Subject: Re: Prayers For Our President
Anyway, I think the bible stories actually help elucidate how it came to be that we feel morally how we do. I think it is from culture we get our feelings about right and wrong, and that culture evolves (memetically) and that western culture is as good a bet as any there ever was as being a good one for humans, so why not defend it aggressively.

Because it has so many *bad* lessons, and for reasons too obvious to list (/Leviticus), we are unable to change them in any reasonable time frame. (I note the Old Testament underwent its first and last revision almost 2,000 years ago and there are people still studying how many pieces of silver you have to pay a father to rape his daughter.)

I am not saying all of the Bible is evil, but it's clear that most of it is nonsense babble, used as a cudgel by bullies to enforce their own peculiar wants. From 'No celebration of Christmas' to 'have an orgy of consumerism at Christmas', it's all been justified by the very same book. (See: Slavery. Women's equality. Etc)

And I am bothered by the 'western culture' is as good as there ever was. Western culture has done some horrific things (genocides too numerous to mention, for instance), but then so have middle-Eastern and Asian cultures; endemic to humans, apparently. It's turned out well, if you narrow your focus to today. If you were in China when Europeans were killing each other, maybe not. Or if you were in the MidEast pursuing math, algebra, chemistry and more while the Western countries were dying of plague, also maybe not. Those areas descended into darkness for a good while, the MidEast still under the influence of religion and Abraham.

Yes, I love it here, now, but I watch as ignorant rubes hold the Bible and decide how our civilization ought be organized - and they have a power that is hard to match. The book of fairy tales may have served a purpose long, long ago, but it's time for an update - a really really serious one - and I see that nowhere on the horizon.