I tend to stay out of religious debates. I also tend to (less succesfully) stay out of political ones. The reason is because I have a tendency to verbally skewer anyone who oversteps boundaries, and let's be honest, in these topics everyone oversteps their boundaries from time to time, myself included.
So when I stumbled into a debate regarding the separation of Church and State (political and religious) and someone had already started making indirect inferences that my good friend Andy needed to find God, the gloves came off.
Andy's brilliant response can be read here: http://bluedepth.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/faith/
Mine was being composed at the same time and is as follows:
The commentary thus far is touching upon far too broad of a subject in regards to the content of the original post. To me, the message is clear. Separation of Church and State is supposed to mean separate. Regardless of your personal religious beliefs, it should not be legal to let your beliefs dictate society law, because it creates an unfair bias in a country that is predominantly Christian.
However, the general public of the US has been mislead by a significant number of politicians that this is not actually true, and that we must abide by the Bible, often quoted as "the direct word of God" regardless of the various translations, offshoots, sects, schisms and branches of Christianity that presently exist in American society.
So tell me, which version of Christianity is the correct version? Are you Roman Catholic? Baptist? Lutheran? Mormon? Which Bible is the correct Bible? I hope you are aware that they are not all the same, nor do they share the same sacred texts. Also, what is your basis for knowing that the version of Christianity you chose to follow happens to be the correct one? Is it because your parents told you? Or did you happen to research the other aspects of Christianity before coming to this decision? Are you an ordained leader of your church? A minister perhaps? Or a priest? What information do you possess that confirms, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you were not tricked into following a false system of belief?
Furthermore, if we are to base our laws upon the laws of God, and the Bible is the direct word of God, which laws are we supposed to abide by?
"Slaves, obey your masters" - Colossians 3:22
Are you saying that we should renew the practice of slavery in the United States?
"I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent." Timothy 2:12
Are you saying women are not permitted to have a job as a teacher, instructor or supervisor in our American society?
"Do not allow a sorceress to live." Exodus 22:18
Do you condone the execution of women who claim or have been found to practice magic or sorcery?
There are plenty more examples I could come up with, but the point I am trying to make is that while there are good messages to be found within the Bible, it is a completely rational to state that it is an inherently flawed text. If you have ever played the game "telephone" you understand how messages that are passed from person to person can change and become very different from the original message. When you take into consideration the number of times and languages into which the Bible has been translated, I hope you will agree that there is a significant amount of potential for mistakes to be made in the process.
If you agree with the above, then you must also accept the possibility that the Bible could be interpreted in potentially harmful ways. This is not to say that our current laws are perfect - quite the contrary. However, I would expect that the introduction of the Bible as a basis of our laws could lead to more problems than already exist in society.
Bear in mind that there is a lot more that can be covered on this subject, but I'm trying to focus on whether the Bible or the God of Christianity should have any impact on the United States government. The only way I could see that as being appropriate in a country that claims to permit freedom to all creeds (beliefs) regardless of sex or race would be to permit the United States laws to also be impacted by other world religions, including Buddhism, Shintoism, Hinduism, Paganism, other Abrahamic traditions and many many more. To do otherwise would make our government leaders appear hypocritical, and let's be blunt, they don't need to work any harder to do so.
Sadly this did not prevent said gentleman from stopping, rather he claimed to be merely trying to open a respectful discourse and share information. Based on his prior comment I found that unlikely, and said so. Again he claimed to innocently be attempting to promote discourse, inferring that I was the person who was in the wrong, and I let him know that his chosen words spoke otherwise and he had overstepped his boundaries. This then led to me blocking the individual in question to close out communication on my part.
One of the things Google+ does nicely is making it fairly easy to block someone. Problem solved.
So yeah, I'm definitely in a rowdy mood today. Consider yourselves warned.
