So you're saying that without obtuse Bible verses, we'd have no basis for our governmental foundations?

I agree totally that the ideal of basing societal norms and standards on who we are as individuals is a worthy goal (as long as you carefully select which individuals you use as role models) but my hunch is that the basic ethics and the rule of law that seems to develop in what we consider civilized and advanced societies comes not from the word of God or the sacrifice of Jesus but from societal evolution derived from simple survival techniques.

To me it's perfectly natural for there to be a balance of free will and societal restraint when human beings come together to live. We can see that same behavior in species that certainly have no ability to read holy texts.

That's a pretty odd verse if you take it in its entirety Marcia. What the heck does " which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began" mean? Before creation, Jesus Christ was given to a mankind that didn't even exist yet to save him from sins he hadn't yet committed?

Interesting that two different people can see such different things in text like that. You saw haunting beauty. I saw gobbledy-gook.

Funny that you chose to respond in such a bizarre manner. The link I gave was this very complete history of the evolution of your faith detailing how humans have interpreted words like you cited to rationalize incredible cruelty and violence and you chose to not even acknowledge that history but to instead divert the conversation to how our country evolved properly from Christian philosophy (which is a real distortion of the actual facts). Nice job glossing over all the bad parts. It's how all this crap is perpetuated in my opinion. As soon as someone requests introspection and true analysis, your fingers go into your ears and you begin babbling incoherent, highly-edited, and obscure Bible passages. How you can have an obvious scientific side and still fall to that tactic of spouting blind faith is beyond me.

In many ways I respect more the post by Silent Majority because he at least equated the horrors of Christian history with the horrors of Islam. Ultimately that response is just as inane but at least he stayed on topic. Who cares if today Islam is far worse in their violence. I fully acknowledge that. The point here is that any religion with a basis in faith and magic is subject to manipulation by people who will twist the message into a way of securing power over others and it often ends up violent.

Maybe that website should be required reading for all Christian children. I'd even recommend it in our public schools.

Art