re: #164 jamesfirecat

Sure , do you still have it?

Yep. Here it is:

Yes it is worthy of respect, I respect the belief that drives men to do good things, but I am not quite sure if can truly respect the religion which inspired that belief. The problem is that I can not see how to personally join a religion which will not possibly lead to my voice getting copted into support of causes I dislike by other followers of that religion, unless by defaults I decide to start my own religion where I get to make all the rules which while possible is a little silly.

To further explain, I was raised Presbyterian and was mostly fine with the religion until our church underwent the process of trying to find a new pastor when our old one (a well respected guy who spoke at both my and my brother’s Eagle ceremony) and one of the possible replacements was a woman who was openly homosexual.

So the day came that she came to curch and gave a sermon and then we had a great big vote on the subject of if we should confirm her or not as our new pastor.

Some unpleasant things were said durring the debate before the vote from fellow members of my church things things along the line of “I don’t know god will, but I do know that this kind of thing displeases him!”

The vote was around 75 % in favor and 25% against which was enough to thwart a confirmation.

After that experience I could never fully respect the church I grew up in again because while it did not directly espouse bigotry it’s teachings if one did not want to be a “cafeteria Christian” did promote bigotry against homosexuals.

There is so much about that church which I liked, but the fact remains that it needed to change on that issue and the only way to do it would be to rip out pieces of the Bible directly.

That is why I no longer attend that church and have a bone to pick with all three of the Abrahamic religions.

I’m assuming that’s the right bit - let me know if it was something else.