Blind dogma\'s definitely a bad thing. You mention books of the old testament. My understanding of what Jesus was about was putting and end to that kind of stuff you read in Leviticus and Numbers. The old testament is included in the bible more to show what Jesus was up against, I believe, than to hold old testament standards up as models. Jesus was their antithesis, which was why he was crucified, if my understanding is correct. The establishment wanted rid of him because he would have made them superfluous, offering, as he did, a direct pipeline to God through himself and promising that in this way, the believer would receive the truth.Anyway. Yeah, blind dogma\'s killing us. At the same time, people appear to need their religion. And the folks, Christian or otherwise, who think their idea of god is the only true idea of god, or their sacred text is the only truly sacred text, I\'m not sure will improve upon reflection. They\'ve been educated to have blinders on. And that they\'ll lose their souls if they stray from \"the word of god.\" It\'s a powerful inducement to stay within a community of like-minded people and not examine other ways of believing, including atheism. When you actually read the new testament and focus on the supposed words of Jesus, you see how perverted the ideas we\'re left of his have become by the churches over the years. Look at his advice to the apostles in Acts - that if they came to a city that wouldn\'t receive them and didn\'t want to hear their message, to shake the dust from that city from their shoes and move on -- go somewhere where people want to hear, are receptive. How did we get from that to the inquisition?? Believe in the Catholic church or we\'ll torture you until you do. The only hope I see for blind dogma is to promote literacy and lack of censorship. Many of the people in the muslim world are undereducated and if they can read, have nothing available to read but what their government or religious leaders want them to have. The Lucifer Principle is recommended reading. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]
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