[ianch99]

Originally Posted by Chris

Did you know (no, you didn’t, but hey), that women have held office in the Baptist Church since the 1620s and the first fully accredited female Baptist minister began serving in the 1920s? Within the Reformation it was Baptists who argued, were pilloried, jailed and executed, for insisting on freedom of religion, including the freedom to have no religion at all.

I think you might be surprised at what is actually in the Bible, as opposed to what powerful people have chosen to present as Biblical in order to arrange society to suit themselves.

What with the snide remarks? Totally unnecessary.

I confess, I am not up-to-date with the detailed 500 year history of the Baptist church. While I am at it, I also not up-to-date with the historical details of:

Lutheranism
Methodism
Calvinism
Continental Reformed church
Anabaptism
Hussites
Quakers
Pentecostalism
Nondenominational Christianity
African initiated Protestant churches
Seventh-day Adventist Church
New Apostolic Church
Restoration Movement
Anglicanism
Eastern Orthodox Church
Oriental Orthodoxy
Mormonism
Jehovah's Witnesses
Oneness Pentecostalism
Catholic Church
Independent Catholicism
Nestorian Church
Messianic Judaism

The fact that you are congratulating the Baptist Church for supporting the freedom to have no religion at all, I feel proves the points being made. Celebrating the right to not have religion forced upon you ... no more needs to be said on this point.

I would not be surprised at what you would find in the Bible since it provides legitimacy for many of the crimes carried out in the name of religion over the centuries.

Saying that these crimes are more the fault of "powerful people" than the religious texts underwriting the motivation & justification is just factually inaccurate.

---------- Post added at 15:21 ---------- Previous post was at 15:13 ----------

Originally Posted by Stuart

I've said this a few times over the years, but I had two RE teachers at school. I had an Irish Catholic RE teacher for four years, who basically taught us that Catholocism and Christianity are good, everything else is bad or unimportant.

Then, he left (retired I think) and a younger, Jewish RE teacher took over. He taught us about all of the major world religions. He taught the history behind the beliefs, and also taught us to question what we are told (a good rule for life beyond RE and something I still do). We even had a whole lesson discussing whether we thought Jesus was homosexual (IIRC we came to the conclusion that while there was no evidence in the Bible that Jesus had a sexual attraction to anyone, he probably leaned that way), which I can't imagine my other RE teacher even allowing.

Now, I know my second teacher's niece (she is a friend of my sister) and apparently he is extremely religious, and was when he was teaching me. He still taught us to question religion though. He also continually drummed in to use that it was important we found our own beliefs. If we chose to believe a given religion, that was good. If we chose to believe in Atheism, that was good also. If we chose not to believe in Religion, that was good.

Atheism is not a belief system, rather it is the lack of belief. Everyone is born an Atheist, by definition.

Atheism

Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities