Literary Discussions

Dawn, the bottom line regarding Christ's miracles is that if Christ cannot DO those miracles then there is little point in worshiping Christ as God, because Christ clearly states in one verse that FORGIVING sins is far more powerful than giving sight to one born blind. And there is an obvious Old Testament precedent of prophet Elisha (disciple of Elijah) multiplying loaves of barley. 

I really admire Universalist Unitarians and writings of Thoreau, but I think such people do themselves an injustice when they try to deconstruct the Bible to show that it supports their notion of "grace for all" and all are saved, which is a perfectly acceptable Hindu or Buddhist notion (souls just keep getting reborn until they work out all the karmic knots) but it is hard to find that message in the Bible unless you cherry pick your verses very carefully. 

As for those LGBTQ who desire a religion I think they should just establish their own Humanist religion and not worry about force fitting themselves or their churches into existing models (New wine in old skins). 

I mean if you cannot believe in the supernatural then why try to follow an obviously supernatural religion and then try to explain away the miracles. Since divine revelation would be something on the order of supernatural then reason should reject religions even on that ground and simply construct their own Humanist scriptures.