Noah at Ugly Expat reposts a nice list of items that demonstrate that one really shouldn’t rely too heavily upon Bible quotes when discussing issues of modern morality as those who stick to a literatl interpretation of the Bible are more than likely to run into sticky waters very quickly.

While your faith and your religion may be an important element in your view on issues of legal or moral principle, one needs to keep in mind that not everything in the Bible is currently practiced. While most of the examples given here are Old Testament and rather silly by our standards today, there are plenty of New Testament laws as well.

Of course, one thing that I point out to my students who appeal to Biblical law when discussing issues such as abortion or gay marriage here in Taiwan is that Biblical Law doesn’t really carry all that much weight in a country where only five percent of the population is Christian. Laws have to reflect the timbre of the culture of the nation . . . so even in a so-called Christian nation like the US, there is enough cultural diversity that Biblical Law should never be the final resource for lawmakers . . . especially when many of the folks making Biblical arguments don’t know what they’re talking about and use examples that are misrepresented (such as Paul’s epistles which were addressed at specific issues of his day regarding nonconsensual homosexual abuse of slaves or the whole Sodom story which so many fools seem to think is about homosexuality – hint, God didn’t destroy the city because the people were gay, the city was destroyed because the inhabitants raped an angel or rather abused a messenger).