(March 23, 2014 at 3:39 pm)Chad32 Wrote: It's funny that these conditions were put in place by people with better moral standards than the writers of the bible.That's the way it goes. The moderately religious are more compassionate than the strictly religious, but they have to jump through some hoops to convince themselves that they are religious.
One is that the person must be warned. Well if they've read the bible, they were warned. I'm pretty sure the bible is ok with relative killing each other.
The complexity required to reach a simple conclusion reminds me of a Rube Goldberg machine.
There is an analogy in modern Catholicism. As you may know, catholic theology holds that marriage is a sacrament, and so there can be no divorce, but there can be an annulment if the sacrament was improperly performed.
I spent one year as an unpaid university chaplain, and the catholic chaplain explained to me that many priests, if they are dubious about a marriage lasting, will deliberately mess up the ceremony and leave a sealed record of it, so that if it turns out badly, the couple can get an annulment.
They are very fussy about the form of words. In another area, if a Lutheran or Anglican or some others convert to Catholicism, there is no need to rebaptize the convert, because the proper formula was used—in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit—but if the convert was from some pentecostal church which used a phrase like "I baptize you in the mighty name of Jesus" the priest is gonna splash him all over again.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
