‘If, while in a town, a man happens to meet a woman who is engaged to be married and he has sex with her, take them both to the gate of the town and stone them to death: the girl, for not having cried for help in the town; the man, for having violated another man’s wife. You must banish this evil from among you.’

‘But if, while out in the country, a man happens to meet a girl engaged to be married, and seizes her and rapes her, the rapist alone must die. You must do nothing to the girl. She has not committed a sin worthy of death, for she may have called out for help without anyone coming to her rescue.’

‘If a man happens to meet a virgin woman who is not engaged to be married, and he seizes her and rapes her, but is caught in the act, he rapist must pay the girl’s father fifty silver shekels.  She must marry the rapist, because he has violated her. And so long as he lives, he may not divorce her.’

Deuteronomy 22:23-29

This is your “word of God” and the basis of all the world’s morality?

Update:
The notion that these rules (and the other ridiculous ones riddled throughout the text) do not apply to Christians, because Jesus formed a new “covenant” is ridiculous.  If the text is the indefectible word of god, you can not take bits and pieces and say that some are no longer valid.
To quote the Bible,
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” - James 1:17

xcapnedwardx:

iseenerds:

Euthyphro’s Dilemma summed up nicely

Every once in a while Plato would write something with which I can actually agree. Here’s one of such things.

isavedmegaton:

In response to the concept that morality and God go hand in hand. 

goodreasonnews:

CNN) — When talking about so-called family values, pastors, popes, and politicians routinely quote the Bible as if it were an unassailable divine authority — after all, they assume, God wrote the Bible, and therefore it is absolutely and literally true.

But that is a misconception. As the Bible itself makes clear, its authors were human beings, many of whom are named: David, Isaiah, Luke, and Paul. These human writers wrote over the course of more than a thousand years, and their writings reflect their own views and the values they shared with their contemporaries. So it’s not surprising that inconsistencies are frequent in the Bible, both trivial and profound.

good read here, folks.

etrehumain:

Gallup: Americans’ Acceptance of Gay Relations Crosses 50% Threshold

Click through for source.

I think in the best case religion gives people bad reasons to be good where good reasons are actually available.
In the worst case it separates moral thinking from the actual details of human and animal suffering.
You have an institution like the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church is more concerned about preventing contraception than preventing child rape.
It’s more concerned about preventing gay marriage than genocide.
It’s not my opinion of the Catholic it’s just based on its doctrine and actions in the world.
If you want to talk about getting our wisdom from scripture, the god of Abraham gets slavery wrong.
Slavery is the easiest moral question we’ve ever had to face.
If this is written by an omniscient deity it should at least get this question right.
The god of Abraham clearly expects us to keep slaves.

Our “moral compass” is in the right temporo-parietal junction of our brains — behind our right ears. Researchers at MIT used two different kinds of strong magnets to interfere with the neurons in the that brain area in 12 volunteers, before giving them a morality test.

After they had…