Mr Abdulla reminds me of verse 38 of the Tao Te Ching:

The highest good is not to seek to do good,
but to allow yourself to become it.
The ordinary person seeks to do good things,
and finds that they cannot do them continually.

The kind person acts from the heart,
and accomplishes a multitude of things.
The righteous person acts out of pity,
yet leaves many things undone.
The moral person will act out of duty,
and when no one will respond
will roll up his sleeves and uses force.

My natural tendency is not to use mild language, but what can I do with all the moral people out there who might misinterpret my intentions? I’m afraid they may spread emobreoilded [sic] allegations about me and, sooner or later actually falog [sic] me. And, as we know, falogging [sic] is not very pleasant.

Incidentally, thanks for referring to Poe’s Law. I was not aware of it. I googled it and here is, e.g., what I found:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Poe's+Law

Then again Poe’s Law can make it very hard to pass of mockery of religion as sarcasm (at least on the net)…:)

sar·cas·tic
\sär-ˈkas-tik\
Function:
adjective
Date:
1695

1 : having the character of sarcasm
2 : given to the use of sarcasm : caustic

— sar·cas·ti·cal·ly
sarcastically \-ti-k(ə-)lē\
adverb
synonyms: sarcastic , satiric , ironic , sardonic mean marked by bitterness and a power or will to cut or sting. sarcastic implies an intentional inflicting of pain by deriding, taunting, or ridiculing . satiric implies that the intent of the ridiculing is censure and reprobation . ironic implies an attempt to be amusing or provocative by saying usually the opposite of what is meant . sardonic implies scorn, mockery, or derision that is manifested by either verbal or facial expression .

“dont tell me about the Hadith bring me a prove from the Quran” — if you can convince the hundreds of millions of your fellow Muslims to do this and all stonings stop then I’ll be the first to congratulate you.

Takis — I don’t think we missed anything, other than pointing out that this isn’t explicit in the Quran. These hadith and legal principles do exist and are followed by some. The fact that people like Adbulla insist on a different interpretation does not change reality.

peace & love regards to all
Abdulla Mahir .

1 point I should have made in the post is that Islam rationalises it away too — I linked to Wikipedia articles of Islamic countries where you can get stoned but this is a minority. Most countries with a majority Muslim population do NOT follow the sharia law (especially in terms of an Islamic death penalty) — they have some sort of integration of a secular system with a religious one (different depending on the country). So of the Abrahamic faiths, 3 out of 3 employ rationalisation for moral progress.

As for GWB, I’m reluctant to try psychoanalyse leaders. A speculation on my part is that whatever role Christianity played in his war decisions it was more likely Revelations and its description of end times rather than Deutoronomy or any latent desire to impose some sort of death penalty on Saddam & co for breaking Biblical law.

What you say only confirms my point: that religion cannot deal with a problem like science does. Religion accepts things at face value and, for hundreds/thousands of years, it has to strive to correct blatant falsities, immoralities, etc, contained in its sacred texts; not by deleting them, but by re-interpreting them, by diffusing their meaning. I don’t think (and I think you don’t either) this is acceptable or rational.

[cross-posted as well ]

The rebellious son (Deut 21) is a special case in Judaism, the Talmud devotes an entire chapter to discussing the laws of the rebellious son, restricting the scope of the law so that it’s for all practical purposes impossible to execute anyone under the law. (Example: from memory to be eligible for the death penalty he must consume outside his father’s property a certain quantity of meat and wine with money stolen from his father). It even goes beyond that: one of the rabbis says there never was a [person executed for being a] rebellious son, it was just a law given by God for the sake of Torah learning.

So I guess the ways religions have dealt with such passages are:
- delay moral development (for those who still execute people) or
- obfuscate or restrict the law’s application or
- interpret the entire thing as a metaphor or as an intellectual exercise only

[This comment cross-posted at your site and mine]

The question I ask is this:

Why do religious texts remain unaltered if their teachings are considered dangerous (stoning, hanging) or obsolete (eating certain foods)? Every Jew and Christian, despite the fact they do not (hopefully) still practice stoning, will tell you that the Torah (almost identical to the so-called Old Testament) shall remain unaltered. Why? How can they explain the numerous stupidities, brutalities, nonsense written in it?