Religion's main use by people over the centuries is as a social organizing tool and to justify authority.
i'm all for the first use, the second is where i start to have trouble.
i've never been to a church where i didn't have a lot of questions, and they didn't seem to be really interested in ANSWERING my questions, just giving me mystical bullshit non-answers....
i ask about some of the more bloodthirsty passages in the bible, and get told they're parables, or stories, and maybe some of them are, but i've read it myself, and a lot more aren't parables, they're set down as rules and examples of how to behave.
1st Samuel 6:19 in the King James Version: “And he smote the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men
Slaves, be subject to your masters with all reverence, not only to those who are good and equitable but also to those who are perverse." (1 Peter 2:1
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again."
Exodus 21: 7-8
"Behold with a great plague will the LORD smite thy people and thy children, and thy wives, and all thy goods: And thou shalt have great sickness by disease of thy bowels, until thy bowels fall out by reason of the sickness day by day." (
II Chronicles 21:14-15)
I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” (1 Timothy 2:12)
so just exactly when do we get to the love and wine and fish?