How can anyone really argue rationally with this? If one believes, as I do, that 'Satan' represents an Iron Age myth in which primitive people with less knowledge, but more imaginative genius than modern man, were able to 'personalise' the whole realm of evil, then the whole notion that the problems of the world are the works of the 'Prince of Darkness' is ultimately meaningless. Of course, if we are limited to arguing as if we all agree that the Bible is God's inerrant and literally true word, then fundamentalist Christians are always going to 'win' the debate everytime. It is however at that point no longer a rational debate.
Actually the Bible
does call for homosexuals to be put to death. It also calls for the same punishment for those who curse their parents, those who work on the Sabbath, those who take the Lord's name in vain, for adulterers etc etc etc ... so the Sunday School teacher is totally wrong. There are indeed some Christians who believe that these laws should still be applied and they are the exact equivalent of those Muslims who believe that Shariah law should everywhere replace its secular alternative.
Link. And it's no good saying that that is old covenant justice, because Christ himself said
"For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished." [Matthew 5:18]
The more interesting point is why these punishments are not regularly meted out today, as they were for centuries and as they still are in Islamic countries, and why even the majority of contemporary Christian fundamentalists are forced to accept a more civilised standard?
The answer is not hard to find. Conservatism today is much kinder and more humane than it was a century or two ago: it no longer supports slavery, or denies the vote to women, or punishes sodomy with imprisonment and petty larceny with the hangman's rope. In the inevitable clash of ideologies, it has taken on board some 'liberal' arguments, even as it resists and struggles against Liberalism in general, and in the process has become a more civilised current of thought. (I don't rule out beneficial influence also going the other way
)
Similarly, Christianity today is kinder and more civilised than it was, because it too has had to take on board secular and progressive ideas (like merely
disapproving of homosexuals rather than killing them as the Bible
clearly instructs us to do). If the proportion of people in western society supporting humane and liberal (in the broadest sense of the word) views were to seriously decrease, it is not inconceivable that Christianity would become as murderous as it was in mediaeval times - just as Islam is today. And in the civilised western world, the United States is currently the only country in which this is even remotely imaginable.
So, the bottom line is, if your faith today is more humane, sane and less fanatical than it was it a few centuries ago, you have only the liberals to thank! ~
