@petewxyz saidI asked if the demand to execute homosexuals by God was evil. Assuming God exists, assuming God gave the command, would that command be evil?
My answer would be complicated, but I'll make a genuine attempt. You have to imagine somebody growing up in a different culture where they are so detached from religious literature that it is like being asked whether they have strong positive or strong negative feelings about a movie it never occurred to them to go and watch that simply wasn't on the radar. I know pretty muc ...[text shortened]... is important to people and it is too easy to assume people who aren't religious can't respect that.
@eladar saidIf you take all those assumptions as true and your concept of God is like a being (and it seems to me people use 'God' to refer to very different concepts to each other) then it would be wrong for any person to be executed because of their sexuality so if there is no special definition of evil within religion that I am missing then yes that would be evil. But if you assume God is a divine being who can do no evil you would be forced to assume the command was misreported or never given and the claim it was given would be the evil. An early example of misrepresentation to do evil I suppose.
I asked if the demand to execute homosexuals by God was evil. Assuming God exists, assuming God gave the command, would that command be evil?
Is it believed in religions that the bible is the word of God or a representation through the pens of people from a very different era with very different values that has been interpreted and reinterpreted at every translation. If so it could even be altered by the values of an interpreter at some stage along the way.
Hope that isn't offensive, honest attempt at an answer.
@eladar saidWhile we are assuming things in this matter, and before we answer your question to your satisfaction, do you also need us to assume that this God you are talking about, that you say exists - the one you believe in and worship... must we also assume he cannot give a command that is "evil" because anything and everything he does is, by definition, "good"?
Assuming God exists, assuming God gave the command, would that command be evil?
@fmf saidThere's some bloodthirsty stuff in Leviticus, which is the covenant Suzianne has in mind, specifically, after a rather long list of relatives whose "nakedness thou shalt not uncover" we have:
What Bible verses do you have in mind? Did the same verses make capitial punishment "evil" across the board?'
22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
29 For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people.
Leviticus 18:22 & 29, AKJV
The penalty specified here appears to be banishment, "cut off from among their people". By Leviticus 20 the death penalty appears to be specified for a wide range of sexual offences, the relevant one's in bold, but I left the rest in for illustration:
10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. 11 And the man that lieth with his father’s wife hath uncovered his father’s nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 12 And if a man lie with his daughter in law, both of them shall surely be put to death: they have wrought confusion; their blood shall be upon them. 13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 14 And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you. 15 And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast. 16 And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 17 And if a man shall take his sister, his father’s daughter, or his mother’s daughter, and see her nakedness, and she see his nakedness; it is a wicked thing; and they shall be cut off in the sight of their people: he hath uncovered his sister’s nakedness; he shall bear his iniquity.
Leviticus 20: 10-17; AKJV
So various incest offences as well as general adultery appear to have the death penalty, but we see in verse 17 that sibling incest is apparently only punished by banishment, despite the wide variety of other offences being punishable by death. This seems to indicate that the penalties specified had more to do with poetry than actual jurisprudence.
The Gospels are silent on the matter and the Acts of the Apostles effectively remove the restrictions of Leviticus at least from Gentile Christians, see Acts 10 and 11. So, even if the penalties described in Leviticus are intended to be understood literally they don't apply to gentile Christians. Which leads us to various statements made by Paul, for example:
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; 19 because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
Romans 1:18-19 & 26-32; AKJV
Other than the mention of "the wrath of God" this seems to be a statement of disapproval rather than specific outlawing, there certainly isn't a penalty specified here, or anywhere else that I'm aware of in the New Testament. So, there's no clear Biblical justification for the death penalty for sodomy. As it happens the death penalty for sodomy was introduced in England during the Tudor era to facilitate the dissolution of the monasteries.
@DeepThought
Some things like burning of witches have roots in pagan practices carried over into medieval Christianity.