The Bible says many things. It is inconsistent. In some sections it is plainly errant, such as when it implies the sun is in motion.
Fundamentalism is not the way a sensible religious person approaches the text.
Anyone can pluck elements of the bronze age sections to define a primitive morality or social organization. You can use the Bible to justify slavery if you wish. Folks from the South used it extensively during the civil war. Only very stoopid people still choose to do so.
Or are you saying modern Christians must also observe God's commandments regarding the treatment of slaves?
You may wish to tie Christians to a literal reading of their book. For myself, I think it makes sense to permit people of faith to treat the text as sometimes having an allegorical form.
This is a polite euphemism, of course.
It helps preserve the bits worth keeping. The God of love whom you desire is one of these.
Rather than to adopt the slash and burn option favoured by Richard Dawkins et al who would throw out the baby with the bathwater. Those who insist on the inerrancy of the Bible invite folks like Dawkins to point out that it clearly is not inerrant. And if it is full of errors and someone wants to claim it is the word of God, then the obvious thing is to doubt the claim and to doubt the existence of a God of such poor insight.
So if you wish to be a Christian, it is obviously wiser not to be fundamentalist.
The fact there are folks who will deny the evidence of their eyes, or who are ignorant of the text's shortcomings, or who insist upon an unsustainable method of reading it, is no reason for me to respect them.
For myself, I have sympathy for Carter dealing with those sorts of people. There's no way to say it politely. Such people have wood pulp on the brain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Af-Spu5QWo
Okay - I'm all ears re the suppression of women.
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