Social Change and Religious Compatibility

Science and technology, and human knowledge in general, are expanding explosively, in all areas except moral philosophy and religion. Of course religion, by its very nature, resists change: all religions are perfect already, just ask their adherants. Moral philosophy and religion  have neither changed nor advanced in hundreds if not thousands of years. Are they compatible with today's world? Are they true?

For example, if you are a christian today, you believe that christianity is the unrivaled source of human goodness, that jesus taught love and compassion better than anyone else, and that the Bible is the divinely revealed absolutely true Word of God.

In Proverbs 13:24, 20:30, and 23:13-14, we are told to beat our children with a rod for any misbehavior. Exodus 21:15, Mathew 15:4-7, and a couple other passages tell us that if children talk back to their parents, their parents should kill them. We must also stone people to death for heresy, adultery, homosexuality, or working on sunday.

Is this the way the lord wants us to discipline our children in today's world?  In our hearts, I think we all know. And knowing this, it becomes clearer that a book written two thousand years ago, by a large number of different humans, does not provide a code in keeping with the realities our our modern world. In america, we don't beat or kill our children.

Note that these core values occur in both the old and the new testament. Slavery is of course perfectly alright; the old testament gives instructions on how to sell your daughter into sexual slavery, and jesus never uttered a word against the practice. In fact, jesus emphasized that he was not opposed to any old testament law.

The question is: is this the way God wants us to behave today? Is this book perfectly wise? One wonders whether people in the centuries to come will cling to the notion of holy books, believing that god speaks through books. It is a common human tendency. One suspects that over time, this tendency will vanish .

Goethe said : "It is beyond me how anyone can believe that God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal itself to us, if our hearts do fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, then we will most assuredly not learn it from books, which at best are designed only to give names to our errors."

...couldn't've said it any better myself....

Bb

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE OTHER ARTICLES IN TODAY'S ISSUE OF THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER.THANKS!