(November 20, 2017 at 7:21 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: But look at the people you meet every day - the bus driver, the girl who hands you the fizzy drink and the burger through the little window, the neighbor who works two jobs to feed her three kids, your doctor, your solicitor, the bloke who walks dogs for a living, that cop who gave you the ticket.
Well I used to think that. If we're talking about personal experience then the thing that actually prompt me to be more active as an atheist is when I saw all those people you mention standing up against gay marriage with no other reason but because they heard it from their priests. Not just that but vile fairy tale stories about how wicked homosexuals are. It scared me, to be frank, because who knows who is next. Jews? I tell you I became aware that there is something more disturbing in them under the surface.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
