[vhawk01]

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And bills...of course I didn't say this was based on a CORRECT interpretation of the Bible. Simply that it clearly is based on one.

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So if a person interprets something which results in harm, regardless of whether the interpretation is correct or not, we should banish that thing and everything to do with it? In this case you seem to be implying that because someone interpreted the Bible in such a way that causes harm, Jesus is bad and all religion is bad.

So, by this same line of reasoning if someone interprets Nietzche as saying "it is okay to kill other people" (regardless of whether the interpretation is correct or not -- this part is important in your argument), we should banish the teachings of Nietzche? It also follows that we should banish all philosophy, as your post seemed to imply that all religion is bad because of one person's interpretation of one specific religious document.

This is awesome.

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You don't see how this is flawed? Especially since my entire point is that this was an example where basing laws and practices on a personal, biased and EXTREMELY UNLIKELY TO BE CORRECT intepretation of scripture (by the way, this is the only type of interpretation that exists) led to disastrous results.

The issue isn't whether the lawmakers correctly interpreted scripture or not. Especially when the phrase 'correctly interpreted scripture' is almost a non-sequitur. The point is, these lawmakers were allowed to make an absurdly unfair law simply because they happened to understand that God hates sodomites, and quite a lot. Actually, the reason they were able to make the law was probably because their constituents agreed with them....but for the same reason. They were not required to support their reasoning because it was an obvious, religious viewpoint. Sodomy is bad, sex for pleasure is bad, no need to justify it.

This case was obviously an extreme example of this type of thinking run amok. Of course this doesn't normally happen. And of course something like this COULD happen in a secular society....I guess. The point is simply that this happened because of the sheltering of beliefs that are rooted in faith or religion.