(November 17, 2018 at 4:42 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: Theism isn't the root of all the worlds problems. Theism only -amplifies- the root of all of our problems.
Even the example you presented..is problematic. If the reason that all people deserve equal rights is that a magic book says so...that argument falls just as magic book falls. Those who assert as much have doomed civil rights to failure.
Look around you, the magic book folks have decided that civil rights aren't all that important after all. MAGA jesus says bow to the king.
It's not about the magic book.
People only follow the parts of the magic book that they like. We can take a stroll through leviticus and see for ourselves that the majority of Christians eat or condone the consumption of bacon and shellfish. The magic book doesn't stop them from doing what they actually want. It only offers them the justification to do it.
So if you can convince the followers of the magic book that equal rights is the just thing for everyone, then they'll chew on that for a little... decide if it makes sense to them or not independent of whatever the magic book says. If they decide that equal rights for all makes sense, then they'll find support to validate their views in the magic book. If they can't find support, they'll reinterpret things or cherry pick the offending part of the bible into obscurity.
Then the children see that the parents faced a moral dilemma and they responded by reinterpreting the magic book, and they themselves will have justification to reinterpret it as needed when they become adults. If this wasn't happening, then we'd have the exact same christianity that we had 2,000 years ago. We don't even have the same Christianity that we had 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago.
The end result is the same regardless of how a person justifies it; they're choosing the path they want to take independent of the magic book.
