@Grayhome:
Your belief is that the bible as a whole is false.
That is your belief and you defend it with vehemence.
I don't share that belief, nor do I believe that the bible is "the truth".
The bible is a collection of stories, many of them about morale, and how you should behave.
You can learn from that, or not.
And while my upbringing was not very Christian, I do believe that in total Christianity brought more good than bad.
But since I cannot observe any universe with the same starting parameters, but without Christianity, I cannot prove whether this is actually true.
And you, once again, mix the whole bible as being Christianity. It is not. The old testament are for the most part of Christianity just a collection of stories, some of which are even against the teaching of JC. I don't consider the old testament as anything relevant for my beliefs, even more so when JC teached elements which contradict the old testament.
The same with many parts of the new testament, as they recount elements which did not come from JC, but from others who spoke in His name, but even went against the teaching of JC.
But then, even the parts which concern JC and his life directly are from times long past the alleged time of death. If he even lived (
which I doubt - there is no record in the long list of Roman records of crucified persons with the name of JC, or Jesus of Nazareth, Rex Judicae).
And no, Christianity does NOT evaluate you solely on your belief and submission to God.
Your deeds are more important than your belief.
If you believe, and you did more good than harm, then.... comes whatever they promise and I don't believe in.
If you don't believe in God and the purgatory/hell, then you don't need to be afraid of an after-life in hell, as it does not exist.
And no matter how often you prayed to god, one murder and "you're OUT". No redeeming from that. The Church may have told otherwise (
it is NOT in the bible), but the Church does not represent Christianity, although they tell you so. But the church also sold letters freeing you from purgatory/hell, just because they wanted your money. There is nothing the Church can base this "trade" on, nor could they ever prove that it would have an effect on your "afterlife".
And the old testament is for large parts the same as the Torah, upon which the Jewish belief is founded. No, I did not limit my "claim that religion allows their subjects free will" to Christianity. Notably the first (occidental) religion which teached us that your actions are independent from any will of any God was Jewish. I did intend to include this religion too.
And you are born into this world without having a say over this. Whether you base this on your believe in a God who gave you life, whether you base this on nature and it's will to procreate, it does not matter. You had no say in it. neither does a rabbit baby have a say in the matter whether it will be born or not. Nor does a tree growing have a say in it.
And you do have a choice to not believe. Sufficient converts in any direction have proven that they will not be slain by thunder and lightningbolts just because they seceded from Christianity.
If you are fine with your believe, whether you name it Christianity, Catholicism, Baptism, Jewish, Moslim, Buddhaism, Taoism, Atheism, Science,... it is all fine with me. be happy, there is no afterlife anyway, no matter what the bible or any other religion tells you. If there is rebirth, you will not remember anyway, and it does therefore not matter how you live this life. It's solely up to you, and society will judge you by what you did.
The Torah and the bible tell you to give someone who really repents a second chance
(although no-one can prove or disprove heaven and by what rules someone gets in or not - someone repeatedly murdering and only repenting on his deathbed is someone I cannot believe to be admitted to wherever or whatever "heaven" is).
Which I see as an improvement over previous rules. This still did not perpetrate into society until society got better education. But also society always interpreted it as "then get to work and we will evaluate whether you have really changed". Someone only repenting on his deathbed cannot be reevaluated, and has therefore no chance to prove that he has become a good person. Society will still remember him as murderer - no matter whether he really repented and changed or not.
And that the old stories (I tend to see the whole bible as "old stories" which somehow survived all the social changes and are outdated stories) condemn certain sexual orientation does have it's reasons. LGT usually live their life for one generation, their own. Then they die, and they are no more. Society does benefit from them as they can put more energy into other things (like theatre, politics,...) (so be welcome to live how you want it, life's short as it is), but the next generation is not brought up by them. Except now in the modern times - but it still remains a lower quota than with mother/father pairs who cannot give birth themselves but raise someone else's kids.
(It did happen in the medieval times, hardships within families sometimes meant that kids were brought up by the aunt/uncle who somehow always stayed single. - But it was nowhere near normal.)
Society as a whole is very conservative.
My student association was, when it was founded, considered to be progressive. By the time my local club got founded, the association was considered to be "ultra-conservative", although the base law of the association has not changed. Within the association, our club was considered to be progressive when the local club founded itself. Society considered us "conservative", and without looking at us in detail mostly classify us as "outdated and ultra-right".
Take your viewpoint. I have mine, and so far nothing you said has been an argument I have not heard just because I'm a member of a Christian Student Association.
And yes, I agree that it is good that in the western democracies the law has become fully secularised.
But most textbooks of religions are not much else than a collection of moral values which were existent and predominant in the society (of that time) anyway, and thus are a formalised set of rules. With the addition of "God". If you scrap the parts referring to "God" and "his wonders", not much more than certain basic Human interaction rules remain.
For a long time this was the law. And it was considered to be much better than not having such a law and having to submit to the law of the stronger. With the religion behind you, many despots have been overcome. And it is not without reason that many despots either tried to make the religion and it's formal representatives work for them, or try to get rid of religion altogether.
tl;dr: IMHO the bible is a collection of stories. Even the r.c. church does not take all of it at face-value truth. I do interpret it much more freely than the church (who does not represent my personal belief), and disregard many stories as "advertisement" and "in modern context without any value". It had its values in those times, and additions and alterations have been made to fit other societies.
- also my last post on this subject; the argumentations are circular by now and based on fundamental beliefs of persons participating - nothing good can come from that -