Uke Wrote:Have you people actually read God's Blog? It speaks volumes against gays. I feel that i want to believe, but the book speaks of "sodomite atrocities", so i keep my distance. For now.
I've known more than one former Christian who stopped being Christian after they sat down and read the Bible all the way through without some clergyman cherry picking it. And having read the Bible myself when I was 17 and being utterly horrified at the thought of "Bible Believing Christians" (though I calmed down once I realized most such Christians knew very little about what their Bible said), I can understand why, it's a horrible and morally repugnant book. That is to say it's got far worse than that. As just one example, even the New Testament endorses slavery. How would you feel about a political tract that did the same? And it gets far worse than that.
I don't feel a need for religion, but if I did I'd either go UU and/or neopagan (a lot of neopagans mix with UUs, btw). I was neopagan for awhile but I lost interest in it. I have some interesting experiences, both social and occult, from it, so I don't regret my time spent that way, but after a few years I just grew away from it.
One good thing about most neopagan religions is they're wary (if not downright antipathic) toward dogma and encourage free thinking (not that neopagans are obligated to think freely, and many can become quite dogmatic themselves). One way this is good, IMO, is that Gerald Gardner (the creator of modern Wicca) said gays were cursed by the Goddess, but because of the free thinking and anti-dogmatic elements this was largely rejected by the 70s (though not all Wiccans are comfortable with it even today) and now some Wiccan trads are even based largely on gay identity, such as the
Radical Faeries.
(ETA: I confused Radical Faeries with Faery Wicca which was a mistake, so they're not a Wiccan trad. However, the Radical Faeries are still neopagan, and IIRC it was originally started by people who practiced Wicca.)
IMO, if you feel a need to participate in religion you'd do far better to go with that than the monotheist religions. Either that or Taoism (disclaimer: I know very little of the mystical practices, I'm only familiar with the writings of Lao Tzu), which seems to have a lot of wisdom (though I quibble on some points) without the usual toxicity of most dominant religions. (And btw, most dominant religions are dominant because of evil methods done to our ancestors, not because they were loving and kind.)