The question is, how can anyone honestly understand and accept this and still believe that the bible, xtianity and dualistic religions in general, are blueprints for a good life and a healthy planet?

I would imagine so.

Religion divides and that is a good thing
Atheism is a religion
There’s no such thing as separation of church and state
People should only vote Republican
And God needs money to operate

Then in one of his early articles titled “Only Perfect People Go To Heaven he writes:

We live in a world where there are lots of various religions and belief systems. Even though there are similarities among all of these, there certainly are differences. I am asked quite often if it is possible to sort through all these differences, without getting confused, and focus in on the clear distinctions. Is it possible? I think it is, but it takes a humble heart and a desire to accept what the Bible teaches no matter what we might think.

There you go. The typical fundie rules for properly brainwashing oneself…DO NOT QUESTION this absurd book. Just believe what your pastor on a pedestal tells you what it means.

He goes on to say:

So how can we gain perfection? It is Jesus’ perfection as our substitute that we need. When we put our trust in what God has done for us through Jesus on the cross,

One is not supposed to ask why if this god desires perfection he made human beings with so many flaws that he doesn’t like…like thinking for oneself and disagreeing with him for example. Why would a god who desires perfection think of such an imperfect solution to the problem of what to do with his imperfect creations? If the sheeple start to think for themselves as we have done, then they would see the absurdity of their beliefs and that their Bible is just a mythology book about a moody god like all the other gods invented by human imagination throughout the ages.

This is the exact point I have brought up to friends and family who go to church. I tell them they put this man or woman up on a pedestal and believe everything this person says. I remember people sitting in church and nodding in agreement, no one shaking their heads in disagreement, no one questioning even when the things the pastor says is downright ridiculous. One sermon stands out for me when the pastor of one of the churches I attended gave his “Oreo cookie” sermon. “Life is like an Oreo cookie, you have to unscrew the outer cookie parts to get to the creamy goodness inside” People were actually nodding and laughing in joyful agreement. And then this one pastor of the church were our kids went to Lutheran school for a brief time gave a terrible talk to a bunch of six year olds about this shepherd who broke one of his lamb’s legs to keep him from wandering away from the flock and is why God makes bad things happen sometimes. And again, people nodded and smiled in agreement to this horrific speech!

To follow-up on what I wrote above, imagine how silly it would sound if a Chinese Confucian wrote “The world has always been divided between those who uphold the teachings of Confucius and those who oppose it and mock it.” Such a statement would reek of ethnocentric bias.

It must be hard for the preachers to teach their flock that the bible is correct with the exception that we no longer stone people. We no longer burn, hang, or stone witches, well because there is no such thing. We no longer kill our children when they are disobedient.

Jimmer, the reason they ignore these passages is that we have laws against them in our society which prevent them from using those passages as they most likely would if there were no laws against those things.

I would also like to point out that, whatever else he may say, and based on the excerpt here, that Pastor Mondo is a very very bad writer. He gets his own column with this sort of fourth grade writing style?

Ryan, actually the “Pastor’s Corner” is for all area pastors and priests to write whatever the hell they want. Little sermonettes to their diverse readership. My husband wrote a letter to The Patriot asking for equal space for a Secular Humanist column. It might be called something like “Freethinker’s Corner” or the “Corner of Reason”, and I am certain that it would be written in a more intelligent manner than Mondo’s blathering. We are still waiting for a reply.

I’ve never witnessed a child reading anything other than the comics, and I would imagine that any adult who could only read at that level would never pick up a newspaper, they’d just watch Fox News! Right?