‘Witch’, in the bible, is used in the literal meaning of the word, which is a corruption of the word ‘pact’ as in deal (I think greek, originally). It signifies one who had an agreement with Satan, or one of his ilk.

‘Witch’, in the Wiccan and other Magickal sense is an analogue, referring to, literally; any magick user. It’s a very different meaning. An unfortunate occurrance.

IE: The bible says satan’s followers should probably be put to death, but that’s not that strange. Doesn’t say a word about magick.

I think that practicing witchcraft is dangerouse, and as such, I would not personally partake in it, I don’t think it is a good idea, and I would never do something like play around with a Ouijia (sp?) Board or anything like that. However I don’t think it is a good idea.

Also, I think that when Jesus stoped the people throwing the stones at the woman who had committed adultary “Let ye who is without sin cast the first stone” and all that stuff (I think that my old old church must have used the King James Version of the bible, lol, as all my quotes from memory seam to be from that!) he made it quite clear that the new covenant was one of love, and not of rules, which had to be followed. People could be forgiven, and people should be.

Lastly, I think that it is importaint to point out that these rules were written specifically for the people of the nation of Israel. As Judaism, unlike christianity, is a religion that is passed down through the mother, and therefore as the Jewish people were told to not take wives who weren’t Jewish, there would not be anyone effected by these rules, other than Jewish people. It sounds odd, but these people were all assumed to know God, so turning to witchcraft, would be seen as more of a way of getting power for oneself, from other means, rather than realying on God’s power, which had just brought all of them out of Egypt, and so they knew was real. I mean, obviously this statement has a few problems with it, if you don’t believe in God’s power, but if you had just seen the Red Sea open up before you, but decided that rather than using the power of God to do things, you were going to use other powers, much more dangerous, then you are a danger to that society.

I have a feeling I am going round in circles a little, so I am going to get dressed and ready for Bondi! Woohoo!

Given the extreme behaviour is more readily present in history, it would see that even if the moderates have it right, it isn’t the fundamentalists that have lost their way but rather the moderates that have found it. Therefore it would make much more sense for God to to write it as something we could take the literal meaning of given that seems to be what we have done throughout most of history.

I have yet to see any benefit that can be gained from subscribing to a faith-based religion that cannot be gained from rational spirituality so I would disagree there is anything to be said for religious moderation. If they were to take a path of rational spiritualism instead it would stop giving cover to the religious fundamentalists.

In fact you might argue that it is only the interpretation that should be carried forward not the specific word it’s self, after all can anyone honestly say that holy texts are 100% clear in how they should be interpreted? What you are in essence saying is that people should follow the words of their faith to the letter or not at all. The reason religious fundamentalists have gotten so much bad press lately is because they do just that and without placing any thought into how they interpret them. This causes a big problem, because words change meaning over time, as does their interpretation. I would say then that rather than your view of moderate = push-over, fundamentalist = got it right, it is actually the other way around; the fundamentalists who take the word at face value have lost their way and the moderates who spend more time on the interpretation are more grounded.

You must forgive the fact I am unable to back this up with any citations from afore-mentioned holy texts, but I think Michelle has handled that one pretty well.

Oh also, although I am not one of these people, there are those who believe that although the Bible is a good book, it was written by humans, and therefore due to free will can have all sorts of stuff in it that isn’t good, and we can ignore the things that we don’t think were written by God, not cause God made the mistake, but cause people did.