he who feels like it cast the first stone
i wrote a while ago that it’s amazing how everyone’s religion’s tenets seem to perfectly match their own personal beliefs and biases.
well, i found my own counterexample: the conservapedia project decided that the bible is too liberal and have taken it upon themselves to rewrite it, re: http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project . they’re adding free market rhetoric and removing things like forgiveness (including the ‘cast the first stone’ story and the line ‘forgive them father for they know not what they do’)
another little piece of evidence that it’s not religion that’s the problem, it’s lack of empathy for ‘the other’ that comes from living in small, closed and close-minded communities. these people are not taking religion seriously in any way. make them atheist and they’d simply remove the word ‘god’ from the book and go on right on happily rewriting it to keep justifying their own behavior to themselves.
it’s amazing how much modern spirituality, philosophy, and general thinktanking is spent rationalizing and justifying being shitty to others.