responding to common objections to bible

[Kadagar_AV]

It's straightforward - if my beliefs are exluded from the public sphere, then I am being excluded from society. This repression can be political or social in nature.

The social aspect can be subtle but pervasive, and goes beyond a tabboo on public preaching. I heard it mentioned at a church meeting tonight that a school teacher was sacked for saying something negative about homosexuality to his class (I can't find it online, but something like that happened). And so suddenly you have a situation where it is difficult to be a Christian (or at least that type of Christian) and be a teacher. Or a social worker. Or if you have to care for abortion patients, a nurse (though they won a recent case). And the list grows and grows until you see a situation where Christians really are excluded from many employment options - a pretty fundamental part of your role in society.

As for your comment about political ideas being about facts and figures and not "belief", this is untrue. People's political beliefs are motivated by a whole host of things in much the same ways that religious ones are.

I guess we have to agree to disagree then.

Yes of course a teacher should be sacked for commenting on who loves who, if it wasn't in a biology class and the teachers negative comment were in the lines of "homosexuality clearly isn't a way to get more babies".

Stupid people might vote on belief. I for one prefer to vote based on facts and figures. IE communism, I am ALL FOR IT from a belief perspective. But the facts and figures steers me way, way, away from it.

Beliefs in a religion leads to compromises with logic. And I don't support that.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I guess we have to agree to disagree then.

Yes of course a teacher should be sacked for commenting on who loves who, if it wasn't in a biology class and the teachers negative comment were in the lines of "homosexuality clearly isn't a way to get more babies".

I will try to address LittleGrizzly/Papewaio with this bit as well.

I think you are all missing my point. My point was never that a teacher ought to have the right to do that when it harms homosexuals, or that somebody who would feel bound to express such views when asked honestly should to be allowed to be a teacher.

My point was that the beliefs and principles of Christians naturally put them in conflict with modern mainstream secular society. Due to this they cannot integrate with society, and as a result they become exluded from society.

I am not using this to advocate changing the rules to favour Christians - I am simply making an observation.

It's like you yourself have always said Kad, a healthy society is a homogenous society. Otherwise some groups will just never fit in and be happy.

Stupid people might vote on belief. I for one prefer to vote based on facts and figures. IE communism, I am ALL FOR IT from a belief perspective. But the facts and figures steers me way, way, away from it.

Well, while in a sense absolutely everything could be reduced to numbers and assessed rationally as such, in the vast majority of cases we humans lack the knowledge or capacity to strip concepts down to that level.

For something as complicated as politics with economic, social, geopolitical etc issues, our understanding is generally inadequate to reduce all the factors involved in them and the relationships between them into a simple set of statistics. If we could we would have a formula that showed the perfect relationship between economic growth, wealth distribution, and social wellbeing.

But we don't. Hence why we use other methods such as logical deduction, theorization, historical analysis etc - it is out of this cocktail that our political beliefs come from.

If you are relying purely on what we can quantify in statistical form, then your political ideas must be very poorly developed.

Beliefs in a religion leads to compromises with logic. And I don't support that.

The concepts of God or religion are not inherently illogical since they are not inherently inconsistent - you just happen to disagree with the logic that backs them.