7½ Billion people on the planet and frums are obsessed with making more! They don’t understand nuance or that the command to “Go forth and multiply” didn’t mean “NON-STOP”.
The few “anti-LGBTQ” passages were likely miss-translations and stuff taken WAY outta context (and often passages against pederasty and sexual abuse). The ancient world had no concept of “Sexual Orientation”.
Taking scriptures literally and divorcing them from the context of culture of when and where they were written is dangerous! One must consider why some rules and prohibitions were made and that changes in society, knowledge of science and medicine, etc. can make those prohibitions and rules obsolete!
Faith can only exist with REASON! Just follow the SPIRIT of the Law not the Letter!
Jesus said it best to Abrahamic believers (I’ll paraphrase)…
“Love Deity with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and love everyone as you love yourself”.
If you’re an Atheist/Agnostic, replace “Deity” with “Higher Ideals” or something or take “Deity” non-literally (do the same with the Decalogue, which is mostly common-sense stuff like, ’don’t murder’, ’don’t steal’, etc.).
The Non-Literalists, Progressives, Mainliners and Theosophists have the right idea on how to approach Religion and Spirituality and the Wall of Separation of Religion & State PRESERVES AND PROTECTS BOTH! A true religionist would support keeping that Wall up and strong. It has been proven EVERY TIME that when a religion becomes Civic Law, it gets perverted away from it’s ideals and becomes a tool of oppression.
The earliest Christians were peaceful and serious about what Jesus taught but once they became the State Religion of The Roman Empire, they became power-hungry dogmatic jerkasses.
This even happens WITHIN the QURAN AS IT WAS WRITTEN! The Meccan verses were truly inspired and Universal and at that point, Mohammed was a good man. Once he moved to Medina and got power and influence, he went nutsy-cuckoo with power and Saklas (the ‘Demiurge’, the ‘False Deity’ within the minds of the ‘Dogmatic Pious’ types) rather than Allah spoke through him! The Medina verses are more sexist, brutal, exclusionary and contradict the earlier stuff and even state that if there’s a contradiction, the new stuff supersede the old stuff.
I’m NeoPagan but look through the Theosophist, Universalist, Interfaith eye. I’m the “blind man” trying to grab as much of the “elephant” as I can. We need to see the spiritual though those eyes and embrace Reason if we embrace Faith.
