In the sense that someone fixes a race. Sure.
Also, I think it's important to note on the time line when apostasy, and certain scientific en devour, was no longer was a death sentence from the church.
I think that would be lovely. And we could compare it to the response of atheistically premised communistic governments to the peaceful practice of religion. We could start with Stalin or go straight to the humanistic wonder of the Chinese treatment of pacifist monks.
lain:
I think a problem that you seem to have is you don't give people like Dawkins, Harris, or Hitchens a fair shake or an honest listen.
I've read a great bit of Hitchens, whom I admired as an intellectual force. His political commentary was particularly insightful. I attended one of his God debates and read God is not Great. I enjoy reading or listening to Dawkins on science. I read The God Delusion and found it and Hitchens' effort surprisingly sophomoric as theological criticism.
and regardless of the reasonableness for which they make their cases.
It was precisely the absence of this, the palpable contempt and emotional nature of their repeatedly less than objective attempts to frame religion in the worst possible and least reasoned and reasonable context, as though the entire breadth of Christian (to pick the principle target) faith were found in the huts of sheepherders and not as comfortably in the hands of intellectual giants of a number of ages that disappointed me the most. It is because their approach to the subject was even more markedly the thing you mistake my reaction for that led me to shrug the whole of their efforts off.
What is it, specifically, you think Dawkins is wrong on? Can you quote him and then show here his mistake? Can you do the same with Harris and Hitchens? Dennett? Kraus? What about Niel Degrasse Tyson?
I could and did when their respective tomes came out several years ago. I suppose I could question you on Chesterton or Barth or any number of additional critics of the atheist understanding and model, to note the sudden flurry, but to what end?
No, it doesn't. You need a wider familiarity. Begin with native Americans. Now in Christendom it most certainly is considered a sin.
Homosexuality is an abomination. It is unclean. Show me where in your bible that it say's it's OK. Or that it's not sinful.
Is it a sin? I believe so. I believe the Bible makes that point. So are any number of things, from drinking to excess to cursing. And most people I know do any number of things that would fail the judgment of the law. And so grace.
And how do you rectify the bible with common sense and biology with regards to homosexuality?
Common sense is the very thing you'd eschew if it didn't suit your purpose. Or need I remind you of the litany of silly notions that were once a part of the common understanding? As for biology, what can you imagine it has to do with our conversation?
On what objective grounds can it be argued that homosexuality is immoral?
How much does a truth weigh?
You missed the point. I haven't argued that bullying is exclusive to religion. However, I have argued that your religious belief and its history has painted targets on homosexuals for bullying and worse.
I didn't miss it. I differed with it. You lay that at the feet of religion and I note that homosexuals were brutally treated under communist/atheist governments. It's a human response to significant deviation from the norm. On a secular level, it's the darkest corner of the ethnocentric principle in play, the disgust for that which is not only different, but so different as to diametrically oppose our reflection.
Without vague religious excuses with regards to homosexuals, there is no objective reason to treat them poorly, or to believe they or their actions are inherently immoral.
See, you just assumed a thing that only illustrates your lack of familiarity with sociology and human psychology. You'd think you might look for a larger human context first, to legitimize the criticism or, better yet, attempt to find it before coming to that conclusion. A wrong one.
But even a simple extension of your own construct should have led you to a different conclusion but for your negative fixation. If, as Hitchens and Dawkins suppose, religion is a human construct and there is no absolute moral arbiter, then God is nothing more or less than a sound we make, reflective of something in our need and nature. And it isn't going to be eliminated by crushing that sound any more than that sound created the nature.
Re: the larger invitation of Biblical context.
That sounds like a lot of mental gymnastics and rationalizing.
The other guy's beliefs always seem to when they differ from our own.
As to a discussion of miracles, who do you propose start the thread?
