamous for his political grandstanding leveling the accusation of grandstanding at someone else just so that he can get some press. If you look at the two quotes above it appears that the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission is angry because Matt Foreman, the big gay bully, is bashing the poor defenseless Christians of Broward County who had nothing to do with any of the anti-homosexual sentiment in the Fort Lauderdale area.

But what about this quote from the end of Mr. Cass’ press release?

“Faithful Christian churches must oppose homosexual behavior, just as they must oppose other behavior they consider to be sinful, but where is the proof that any minister has ever suggested or condoned violence.”

Let’s recap the story so far. Matt Foreman accuses local Christian ministers of preaching intolerance. The Christian groups get upset because Matt Foreman accuses them of preaching intolerance. Then in the same press release those same Christians admit that intolerance is one of the core tenets of their faith. So now Matt Foreman is getting raked over the coals for stating the plain and simple truth as admitted by the very group that he’s supposedly oppressing?

And let’s not forget that the oppressing of Christians has really just amounted to protests against a murder. The anti-gay oppression has come in the form of a beating and, oh yeah, that murder that gay rights activists were protesting in the first place. I think it’s safe to say that we’re comparing apples to oranges here when it comes to who is the oppressed and who is the oppressee in this situation.

I know that it’s a popular sentiment amongst Christians right now that they’re one of the most put-upon groups in the world because of their beliefs, but let’s be honest. If you’re the majority religion in the world you aren’t the one being oppressed. Sure you might run into trouble in some parts of the world, but the vast conspiracy of anti-Christianity that you’ve created for yourselves just doesn’t exist. Matt Foreman was just saying that we should live and let live, and shouldn’t live in a world where someone is murdered or beat up because of their sexuality. I’m sure that Jesus would probably agree were he here today, he seemed like a pretty cool guy as long as you ignore most of Daniel and Revelation.

And if a Christian group is preaching intolerance of homosexuals as a matter of faith then they are preaching intolerance, plain and simple. They’re no better than congregations of days gone by that found biblical justifications for slavery or any other number of atrocities.

Technorati Tags: christian oppression, homosexuals, matt foreman, christianity, simmie williams

The source of all of this uproar?  SB-777 - Student Civil Rights Act, a bill that aims to extend basic civil rights protection to lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transexual students in the California school system.  That’s all.  They’re just explicitly spelling out that people in the GLBT community have the same basic human rights and protections as everyone else in the public school system.

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I was so impressed with the description of the Changs and their unique interpretation of Christian morality that I thought I’d share a couple of their good works right here, including:

1.  Keeping their prices low by forcing American workers to endure sweatshop conditions, then filing defamation lawsuits against those workers when they protest their horrible working conditions.

2.  Ripping off designs from high end designers and then selling low-cost knockoffs in their store.  So much for that whole “thou shalt not steal” thing, eh?

I just wish that there were more charitable Christians out there like the Changs who are willing to eschew ostentation and follow the example Jesus set by living in an $8.5 million home that was built on the sweat and tears of exploited workers and stolen intellectual property.

Technorati Tags: forever 21, christianity, radar online, fashion industry, christian morals, exploitation