Science and Religion Can and Do Mix, Mostly

Discarding scientific knowledge because of a book written originally for a nomadic group of shepherds is ridiculous.

Discarding the moral teachings that have been handed down over thousands of years is equally ridiculous.

There is one very, very, VERY important difference here. One of these is subject to review, testing and change when new facts emerge. The other is still stuck in 1000 BC.

Moral teachings that may have been appropriate for nomads in the middle east three millenia ago may or may not apply to modern day society. Some certainly still do (not killing sounds like a good general rule), some are utter bullshit in todays society - we've since abolished slavery, consider women equals, the role of parents isn't as important anymore, we're not all homophobes, magicians are entertainers not people we fear and want to put to death, and let's not even talk about the dietary guidelines.

People often point out the bible as a "source of moral teachings", but when you look at it, basically any of the actual rules that matter are independent of the bible and can be found in many other teachings as well, or are so obvious (again, killing) that it really doesn't put a good light on Moses people that it needed explicit mentioning.

No, friend, the bible is a horrible source of moral teachings. The good parts are massively drowned by crap, nonsense and dangerous psycho stuff. Only by ignoring the vast majority of it can you come to a worthy subset. And frankly, when you go to that effort, you can just as well write the same subset from scratch, and find much better reasons for it, in the same time.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/Xaj3-R6D7JI/Science-and-Religion-Can-and-Do-Mix-Mostly

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