Okay, we atheists agree that the Bible is a human invention…

religiousragings:

…but I sometimes think that we lose site of this.  Simply eliminating the Bible as a source of authority is important, but not enough.

The ideas, the hatreds, the thinking that gave rise to the kind of thinking found in the Bible are still very much alive and well in today’s age.

There IS no valid reason to be against gay marriage.  There never really was.  Homophobia exists independent of religion.  By seeing the misogyny among atheists, we also know that the hatred of women exists independent of religion.  All of the fears, foibles, lust for powers, vanities, loves, hatreds, acts of kindness, acts of unspeakable cruelty, and various insanities are part of humanity.  They are not given to us by Biblical sources.  They were put into the Bible because humans put them there.

All that the Bible really does is take away the need to justify them against reality.  By saying that they are part of the plan of an mysterious God, we can say that they are explanation enough.

But if you take away that excuse, we won’t get to a point where such fears and hatreds don’t exist.

The KKK was a religious organization, but it really didn’t need to be.  It would have operated just as hatefully without religion.  The Bible doesn’t really give good reason for what they did.  Neither does the Bible say anything about people murdering abortion doctors.  People make up this shit all on their own.

As I’ve stated before, atheism is important, but it is far from all sufficient.  That which gives rise to atheism: reason, critical thinking, OBJECTIVE thinking — these are all more critical.

So, what is the other thing needful?  Secular Humanism?  Something else?

This is another one of those posts where I’m not quite sure what my point is, but I felt like I had to say this anyway.

~ Steve