That's Old Testament jewish law that is no longer applicable. Death was also the prescribed penalty for such things as gathering wood on the Sabbath. Your reasoning is kind of like saying modern America supports slavery because slavery was legal at one point in history.
of course i have heard of Pascal's wager. its one of the simplistic arguments christians who are not very deep thinkers use. in pascals time the choice was the catholic version of god or nothing. today a thinking person can come up with many other possibilities. what if the real god is allah? you are in trouble. what if the real god values intellectual honesty over blind obedience? you are in trouble. if god can see into peopleâs hearts, then will such a god be pleased by a believer who merely believes out of fear and greed? a child should be able to see the flaws in pascals wager.
where in the bible are the verses that christians use to preach againt homosexuality? so the part about killing is no longer valid but the part about hating is still valid? how convienient to pick and choose the verses you will follow. You know you've created god in your own image when it turns out he hates all the same people you do."-Anne Lamott
Let's be honest. Most of the anger "progressives" have toward religion, particularly Christianity and the Catholic Church, stems from abortion and homo issues. Take those away, and most "progressives" would feel free to ignore religion. Since one of their core tenets however is suppression of any dissenting opinion, they cannot abide the fact that religious organizations are free to teach that abortion and homosexual conduct are immoral. So they force people, under the coercion of diversity training, to deny their religious beliefs or face loss of their jobs. They force religious groups to provide abortion and other services that are against their beliefs. It's all about the twin goals of forcing these groups to heel to the government's leash and demonstrating to the progressives that obama and his crowd are punishing their enemies.
Don't forget the war on stem cell research and science in general. Also, the the way that religion serves more to separate people than to bring them together: a dislike and distrust of "other" that is inherent in most religious people despite what the actual teachings may be.
Free Thinker assumes that the people talking about murdering their unborn children if they're gay are religious. Well, let's suppose he's right. Then we have two groups of people: 1) Religious believers, a tiny minority of whom say they'd murder their unborn child if it was homosexual. 2) Atheists, a great many of whom will happily murder an unborn child for any reason at all, and consider it to be a right, sanctioned by the Warren Court.
OK, staying on topic here. I am with you on this one too. Pigeon holing, labeling, whatever you want to call it, is a pet peeve of mine. Taking something random and generalizing to a large group is not productive. I see a lot of 'baiting' here as well, and I think you accused me of it too, but I was not, maybe just having some fun. c
I think we discussed the lumping of an entire group into a pigeon hole based on a few topics. I think Max and I were on the same team on that. I have no anger with religion, and respect everyone's right to believe whatever they choose to believe. Last I checked that was still one our Founding Father's core beliefs. If someone is an atheist, agnostic, or the Pope, I give them full berth to think as they please. c