8 Bit Philosophy: Does Christianity Make Us Weak? (Nietzsche)

leviadragon99

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TruthInGaming said:
leviadragon99 said:
TruthInGaming said:
leviadragon99 said:
TruthInGaming said:
Um, the message of Christ seems to be pretty clear that man is in need of a savior to be made right with God due to his own nature of sin and that he should resist this nature focusing instead to treat others as man would like to be treated and show them freely the love of God which God has shown to them. Which included Christ allowing them to maliciously crucify him in order to benevolently save them. - Honestly did you even bother to read the accounts of the gospel before spewing your opinions?
I know enough of the bible to disagree with it.

The notion that we aren't capable of saving ourselves and need a perfect ubermensch to human-sacrifice to his father because "Something, something Sin, sin, sin, reasons" strikes me as sufficiently fascist in the dumping of a guilt/debt complex upon people to question the hell out of it.

Yes I am intentionally misrepresenting what you claim the point of it all is, but I'm doing so to prove a point, how easy it is to skew those events by a different perspective and different phrasing, not that the bible really needed your help to come across as one long incomprehensible rant, but you really did the text no favours with your "explanation"
You don't need to know a lot about something to disagree with it for all that statement says.

Capable of saving yourself? You have some kind of eternal life potion in your pocket you wish to share with the rest of us? If you stand before an almighty God who created the universe and watched men screw it up then came himself in the form of his own son to die to fix it at the hands of the very lynch mob he was dying to save and you are asked to give an account of your wrong doing in life and why he should allow you into his heaven how can you respond? I don't think it's fascist to tell people they are doing something evil and they need be repentant. Christ offered people freedom from the guilt and slavery of their own behavior. That's the good part to the good news of the good gospel. God encourages you to ask questions. He discourages you from hurting other people and yourself. God isn't helped by your service and he doesn't need you to accept his salvation freely offered to you. He wants you to because its good for you. If you are drowning it doesn't hurt me at all if you choose not to climb onto the life boat. I want you to get in the life boat because its going to save your life.

I am at least glad to see you are honest about your dishonest but I'd rather you were just honest. It would be pretty hard and I would argue the modern church has worked almost round the clock to achieve it but then I would be speaking of organized religion not the life and example of Jesus Christ or the works surrounding his life. If you don't comprehend something maybe you should spend some time studying it or seeking clarification from a reputable expert instead of making some generally unfounded and non sequitur points that you yourself admit as misrepresenting. I am not trying to do the text "favors" by explaining it. My whole point was the text can stand on it's own and the point is fairly obvious to those who bother to read and study it.
Yeahno, my entire point was that the text does not stand up by itself and even the most cursory explanation reveals massive contradictions and inconsistencies, but apparently you decided to get more mileage out of missing the point of my intentional hyperbole.

As to "saving ourselves" I referred to acting in a moral fashion without needing the coda of a supposedly gay-hating, demanding-subservience-of-women, insecure-to-the-point-of-intolerance-of-any-other-belief, evil deity, one that I do not believe even exists, thus the question of eternal life or needing to explain ourselves to this force becomes rather moot, and indeed if he did exist and is everything mainstream religion says he is, I would gladly lead the armies of hell against him, because THAT is how bad his PR department is right now.

The only thing modern religion as an institution has worked pretty hard to do is to keep women out of the clergy and prevent gay marriage, yeah that's really spreading the good word. The charitable efforts that they are involved in strike me increasingly as the actions of pockets of good people trying to make the best of a hopelessly morally bankrupt institution they're too scared to leave, good that they do despite their religion, not because of it.

Your allegories about god and his life boat lose a little lustre when god allegedly demands we blind, deafen and mute ourselves in order to be allowed into the boat. So while it may not be fascist to point out people are screwing up, it is definitely fascist to DEMAND they follow your every whim or else die in a fire.

At the end of the day, if you feel like god is a thing worth believing, an entity worth following, then you do that, you can call bullshit on all the horrible things that organised religion believes are true to him and view him as an actually nice guy... but don't expect everyone else to accept that distinction and fall neatly into line when organised religion demands we march in lockstep, because for many of us, what god actually wants is irrelevant, because the church is what we actually have to deal with in the real world.
Whoa, whoa easy there bud. If you were putting up intentional hyperbole I think it's understandable if I misunderstood it.

The only hate vibes I'm picking up here are not coming from the Christian God. You are throwing around a lot of accusations and you might want to back it up there a second to evaluate your own prejudice and bias coming into this and just question where all this is coming from before you go slinging and swinging. If you don't believe he exists then go live your life. He'll knock at the door and you can feel free to ignore him. He won't break in and force himself upon you but he also won't force you to live in his paradise either. If the other choice is hell then that's your choice. I do have to say though from reading you post I am given the inference that you choice not to believe in God sounds like its due to a desire not to be accountable to him.

So you want to save yourself in a your moral fashion while leading the armies of hell again God... because he has a bad PR department... OK. Yes apart from sanitation, education, wine, public order, irrigation,fresh water systems and public health... sure the church doesn't do much but besides all that the whole mission of inspiring others to follow and accept the teachings of Christ cause that's certainly bad right? On the gay issue how dare they insist that people who want to be leader in their religion actually follow and believe the things the religion espouses? How dare they! We should force them to do as we believe and we think right? Oh wait... I do believe there are a number of women clergy but traditionally yes I would agree that's not really a female role in the same way that a man isn't really a traditional role at playing wife to another man... at least their consistent no? Well your impression of charitable organizations and utterly fabricated motives for what other people do despite their actions indicating the exact opposite not withstanding I'd encouraged you to direct your rage to your nearest representative because this does seem to be the way that the government openly operates and you might find your efforts in that field only slightly more effective though slightly less appreciated.

I've never had God demand me to be blind, deaf or mute. Must have missed that verse. I don't see God asking me to follow his every whim he basically just gives me instruction on things that will hurt me or others and then advises me not to do them. He also tells me that even if I do them that he will forgive me if am sorry for hurting other people or myself which seems like a pretty straightforward and moral thing to do to me. However if someone was to hurt other people or themselves maliciously fully aware that they had been warned ahead of time not to do it then be unapologetic for their actions and the pain and suffering they had caused I can't very well think of a person more deserving to die in fire as you put it.

Well at the end of the day I do believe in that God. I am not aware of all the terrible things that my organized form pf religion has done and I don't accept responsibility for the terrible things that other religions have done nor do I think they should in any way reflect on my religion. I don't remember making demands that you march in lockstep or honestly making any demands of you at all. I would describe your comment as angry perhaps even hostile and I really don't see much reason for it. If the Christian body of believers has harmed you in some way that you find debilitating or difficult to overcome perhaps you should take it up with the courts if on the other hand this is some kind of pseudo outrage wannabe rebel of an over privileged atheist hipster please don't let me stop you in your search for someone who cares about your "struggles."

All that being said I wish a very good day to you. I wish you no harm and submit to you only what you are willing to accept on the basis of reason and truth. I am more then happy to share the message of Christ with you or anyone else who is willing to listen and I am not willing to give up that mission or be silence by any threat or force others may posses.

Best wishes.
He might not try breaking down my door and forcing me to convert, but his pep rally here on this plane of existence... well I wouldn't put that past them, THAT's who I'm worried about. Your inference that I "don't want to be accountable to him" is only accurate in that I don't particularly feel some of the things he supposedly wants are fair, now whether that's actually what he wants and thus he's evil, or whether it's what the aforementioned pep rally are after and thus they're completely screwing up what he actually wants amounts to the same thing in the end from my perspective.

Yes, if god is evil then leading the armies of hell against him is the only moral course of action, you seem to have overlooked the qualifying statement that I would do that ONLY IF certain things he supposedly wants are what he actually wants, do try to pay attention. I also question the hell out of you ascribing all those technological innovations specifically and exclusively to god/Judaeo-Christian faith, indeed I'm pretty sure that a lot of those predate any belief in Jehovah or Yahweh. Your skirting over and apologising for mainstream religion's sexism and homophobia does you no credit. For example, if atheist people are allowed to get married, without observing the traditions of Christian marriage nor acknowledging the existence or authority of god over them, then gay people should be able to get married as well, that's where the issue begins and ends or me, marriage is no longer exclusively a church institution and you need to accept that.

And yes, I am perfectly aware of government corruption, in other news, water is wet, I also criticise the hell out of shady government behaviour, I can point out complete bullshit in more than one place at a time you know.

Okay... are you a biblical literalist or do you really have that much trouble identifying allegory? I did not LITERALLY mean blind, deaf and dumb, I was using that to allude to the level of unquestioning obedience that religion certainly seems to require most of the time. I thought it was obvious given that I was using it in conjunction with your boat metaphor but apparently not, and if you were actually aware of my true meaning, then faux-ignorance just wastes my time and yours for no payoff. I'm also curious whether you actually believe god gives you instructions directly... do you hear a voice in your head or just feel a vague feeling? Because one could be psychosis and the other could be common sense. I wouldn't mind if these things god apparently says are all good advice, but if he's telling you not to do things that would harm no-one and then getting peeved if you did them anyway, THAT's what I take issue with, the aforementioned treatment of women and gays for example.

"privileged hipster atheist" Yeah, just keep on projecting and victim-complex-ing. I'm sure that you yourself have never done anything to me, you're probably a good person... but you seem unwilling or unable to comprehend that the people you're involved in (perhaps only tangentially) could do harm... just a question, are you catholic or protestant? Because if the former, there is one notable example of recent harm your religion has caused, and if the latter... well how lose a coalition of churches is Protestantism? Because some factions, particularly the American ones have rather nasty baggage, lobbying to have their own biases protected by law and forced onto members of the population that don't actually share their belief "*cough*reporductiverights*cough*" That's what I mean with "forcing to march in lockstep" If you have a particular belief on condoms and birth control pills? Fine, you follow it yourself, but don't demand nonbelievers adhere to that, the separation of church and state happened for a reason.

I have presented no threat of force, do not act as if I am a roman trying to throw you to the lions, I may have been aggressive in my responses here, but you are uniquely infuriating in your blinkered perceptions and holier-than-thou perspective, I suppose the Inquisition and the Crusades never happened in your world eh?
 

TruthInGaming

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Apr 29, 2015
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leviadragon99 said:
TruthInGaming said:
leviadragon99 said:
TruthInGaming said:
leviadragon99 said:
TruthInGaming said:
Um, the message of Christ seems to be pretty clear that man is in need of a savior to be made right with God due to his own nature of sin and that he should resist this nature focusing instead to treat others as man would like to be treated and show them freely the love of God which God has shown to them. Which included Christ allowing them to maliciously crucify him in order to benevolently save them. - Honestly did you even bother to read the accounts of the gospel before spewing your opinions?
I know enough of the bible to disagree with it.

The notion that we aren't capable of saving ourselves and need a perfect ubermensch to human-sacrifice to his father because "Something, something Sin, sin, sin, reasons" strikes me as sufficiently fascist in the dumping of a guilt/debt complex upon people to question the hell out of it.

Yes I am intentionally misrepresenting what you claim the point of it all is, but I'm doing so to prove a point, how easy it is to skew those events by a different perspective and different phrasing, not that the bible really needed your help to come across as one long incomprehensible rant, but you really did the text no favours with your "explanation"
You don't need to know a lot about something to disagree with it for all that statement says.

Capable of saving yourself? You have some kind of eternal life potion in your pocket you wish to share with the rest of us? If you stand before an almighty God who created the universe and watched men screw it up then came himself in the form of his own son to die to fix it at the hands of the very lynch mob he was dying to save and you are asked to give an account of your wrong doing in life and why he should allow you into his heaven how can you respond? I don't think it's fascist to tell people they are doing something evil and they need be repentant. Christ offered people freedom from the guilt and slavery of their own behavior. That's the good part to the good news of the good gospel. God encourages you to ask questions. He discourages you from hurting other people and yourself. God isn't helped by your service and he doesn't need you to accept his salvation freely offered to you. He wants you to because its good for you. If you are drowning it doesn't hurt me at all if you choose not to climb onto the life boat. I want you to get in the life boat because its going to save your life.

I am at least glad to see you are honest about your dishonest but I'd rather you were just honest. It would be pretty hard and I would argue the modern church has worked almost round the clock to achieve it but then I would be speaking of organized religion not the life and example of Jesus Christ or the works surrounding his life. If you don't comprehend something maybe you should spend some time studying it or seeking clarification from a reputable expert instead of making some generally unfounded and non sequitur points that you yourself admit as misrepresenting. I am not trying to do the text "favors" by explaining it. My whole point was the text can stand on it's own and the point is fairly obvious to those who bother to read and study it.
Yeahno, my entire point was that the text does not stand up by itself and even the most cursory explanation reveals massive contradictions and inconsistencies, but apparently you decided to get more mileage out of missing the point of my intentional hyperbole.

As to "saving ourselves" I referred to acting in a moral fashion without needing the coda of a supposedly gay-hating, demanding-subservience-of-women, insecure-to-the-point-of-intolerance-of-any-other-belief, evil deity, one that I do not believe even exists, thus the question of eternal life or needing to explain ourselves to this force becomes rather moot, and indeed if he did exist and is everything mainstream religion says he is, I would gladly lead the armies of hell against him, because THAT is how bad his PR department is right now.

The only thing modern religion as an institution has worked pretty hard to do is to keep women out of the clergy and prevent gay marriage, yeah that's really spreading the good word. The charitable efforts that they are involved in strike me increasingly as the actions of pockets of good people trying to make the best of a hopelessly morally bankrupt institution they're too scared to leave, good that they do despite their religion, not because of it.

Your allegories about god and his life boat lose a little lustre when god allegedly demands we blind, deafen and mute ourselves in order to be allowed into the boat. So while it may not be fascist to point out people are screwing up, it is definitely fascist to DEMAND they follow your every whim or else die in a fire.

At the end of the day, if you feel like god is a thing worth believing, an entity worth following, then you do that, you can call bullshit on all the horrible things that organised religion believes are true to him and view him as an actually nice guy... but don't expect everyone else to accept that distinction and fall neatly into line when organised religion demands we march in lockstep, because for many of us, what god actually wants is irrelevant, because the church is what we actually have to deal with in the real world.
Whoa, whoa easy there bud. If you were putting up intentional hyperbole I think it's understandable if I misunderstood it.

The only hate vibes I'm picking up here are not coming from the Christian God. You are throwing around a lot of accusations and you might want to back it up there a second to evaluate your own prejudice and bias coming into this and just question where all this is coming from before you go slinging and swinging. If you don't believe he exists then go live your life. He'll knock at the door and you can feel free to ignore him. He won't break in and force himself upon you but he also won't force you to live in his paradise either. If the other choice is hell then that's your choice. I do have to say though from reading you post I am given the inference that you choice not to believe in God sounds like its due to a desire not to be accountable to him.

So you want to save yourself in a your moral fashion while leading the armies of hell again God... because he has a bad PR department... OK. Yes apart from sanitation, education, wine, public order, irrigation,fresh water systems and public health... sure the church doesn't do much but besides all that the whole mission of inspiring others to follow and accept the teachings of Christ cause that's certainly bad right? On the gay issue how dare they insist that people who want to be leader in their religion actually follow and believe the things the religion espouses? How dare they! We should force them to do as we believe and we think right? Oh wait... I do believe there are a number of women clergy but traditionally yes I would agree that's not really a female role in the same way that a man isn't really a traditional role at playing wife to another man... at least their consistent no? Well your impression of charitable organizations and utterly fabricated motives for what other people do despite their actions indicating the exact opposite not withstanding I'd encouraged you to direct your rage to your nearest representative because this does seem to be the way that the government openly operates and you might find your efforts in that field only slightly more effective though slightly less appreciated.

I've never had God demand me to be blind, deaf or mute. Must have missed that verse. I don't see God asking me to follow his every whim he basically just gives me instruction on things that will hurt me or others and then advises me not to do them. He also tells me that even if I do them that he will forgive me if am sorry for hurting other people or myself which seems like a pretty straightforward and moral thing to do to me. However if someone was to hurt other people or themselves maliciously fully aware that they had been warned ahead of time not to do it then be unapologetic for their actions and the pain and suffering they had caused I can't very well think of a person more deserving to die in fire as you put it.

Well at the end of the day I do believe in that God. I am not aware of all the terrible things that my organized form pf religion has done and I don't accept responsibility for the terrible things that other religions have done nor do I think they should in any way reflect on my religion. I don't remember making demands that you march in lockstep or honestly making any demands of you at all. I would describe your comment as angry perhaps even hostile and I really don't see much reason for it. If the Christian body of believers has harmed you in some way that you find debilitating or difficult to overcome perhaps you should take it up with the courts if on the other hand this is some kind of pseudo outrage wannabe rebel of an over privileged atheist hipster please don't let me stop you in your search for someone who cares about your "struggles."

All that being said I wish a very good day to you. I wish you no harm and submit to you only what you are willing to accept on the basis of reason and truth. I am more then happy to share the message of Christ with you or anyone else who is willing to listen and I am not willing to give up that mission or be silence by any threat or force others may posses.

Best wishes.
He might not try breaking down my door and forcing me to convert, but his pep rally here on this plane of existence... well I wouldn't put that past them, THAT's who I'm worried about. Your inference that I "don't want to be accountable to him" is only accurate in that I don't particularly feel some of the things he supposedly wants are fair, now whether that's actually what he wants and thus he's evil, or whether it's what the aforementioned pep rally are after and thus they're completely screwing up what he actually wants amounts to the same thing in the end from my perspective.

Yes, if god is evil then leading the armies of hell against him is the only moral course of action, you seem to have overlooked the qualifying statement that I would do that ONLY IF certain things he supposedly wants are what he actually wants, do try to pay attention. I also question the hell out of you ascribing all those technological innovations specifically and exclusively to god/Judaeo-Christian faith, indeed I'm pretty sure that a lot of those predate any belief in Jehovah or Yahweh. Your skirting over and apologising for mainstream religion's sexism and homophobia does you no credit. For example, if atheist people are allowed to get married, without observing the traditions of Christian marriage nor acknowledging the existence or authority of god over them, then gay people should be able to get married as well, that's where the issue begins and ends or me, marriage is no longer exclusively a church institution and you need to accept that.

And yes, I am perfectly aware of government corruption, in other news, water is wet, I also criticise the hell out of shady government behaviour, I can point out complete bullshit in more than one place at a time you know.

Okay... are you a biblical literalist or do you really have that much trouble identifying allegory? I did not LITERALLY mean blind, deaf and dumb, I was using that to allude to the level of unquestioning obedience that religion certainly seems to require most of the time. I thought it was obvious given that I was using it in conjunction with your boat metaphor but apparently not, and if you were actually aware of my true meaning, then faux-ignorance just wastes my time and yours for no payoff. I'm also curious whether you actually believe god gives you instructions directly... do you hear a voice in your head or just feel a vague feeling? Because one could be psychosis and the other could be common sense. I wouldn't mind if these things god apparently says are all good advice, but if he's telling you not to do things that would harm no-one and then getting peeved if you did them anyway, THAT's what I take issue with, the aforementioned treatment of women and gays for example.

"privileged hipster atheist" Yeah, just keep on projecting and victim-complex-ing. I'm sure that you yourself have never done anything to me, you're probably a good person... but you seem unwilling or unable to comprehend that the people you're involved in (perhaps only tangentially) could do harm... just a question, are you catholic or protestant? Because if the former, there is one notable example of recent harm your religion has caused, and if the latter... well how lose a coalition of churches is Protestantism? Because some factions, particularly the American ones have rather nasty baggage, lobbying to have their own biases protected by law and forced onto members of the population that don't actually share their belief "*cough*reporductiverights*cough*" That's what I mean with "forcing to march in lockstep" If you have a particular belief on condoms and birth control pills? Fine, you follow it yourself, but don't demand nonbelievers adhere to that, the separation of church and state happened for a reason.

I have presented no threat of force, do not act as if I am a roman trying to throw you to the lions, I may have been aggressive in my responses here, but you are uniquely infuriating in your blinkered perceptions and holier-than-thou perspective, I suppose the Inquisition and the Crusades never happened in your world eh?

Well then direct you anger at his pep rally not him. Maybe pray to God to save you from his followers? If you can't see the difference between man and God I can start to understand your anger and confusion.

If we are discussing the God of the bible in what way is he evil? If he is the creator of all things does he not have even by human understanding have the right to do what he pleases with his own creation? So leading the armies of hell against the God of the universe would be the moral thing to do according to what moral system? Care to discuss the things he may or may not want you to do? There is this whole collection of books called the bible that lays out what he wants us to do and not do and it's pretty clear in most parts but people do tend to get lost in the details so that's understandable I guess. I do give you as much attention as I can spare I hope it's not in vain. Well belief in the Christian God predates ancient Egypt so I'd think it predated most of that came about in Rome. The line I used is a reference to Life of Brian to be funny and bring humor to the conversation and I was pointing to actions they take in modern day to help people of third world populations but there are those who would also argue that most of these things are present today because of Christian society. I'm not one of them but I do think they have some merit to their argument. I didn't offer you any kind of apology for their behavior. Misreading what I'm saying does you a discredit. You seem to be wanting to force your beliefs on me which is the exact claim you make about God's pep rally. For your information under my religious views people are free to do whatever they want in life and will suffer the consequences for those choice in this life and the next. If the people of the government in this life want to stop them that doesn't really bother me since that's how our government is designed to work. If people want to allow it that's their choice as well. Both choices have consequences however and I feel it is part of my assigned mission to warn them of those consequences. Thinking about it for a moment you will see this is really the only ethical thing to do because if after all I saw you about to walk off a cliff and I believed it would cause you great harm to do such it would be a very evil thing for me not to try to warn you. In the same sense if I knew a way to live that made me happy, gave me worth, and helped me to be at peace with my fellow man then I would be an evil person if I choose not to share it with other people around me that I saw struggling but decided to keep it to myself. Marriage isn't exclusive to "the church" Muslims get married, Hindu's get married. Marriage is between a man and a women and whatever you call a man and another man getting "married" will never be the same as a women and a man getting married for the same reason that x isn't the same as y despite the fact that some people may call it such. Now again I really don't have an issue with them making their choices as I'm not the one out there to inflect consequences on anyone unless they harm me in which case I'd still do my best to find it in my heart to forgive them. That's not to say I approve of it or that I want to be around it or I want to take part in it. Fact is gay people do get married. Old perverts marry little children too and I don't approve of that either but I wouldn't say they can't get married only that they are going to pay the consequences for their choices. I'd warn them the same as I do for anyone. If someone doesn't want to hear it I move on to the next person. If someone doesn't like the fact that I'm saying it to other people and they want to silence me I simply tell them I'm willing to suffer the consequences of the gospel.

I'm glad we agree that the institutions comprised of men are corrupt. Its almost as if the nature of man itself is corrupt. Wait, where have I heard that before?

Religion has never required me to be bling deaf or dumb. "Faux-ignorance just wastes my time and yours for no payoff." The purpose of your hyperbole in your first comment then was something other then faux-ignorance I assume? As far as instruction from God I read it of the same verses as anyone else. I just try to internalize it and apply it to my life so I can do good for others and myself. As far as vague feelings I do believe that what I've internalize from reading and studying the bible acts upon my conscience to heighten my sense of right and wrong if that's what you are asking. Taking the bible literally or as allegory has to be taken on a case by case basis but I find the bible is pretty clear when it is using allegory as it makes it abundantly clear when it is doing such. Religion has never asked me not to question it and I'm chuckling as I write this because Lord knows I question him everyday. I approach the thing I don't understand in religion the same way that I approach things I don't understand on anything else with a skeptical mentality that desires understanding. Mark 9:24 epitomizes my heart on the matter. "Lord I do believe; help me with my unbelief."

As far as privileged hipster atheist it's a stereotype I've run into time and time again in these discussions. There are a lot of atheist people who live in insulated lifestyles who like to espouse their views (Not sure views is the right word. I'm at a loss of words on what to call it because they don't actually believe what they are saying they are just saying it because that's what they think is rebellious and counterculture) with no life perspective to back up what they are saying. A few of them have come back to me years later to tell me they had no idea what they were talking about at the time and even apologize which has impressed me and we can then have a rational conversation. I haven't found a good way as of yet to confront their combination of naivete and arrogance other then to give them time to experience life and develop some more informed opinions. I'm not saying you are one of those people I just wanted to say if you are it's a waste of time to argue with you. I don't doubt that Christians could do harm even well intentioned. They are people and therefore human beings. I find in every case that a Christian group cause harm or do damage it is because they are failing to follow the example of Christ and thus not acting as Christians. In order to determine what is Christian behavior go back to the text in the bible. If it doesn't come from the bible it isn't Christian behavior. On the other hand people like to take offence when they are told they are doing something sinful or wrong and tend to take those feelings out on the people telling them they are doing sinful and wrong things. This is exactly what happened to Christ and it also happens to those who follow his example. I've been exposed to the Catholic and the protestant Churchs and I identify with both of them accepting their members as my brothers and sisters as followers of Christ. I don't find any example of Christians pushing to mandate Christianity in the bibles. History is rife with examples true but they are not following a precedent from the bible. They came up with that all on their own. So that's not Christian that's political and doesn't reflect Christs behavior. That's not to say its wrong and I don't object to Americans attempting to use the system to enact what they believe as that is their right under the governmental system in which they reside to do such the same as others in that system having a right to use the system to oppose them. By "reproductive rights" I'm guess you are referring to abortion and premarital sex and the entire area of sexuality and problems it poses in both religion and society in general and I do hope you will agree with me when I say problems. As far as religion goes I agree with you in that the bible lays out very clear rules for the followers of Christ in how we are to conduct ourselves in what is right and what is wrong. As far as society ever aside from religion if I were an atheist I still have a vested interest in the issue of reproductive rights because we live in a fairly organized welfare society. If your actions were your responsibility alone then I would agree you would be free to conduct yourself as you saw fit and tell me to bugger off if I told you that what you were doing was wrong. However since your choices could cost me considerable I therefore have a vested interest in controlling the legality of your choices through a completely secular venue of the political arena. So even without religion being taken out of context in your example people would still have reason to have interest in controlling your "reproductive rights" purely from a pragmatic point of view. If you don't like this then campaign for a society of individuals that are personally responsible for themselves instead of a society of individuals that are socially responsible for others. The church in my opinion has the best of both these worlds as it is comprised of members who agree that they believe the same thing and are socially responsible for others under a voluntary basis instead of the governmental system of compulsion. I'd encouraged you to look up the use of state and church separation and read the letters it came from and the context it was intended to be used.

I'm not saying you are threatening force I am trying to express my earnestly of beliefs. I did say your comment seemed hostile since you yourself admit I make you infuriated and being infuriated comprises anger and anger incorporates hostility I'd say I was speaking correctly though I'd say that's more at my beliefs then my physical person. I certainly wouldn't accuse you of trying to throw me to lions but I've been told by other individuals that they wish they could feed Christians to lions and murder us in other unpleasant ways. You are telling me that I have a "blinkered perception" (<- that's cute :) seemingly because the Christian view disagrees with your own. Its the same ironic charge of calling someone "Narrow minded" that in doing such the person commits the very thing they are accusing someone else of doing. That is not to say the other person isn't also guilt of it but just that it is inherently a hypocritical statement. Now as for the charge itself that I have a "blinkered perception" I've openly considered the alternatives and made a choice for myself. I additionally take into consideration the views and choices of others and sometimes choose to respectfully disagree with them and if they are willing to discuss it I will have a heartfelt debate with them on the fine points of our disagreement. That isn't being narrow minded that's being a critical and rational person. As far as being holier then thou please let me be the first to public admit that my life is rife with sin as any other man I'm just intimately more familiar with my own. The entire reason I came to Christ was because of how bad I realized I am and the recognition that I needed his forgiveness and salvation that he offered. The inquisition and the Crusades certainly happened I wasn't aware there were people who denied them but I suppose some people will choose to deny anything. I'm not sure your making the point you think you are though as both the inquisition and the crusades were activities conducted by people failing to follow the example of Christ. Christ never killed people. Technically speaking even in these instances you are citing the Church didn't either. The church handed people over to the state who condemned and killed them in the inquisition and in the crusades the states sent their armies to wage wars. Now I won't deny that the church was instrumental in these processes and I would even argue bear the brunt of responsibility for these actions but I'd also argue that the church that did these things was not acting in the following of Christ but had rather become a political machine pursuing its own goals of power. This is why I agreed with you earlier when I said "They are people and therefore human beings. I find in every case that a Christian group cause harm or do damage it is because they are failing to follow the example of Christ and thus not acting as Christians. In order to determine what is Christian behavior go back to the text in the bible. If it doesn't come from the bible it isn't Christian behavior."

I hope this response answers your questions, gives you some things to think about and most importantly prompts more questions. I'm happy to answer anything I can concerning my faith, the bible and how it influences my views. Best wishes.
 

leviadragon99

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TruthInGaming said:
leviadragon99 said:
TruthInGaming said:
leviadragon99 said:
TruthInGaming said:
leviadragon99 said:
TruthInGaming said:
Um, the message of Christ seems to be pretty clear that man is in need of a savior to be made right with God due to his own nature of sin and that he should resist this nature focusing instead to treat others as man would like to be treated and show them freely the love of God which God has shown to them. Which included Christ allowing them to maliciously crucify him in order to benevolently save them. - Honestly did you even bother to read the accounts of the gospel before spewing your opinions?
I know enough of the bible to disagree with it.

The notion that we aren't capable of saving ourselves and need a perfect ubermensch to human-sacrifice to his father because "Something, something Sin, sin, sin, reasons" strikes me as sufficiently fascist in the dumping of a guilt/debt complex upon people to question the hell out of it.

Yes I am intentionally misrepresenting what you claim the point of it all is, but I'm doing so to prove a point, how easy it is to skew those events by a different perspective and different phrasing, not that the bible really needed your help to come across as one long incomprehensible rant, but you really did the text no favours with your "explanation"
You don't need to know a lot about something to disagree with it for all that statement says.

Capable of saving yourself? You have some kind of eternal life potion in your pocket you wish to share with the rest of us? If you stand before an almighty God who created the universe and watched men screw it up then came himself in the form of his own son to die to fix it at the hands of the very lynch mob he was dying to save and you are asked to give an account of your wrong doing in life and why he should allow you into his heaven how can you respond? I don't think it's fascist to tell people they are doing something evil and they need be repentant. Christ offered people freedom from the guilt and slavery of their own behavior. That's the good part to the good news of the good gospel. God encourages you to ask questions. He discourages you from hurting other people and yourself. God isn't helped by your service and he doesn't need you to accept his salvation freely offered to you. He wants you to because its good for you. If you are drowning it doesn't hurt me at all if you choose not to climb onto the life boat. I want you to get in the life boat because its going to save your life.

I am at least glad to see you are honest about your dishonest but I'd rather you were just honest. It would be pretty hard and I would argue the modern church has worked almost round the clock to achieve it but then I would be speaking of organized religion not the life and example of Jesus Christ or the works surrounding his life. If you don't comprehend something maybe you should spend some time studying it or seeking clarification from a reputable expert instead of making some generally unfounded and non sequitur points that you yourself admit as misrepresenting. I am not trying to do the text "favors" by explaining it. My whole point was the text can stand on it's own and the point is fairly obvious to those who bother to read and study it.
Yeahno, my entire point was that the text does not stand up by itself and even the most cursory explanation reveals massive contradictions and inconsistencies, but apparently you decided to get more mileage out of missing the point of my intentional hyperbole.

As to "saving ourselves" I referred to acting in a moral fashion without needing the coda of a supposedly gay-hating, demanding-subservience-of-women, insecure-to-the-point-of-intolerance-of-any-other-belief, evil deity, one that I do not believe even exists, thus the question of eternal life or needing to explain ourselves to this force becomes rather moot, and indeed if he did exist and is everything mainstream religion says he is, I would gladly lead the armies of hell against him, because THAT is how bad his PR department is right now.

The only thing modern religion as an institution has worked pretty hard to do is to keep women out of the clergy and prevent gay marriage, yeah that's really spreading the good word. The charitable efforts that they are involved in strike me increasingly as the actions of pockets of good people trying to make the best of a hopelessly morally bankrupt institution they're too scared to leave, good that they do despite their religion, not because of it.

Your allegories about god and his life boat lose a little lustre when god allegedly demands we blind, deafen and mute ourselves in order to be allowed into the boat. So while it may not be fascist to point out people are screwing up, it is definitely fascist to DEMAND they follow your every whim or else die in a fire.

At the end of the day, if you feel like god is a thing worth believing, an entity worth following, then you do that, you can call bullshit on all the horrible things that organised religion believes are true to him and view him as an actually nice guy... but don't expect everyone else to accept that distinction and fall neatly into line when organised religion demands we march in lockstep, because for many of us, what god actually wants is irrelevant, because the church is what we actually have to deal with in the real world.
Whoa, whoa easy there bud. If you were putting up intentional hyperbole I think it's understandable if I misunderstood it.

The only hate vibes I'm picking up here are not coming from the Christian God. You are throwing around a lot of accusations and you might want to back it up there a second to evaluate your own prejudice and bias coming into this and just question where all this is coming from before you go slinging and swinging. If you don't believe he exists then go live your life. He'll knock at the door and you can feel free to ignore him. He won't break in and force himself upon you but he also won't force you to live in his paradise either. If the other choice is hell then that's your choice. I do have to say though from reading you post I am given the inference that you choice not to believe in God sounds like its due to a desire not to be accountable to him.

So you want to save yourself in a your moral fashion while leading the armies of hell again God... because he has a bad PR department... OK. Yes apart from sanitation, education, wine, public order, irrigation,fresh water systems and public health... sure the church doesn't do much but besides all that the whole mission of inspiring others to follow and accept the teachings of Christ cause that's certainly bad right? On the gay issue how dare they insist that people who want to be leader in their religion actually follow and believe the things the religion espouses? How dare they! We should force them to do as we believe and we think right? Oh wait... I do believe there are a number of women clergy but traditionally yes I would agree that's not really a female role in the same way that a man isn't really a traditional role at playing wife to another man... at least their consistent no? Well your impression of charitable organizations and utterly fabricated motives for what other people do despite their actions indicating the exact opposite not withstanding I'd encouraged you to direct your rage to your nearest representative because this does seem to be the way that the government openly operates and you might find your efforts in that field only slightly more effective though slightly less appreciated.

I've never had God demand me to be blind, deaf or mute. Must have missed that verse. I don't see God asking me to follow his every whim he basically just gives me instruction on things that will hurt me or others and then advises me not to do them. He also tells me that even if I do them that he will forgive me if am sorry for hurting other people or myself which seems like a pretty straightforward and moral thing to do to me. However if someone was to hurt other people or themselves maliciously fully aware that they had been warned ahead of time not to do it then be unapologetic for their actions and the pain and suffering they had caused I can't very well think of a person more deserving to die in fire as you put it.

Well at the end of the day I do believe in that God. I am not aware of all the terrible things that my organized form pf religion has done and I don't accept responsibility for the terrible things that other religions have done nor do I think they should in any way reflect on my religion. I don't remember making demands that you march in lockstep or honestly making any demands of you at all. I would describe your comment as angry perhaps even hostile and I really don't see much reason for it. If the Christian body of believers has harmed you in some way that you find debilitating or difficult to overcome perhaps you should take it up with the courts if on the other hand this is some kind of pseudo outrage wannabe rebel of an over privileged atheist hipster please don't let me stop you in your search for someone who cares about your "struggles."

All that being said I wish a very good day to you. I wish you no harm and submit to you only what you are willing to accept on the basis of reason and truth. I am more then happy to share the message of Christ with you or anyone else who is willing to listen and I am not willing to give up that mission or be silence by any threat or force others may posses.

Best wishes.
He might not try breaking down my door and forcing me to convert, but his pep rally here on this plane of existence... well I wouldn't put that past them, THAT's who I'm worried about. Your inference that I "don't want to be accountable to him" is only accurate in that I don't particularly feel some of the things he supposedly wants are fair, now whether that's actually what he wants and thus he's evil, or whether it's what the aforementioned pep rally are after and thus they're completely screwing up what he actually wants amounts to the same thing in the end from my perspective.

Yes, if god is evil then leading the armies of hell against him is the only moral course of action, you seem to have overlooked the qualifying statement that I would do that ONLY IF certain things he supposedly wants are what he actually wants, do try to pay attention. I also question the hell out of you ascribing all those technological innovations specifically and exclusively to god/Judaeo-Christian faith, indeed I'm pretty sure that a lot of those predate any belief in Jehovah or Yahweh. Your skirting over and apologising for mainstream religion's sexism and homophobia does you no credit. For example, if atheist people are allowed to get married, without observing the traditions of Christian marriage nor acknowledging the existence or authority of god over them, then gay people should be able to get married as well, that's where the issue begins and ends or me, marriage is no longer exclusively a church institution and you need to accept that.

And yes, I am perfectly aware of government corruption, in other news, water is wet, I also criticise the hell out of shady government behaviour, I can point out complete bullshit in more than one place at a time you know.

Okay... are you a biblical literalist or do you really have that much trouble identifying allegory? I did not LITERALLY mean blind, deaf and dumb, I was using that to allude to the level of unquestioning obedience that religion certainly seems to require most of the time. I thought it was obvious given that I was using it in conjunction with your boat metaphor but apparently not, and if you were actually aware of my true meaning, then faux-ignorance just wastes my time and yours for no payoff. I'm also curious whether you actually believe god gives you instructions directly... do you hear a voice in your head or just feel a vague feeling? Because one could be psychosis and the other could be common sense. I wouldn't mind if these things god apparently says are all good advice, but if he's telling you not to do things that would harm no-one and then getting peeved if you did them anyway, THAT's what I take issue with, the aforementioned treatment of women and gays for example.

"privileged hipster atheist" Yeah, just keep on projecting and victim-complex-ing. I'm sure that you yourself have never done anything to me, you're probably a good person... but you seem unwilling or unable to comprehend that the people you're involved in (perhaps only tangentially) could do harm... just a question, are you catholic or protestant? Because if the former, there is one notable example of recent harm your religion has caused, and if the latter... well how lose a coalition of churches is Protestantism? Because some factions, particularly the American ones have rather nasty baggage, lobbying to have their own biases protected by law and forced onto members of the population that don't actually share their belief "*cough*reporductiverights*cough*" That's what I mean with "forcing to march in lockstep" If you have a particular belief on condoms and birth control pills? Fine, you follow it yourself, but don't demand nonbelievers adhere to that, the separation of church and state happened for a reason.

I have presented no threat of force, do not act as if I am a roman trying to throw you to the lions, I may have been aggressive in my responses here, but you are uniquely infuriating in your blinkered perceptions and holier-than-thou perspective, I suppose the Inquisition and the Crusades never happened in your world eh?
Well then direct you anger at his pep rally not him. Maybe pray to God to save you from his followers? If you can't see the difference between man and God I can start to understand your anger and confusion.
If we are discussing the God of the bible in what way is he evil? If he is the creator of all things does he not have even by human understanding have the right to do what he pleases with his own creation? So leading the armies of hell against the God of the universe would be the moral thing to do according to what moral system? Care to discuss the things he may or may not want you to do? There is this whole collection of books called the bible that lays out what he wants us to do and not do and it's pretty clear in most parts but people do tend to get lost in the details so that's understandable I guess. I do give you as much attention as I can spare I hope it's not in vain. Well belief in the Christian God predates ancient Egypt so I'd think it predated most of that came about in Rome. The line I used is a reference to Life of Brian to be funny and bring humor to the conversation and I was pointing to actions they take in modern day to help people of third world populations but there are those who would also argue that most of these things are present today because of Christian society. I'm not one of them but I do think they have some merit to their argument. I didn't offer you any kind of apology for their behavior. Misreading what I'm saying does you a discredit. You seem to be wanting to force your beliefs on me which is the exact claim you make about God's pep rally. For your information under my religious views people are free to do whatever they want in life and will suffer the consequences for those choice in this life and the next. If the people of the government in this life want to stop them that doesn't really bother me since that's how our government is designed to work. If people want to allow it that's their choice as well. Both choices have consequences however and I feel it is part of my assigned mission to warn them of those consequences. Thinking about it for a moment you will see this is really the only ethical thing to do because if after all I saw you about to walk off a cliff and I believed it would cause you great harm to do such it would be a very evil thing for me not to try to warn you. In the same sense if I knew a way to live that made me happy, gave me worth, and helped me to be at peace with my fellow man then I would be an evil person if I choose not to share it with other people around me that I saw struggling but decided to keep it to myself. Marriage isn't exclusive to "the church" Muslims get married, Hindu's get married. Marriage is between a man and a women and whatever you call a man and another man getting "married" will never be the same as a women and a man getting married for the same reason that x isn't the same as y despite the fact that some people may call it such. Now again I really don't have an issue with them making their choices as I'm not the one out there to inflect consequences on anyone unless they harm me in which case I'd still do my best to find it in my heart to forgive them. That's not to say I approve of it or that I want to be around it or I want to take part in it. Fact is gay people do get married. Old perverts marry little children too and I don't approve of that either but I wouldn't say they can't get married only that they are going to pay the consequences for their choices. I'd warn them the same as I do for anyone. If someone doesn't want to hear it I move on to the next person. If someone doesn't like the fact that I'm saying it to other people and they want to silence me I simply tell them I'm willing to suffer the consequences of the gospel.
I'm glad we agree that the institutions comprised of men are corrupt. Its almost as if the nature of man itself is corrupt. Wait, where have I heard that before?
Religion has never required me to be bling deaf or dumb. "Faux-ignorance just wastes my time and yours for no payoff." The purpose of your hyperbole in your first comment then was something other then faux-ignorance I assume? As far as instruction from God I read it of the same verses as anyone else. I just try to internalize it and apply it to my life so I can do good for others and myself. As far as vague feelings I do believe that what I've internalize from reading and studying the bible acts upon my conscience to heighten my sense of right and wrong if that's what you are asking. Taking the bible literally or as allegory has to be taken on a case by case basis but I find the bible is pretty clear when it is using allegory as it makes it abundantly clear when it is doing such. Religion has never asked me not to question it and I'm chuckling as I write this because Lord knows I question him everyday. I approach the thing I don't understand in religion the same way that I approach things I don't understand on anything else with a skeptical mentality that desires understanding. Mark 9:24 epitomizes my heart on the matter. "Lord I do believe; help me with my unbelief."
Because one could be psychosis and the other could be common sense. I wouldn't mind if these things god apparently says are all good advice, but if he's telling you not to do things that would harm no-one and then getting peeved if you did them anyway, THAT's what I take issue with, the aforementioned treatment of women and gays for example.
As far as privileged hipster atheist it's a stereotype I've run into time and time again in these discussions. There are a lot of atheist people who live in insulated lifestyles who like to espouse their views (Not sure views is the right word. I'm at a loss of words on what to call it because they don't actually believe what they are saying they are just saying it because that's what they think is rebellious and counterculture) with no life perspective to back up what they are saying. A few of them have come back to me years later to tell me they had no idea what they were talking about at the time and even apologize which has impressed me and we can then have a rational conversation. I haven't found a good way as of yet to confront their combination of naivete and arrogance other then to give them time to experience life and develop some more informed opinions. I'm not saying you are one of those people I just wanted to say if you are it's a waste of time to argue with you. I don't doubt that Christians could do harm even well intentioned. They are people and therefore human beings. I find in every case that a Christian group cause harm or do damage it is because they are failing to follow the example of Christ and thus not acting as Christians. In order to determine what is Christian behavior go back to the text in the bible. If it doesn't come from the bible it isn't Christian behavior. On the other hand people like to take offence when they are told they are doing something sinful or wrong and tend to take those feelings out on the people telling them they are doing sinful and wrong things. This is exactly what happened to Christ and it also happens to those who follow his example. I've been exposed to the Catholic and the protestant Churchs and I identify with both of them accepting their members as my brothers and sisters as followers of Christ. I don't find any example of Christians pushing to mandate Christianity in the bibles. History is rife with examples true but they are not following a precedent from the bible. They came up with that all on their own. So that's not Christian that's political and doesn't reflect Christs behavior. That's not to say its wrong and I don't object to Americans attempting to use the system to enact what they believe as that is their right under the governmental system in which they reside to do such the same as others in that system having a right to use the system to oppose them. By "reproductive rights" I'm guess you are referring to abortion and premarital sex and the entire area of sexuality and problems it poses in both religion and society in general and I do hope you will agree with me when I say problems. As far as religion goes I agree with you in that the bible lays out very clear rules for the followers of Christ in how we are to conduct ourselves in what is right and what is wrong. As far as society ever aside from religion if I were an atheist I still have a vested interest in the issue of reproductive rights because we live in a fairly organized welfare society. If your actions were your responsibility alone then I would agree you would be free to conduct yourself as you saw fit and tell me to bugger off if I told you that what you were doing was wrong. However since your choices could cost me considerable I therefore have a vested interest in controlling the legality of your choices through a completely secular venue of the political arena. So even without religion being taken out of context in your example people would still have reason to have interest in controlling your "reproductive rights" purely from a pragmatic point of view. If you don't like this then campaign for a society of individuals that are personally responsible for themselves instead of a society of individuals that are socially responsible for others. The church in my opinion has the best of both these worlds as it is comprised of members who agree that they believe the same thing and are socially responsible for others under a voluntary basis instead of the governmental system of compulsion. I'd encouraged you to look up the use of state and church separation and read the letters it came from and the context it was intended to be used.
I'm not saying you are threatening force I am trying to express my earnestly of beliefs. I did say your comment seemed hostile since you yourself admit I make you infuriated and being infuriated comprises anger and anger incorporates hostility I'd say I was speaking correctly though I'd say that's more at my beliefs then my physical person. I certainly wouldn't accuse you of trying to throw me to lions but I've been told by other individuals that they wish they could feed Christians to lions and murder us in other unpleasant ways. You are telling me that I have a "blinkered perception" (<- that's cute :) seemingly because the Christian view disagrees with your own. Its the same ironic charge of calling someone "Narrow minded" that in doing such the person commits the very thing they are accusing someone else of doing. That is not to say the other person isn't also guilt of it but just that it is inherently a hypocritical statement. Now as for the charge itself that I have a "blinkered perception" I've openly considered the alternatives and made a choice for myself. I additionally take into consideration the views and choices of others and sometimes choose to respectfully disagree with them and if they are willing to discuss it I will have a heartfelt debate with them on the fine points of our disagreement. That isn't being narrow minded that's being a critical and rational person. As far as being holier then thou please let me be the first to public admit that my life is rife with sin as any other man I'm just intimately more familiar with my own. The entire reason I came to Christ was because of how bad I realized I am and the recognition that I needed his forgiveness and salvation that he offered. The inquisition and the Crusades certainly happened I wasn't aware there were people who denied them but I suppose some people will choose to deny anything. I'm not sure your making the point you think you are though as both the inquisition and the crusades were activities conducted by people failing to follow the example of Christ. Christ never killed people. Technically speaking even in these instances you are citing the Church didn't either. The church handed people over to the state who condemned and killed them in the inquisition and in the crusades the states sent their armies to wage wars. Now I won't deny that the church was instrumental in these processes and I would even argue bear the brunt of responsibility for these actions but I'd also argue that the church that did these things was not acting in the following of Christ but had rather become a political machine pursuing its own goals of power. This is why I agreed with you earlier when I said "They are people and therefore human beings. I find in every case that a Christian group cause harm or do damage it is because they are failing to follow the example of Christ and thus not acting as Christians. In order to determine what is Christian behavior go back to the text in the bible. If it doesn't come from the bible it isn't Christian behavior."
I hope this response answers your questions, gives you some things to think about and most importantly prompts more questions. I'm happy to answer anything I can concerning my faith, the bible and how it influences my views. Best wishes.
Yeah I'm not going to read all of that this time, simply because you forgot to properly space out the paragraphs. That one tiny detail results in an obnoxious wall of text, that's how important formatting is. Try again with proper spacing's and maybe I'll go back over it.

I will say though that I glimpsed the last bit when writing this response... something being from the bible doesn't automatically give it virtue, because the bible was written by flawed men guessing at the will of god (or in some cases, throwing in their own biases to try and legitimise them) If you present that work as literally directly from god and completely without flaw, then you just outed yourself as a biblical literalist, and thus impossible to take seriously, I suppose dinosaur fossils are fakes put there by god to test our faith eh?
 

TruthInGaming

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leviadragon99 said:
Yeah I'm not going to read all of that this time, simply because you forgot to properly space out the paragraphs. That one tiny detail results in an obnoxious wall of text, that's how important formatting is. Try again with proper spacing's and maybe I'll go back over it.

I will say though that I glimpsed the last bit when writing this response... something being from the bible doesn't automatically give it virtue, because the bible was written by flawed men guessing at the will of god (or in some cases, throwing in their own biases to try and legitimise them) If you present that work as literally directly from god and completely without flaw, then you just outed yourself as a biblical literalist, and thus impossible to take seriously, I suppose dinosaur fossils are fakes put there by god to test our faith eh?
I'll try to meet you beyond half way here then I've gone back and edited the post for your sole benefit and I hope its up to your standards of how important formatting is to you.

Granting you the fact that you read the end of an argument and formulated a piecemeal response I'll go ahead and respond to that despite how important it is to me that you read and understand the entirety of what someone else is saying and formulate a rational response to it before you become dismissive of it. I didn't make the claim that just because something is from the bible it becomes true. You seem to have come up with that little gem on your own and then decided to take issue with it arguing with yourself. I am surprised you would take the line of reasoning the the bible was written by flawed men and therefore must be flawed.

I facepalm when I read this kind of reasoning because it appease an acceptance of one principle of the Christian faith while ignoring the overarching principle of Christianity which is that God is perfect, all knowing and all powerful yet your reasoning assumes some flawed individuals must have messed up the message that this God ordained to share with them as if Gods sitting there going "Well gosh darn if only I'd known this was going to happen, if only I was a little better at my attempt to get this right, if only I could fix this problem." Its a flawed line of reasoning because it accepts one part of the premise but substitutes the other part with its own conjectured idea of God instead of what the bible describes of God. Secondly you allude to a flawed bible but fail to point out the flaw itself relying on a generalization that it must be flawed because of your flawed reasoning.

leviadragon99 said:
If you present that work as literally directly from god and completely without flaw, then you just outed yourself as a biblical literalist, and thus impossible to take seriously,
Bible listeralism means a lot of different things here's a wiki page on the topic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_literalism perhaps you'd like to have the chance to define how you are using the term? As far as taking the bible literary it is a piece of literature and literature does include allegory, parables, proverbs, examples. Most of these are pretty easy to understand when provided in the bible especially when Jesus says "the following is a parable" thus I don't really have that hard of a time understand it and I don't really understand when people who are mostly unfamiliar with the work say something like this as if they are trying to reveal some kind of obfuscated truth that most 6 grade readers might look up from what they had just read at them slightly amused and respond with "yeah ok whatever." I don't think dinosaur fossils are fake nor do they test my faith anymore then browsing through the coding of a game makes me question my experience of a well designed game indeed it strengthens and reinforces it. If you don't understand it perhaps you could ask me a question in relation to it concerning your confusion and I'd be happy to explain. Best wishes.
 

leviadragon99

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TruthInGaming said:
leviadragon99 said:
Yeah I'm not going to read all of that this time, simply because you forgot to properly space out the paragraphs. That one tiny detail results in an obnoxious wall of text, that's how important formatting is. Try again with proper spacing's and maybe I'll go back over it.

I will say though that I glimpsed the last bit when writing this response... something being from the bible doesn't automatically give it virtue, because the bible was written by flawed men guessing at the will of god (or in some cases, throwing in their own biases to try and legitimise them) If you present that work as literally directly from god and completely without flaw, then you just outed yourself as a biblical literalist, and thus impossible to take seriously, I suppose dinosaur fossils are fakes put there by god to test our faith eh?
I'll try to meet you beyond half way here then I've gone back and edited the post for your sole benefit and I hope its up to your standards of how important formatting is to you.

Granting you the fact that you read the end of an argument and formulated a piecemeal response I'll go ahead and respond to that despite how important it is to me that you read and understand the entirety of what someone else is saying and formulate a rational response to it before you become dismissive of it. I didn't make the claim that just because something is from the bible it becomes true. You seem to have come up with that little gem on your own and then decided to take issue with it arguing with yourself. I am surprised you would take the line of reasoning the the bible was written by flawed men and therefore must be flawed.

I facepalm when I read this kind of reasoning because it appease an acceptance of one principle of the Christian faith while ignoring the overarching principle of Christianity which is that God is perfect, all knowing and all powerful yet your reasoning assumes some flawed individuals must have messed up the message that this God ordained to share with them as if Gods sitting there going "Well gosh darn if only I'd known this was going to happen, if only I was a little better at my attempt to get this right, if only I could fix this problem." Its a flawed line of reasoning because it accepts one part of the premise but substitutes the other part with its own conjectured idea of God instead of what the bible describes of God. Secondly you allude to a flawed bible but fail to point out the flaw itself relying on a generalization that it must be flawed because of your flawed reasoning.

leviadragon99 said:
If you present that work as literally directly from god and completely without flaw, then you just outed yourself as a biblical literalist, and thus impossible to take seriously,
Bible listeralism means a lot of different things here's a wiki page on the topic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_literalism perhaps you'd like to have the chance to define how you are using the term? As far as taking the bible literary it is a piece of literature and literature does include allegory, parables, proverbs, examples. Most of these are pretty easy to understand when provided in the bible especially when Jesus says "the following is a parable" thus I don't really have that hard of a time understand it and I don't really understand when people who are mostly unfamiliar with the work say something like this as if they are trying to reveal some kind of obfuscated truth that most 6 grade readers might look up from what they had just read at them slightly amused and respond with "yeah ok whatever." I don't think dinosaur fossils are fake nor do they test my faith anymore then browsing through the coding of a game makes me question my experience of a well designed game indeed it strengthens and reinforces it. If you don't understand it perhaps you could ask me a question in relation to it concerning your confusion and I'd be happy to explain. Best wishes.
All right then, let's take this from the top.

When it comes to distinguishing between man and god, I only believe one of these things actually exists, so for me, that's the relevant part of the equation. Now if you believe otherwise, good for you, enjoy that, just don't predicate your arguments on other people believing it. As such, praying to god to stop those members of his followers that are doing completely the wrong thing would be a remarkably insincere gesture on my part, not to mention certainly seeming to be pointless, as I don't see him stepping in to stop Westborough Baptist for example, in response to the presumably numerous prayers sent to him by believers that aren't actually crazy assholes.

Okay, you IMMEDIATELY need to fuck off if you compare paedophiles "marrying" children to two consenting adults that happen to be the same gender marrying, the former involves rape, the latter does not. That's a pretty cut-and-dried difference no matter how you look at it. So you essentially equivocating the two by mentioning similar feelings of disapproval towards both does you no favours. In the first case, we all have a legitimate reason to say "no, you can't do that" rather than idly disapproving. If by some miracle that isn't what you meant, then "children" is not a suitable synonym for "woman that is legally of age but substantially younger than her spouse". Now your perspective on the relation between Christian beliefs and Non-Christians is all well and good in a perfect world where everyone has their own opinions and can express them without hatred or force of some kind... the trouble is that certain minority religious factions with money and influence in government can force their views into law, THAT is the big red flag issue, and while you may not approve when it does, it still happens with depressing regularity, that is not the will of the people, that is not the law of man screwing up independently of religion, that is a handful of dictators deciding to be the arbiter of moral law to those who do not share their beliefs.

One of the big things that to me makes god evil (if it's actually what he wants) is how homosexuality is allegedly a sin, the chain of logic just does not add up in the slightest, and I do not accept "because he said so" reasoning. All morality needs a basis in pragmatism to be in any way relevant, all "sin" needs to cause a measureable harm, stealing deprives someone of their legitimately earned property, killing deprives the world of a life unjustly, necrophilia causes mental trauma to the family of the departed, two consenting adults having sex... not causing any harm that I can discern. STDs do not count because they can happen to straight people as well, and there are ways to protect against those for all parties, condoms for example. You'll also find a lot of monogamous homosexual couples who for obvious reasons, represent a pretty much non-existent risk of spreading STDs, this also gets into dangerous territory of "AIDs is god's punishment for gays" which would certainly show god to be an asshole if he's turning something harmless into something dangerous just because he wants his way. The other thing is that all evidence we have suggest that homosexuality is something people are born with, not learned. It's a little more complicated than that, but the idea of "curing" homosexuality has failed time and again, with the best case scenario being people shattered by PTSD, and people being "recruited" into homosexuality is based on such half-assed logic that it would be laughable if the failure to grasp basic logic at play weren't so scary, so that raises the question of why god makes people a certain way, with something they cannot change, something they did not choose... and then damns them for it, that's a dick move right there. There's other stuff as well, but that's one of the big ones.

I'm glad to see that you don't actually believe yourself that Christianity singlehandedly brought morality to all the world everywhere though, that debate is pretty involved.

The problem is that those institutions which claim to represent god also claim they are above reproach because of that connection, and have enough pull with their followers to make that almost be the case, that is a frightening concentration of power, of undeserved trust just because these groups pull the faith card.

Sceptical mentality eh... forgive me if I see inconsistent evidence of that in your conduct, or perhaps it's because I'm encountering you after you have applied your sceptical method and come to rather firm conclusions that you seem resistant to accepting new input on. It is refreshing however to see you do not display the zealotry or arrogance to imagine god is directly beaming instructions into your head, there's a remarkable level of self-awareness in you admitting that your knowledge of the bible is probably the thing fuelling most of your moral gut feelings. I will also take your word for it that the bible is very clear on what is literal and what is allegory... of course the problematic elements arise there when something clearly intended literally is perhaps... morally repugnant, or provably wrong, implying either editorial input from the actual hands that wrote it, or that god is himself an asshole. There's also the issue where people less aware than yourself decide the entire thing is literal, and they seem to wield a surprising amount of power in certain parts of the world...

Oh there's plenty of ignorant idiots out there on the internet that just repeat what they've been told ad-nauseum, that much is obvious. However, I think that more groups and ideologies than just Atheism has that kind of issue... and some seem less inclined to be introspective enough to realise they were being asshats even years later.

Okay... what? Let's back up there a bit. When you're talking about reproductive rights, precisely what sort of controls and limits over them do you consider fair and rational? And in what ways precisely do they affect you personally and not just the men and women actually utilising them? Let's get down into the nitty-gritty of the details there, because you made some pretty bold claims while also speaking as broadly and vaguely as humanly possible.

When talking about the separation of church and state, what was actually INTENDED by the people of that era (who were people shaped by their time) is less relevant to me and many others than what the world NEEDED it to be, removing the disproportionate influence ONE religion had over entire countries, including substantial numbers of people who do not believe in that religion and thus should not be bound exclusively and specifically by it, we form governments rather than being ruled by the church to come to a best-possible consensus of what ALL people consider fair and just. A position of initial privilege because YOU consider your path to be the most correct is not in of itself enough for you to set the rules for everyone, because a lot of other groups think the same of their holy text and have about as much evidence behind it. Either all religions get a say on what is acceptable moral conduct based on their percentage of a given population, or none of them do until they provide hard evidence.

Right then, you're not denying the Crusades or the Inquisition, that's good, even if you debate some of the details, that's fine too, there's plenty to unpack about such messy periods of history. And now the issue comes back around to what I made that previous comment about, when I only responded to a fragment of the whole... and my point still stands, the bible was not handwritten by god, and I'm pretty sure he didn't put all the words in the heads of the various people who wrote it, thus "going back to the text in the bible" does not provide an absolute pure set of instructions direct from big G, and whether people are following it or not, they can still do horrible things, the aforementioned homophobia for example. This isn't even getting into variations of the content from the countless translations from ancient Hebrew to Latin to English, the new stories added to the original root Jewish texts over time, the possibility of revisions in the dark ages when only the priests understood the latin the texts were written in and had the sole means to reprint it, absolute authority and trust not to modify it... yeah that totally wouldn't be abused. The point is, the bible is a patchwork quilt, the fact that there is a new testament and an old one also immediately dismisses the notion that there is one true reliable bible that people should have been looking to either back then or now, if the new testament is the "true" one then people didn't have it a certain length of time ago and couldn't have followed it to stop them doing atrocities, and if the old testament is more true, then why does the new one even exist? But if you think there is one perfect version... which one? Which translation, which edition, which testament? The bible has more versions than the Macquarie dictionary, and curiously I hear stories (from other religious people) that some of the ooooooooold texts don't care about homosexuality one way or the other, or have only vague mentions of the virtues of a celibate clergy rather than it being an ironclad rule. For that matter, are you telling me Catholics and Protestants don't either have slightly different versions of the bible or interpret it differently? Because I know one demands a celibate clergy while the others do not. AND, the fact that it's even possible to interpret the same exact text in different ways means that simply consulting the bible is not a magical cure-all if people can get completely different ideas from doing so.

So here's the kicker, if it's possible for the bible to be wrong, (or to be generous, for people to read it wrongly) if it's possible it doesn't always represent the will of god... then why so zealously cling to homosexuality being a sin as one of the things that MUST be correct? What makes that one part of the bible above questioning? Or if you have questioned it, how the hell did you come to the conclusion that you did?

Back to instances of bad behaviour by the Church though, there's also a more recent atrocity the Catholic church at least was rather intimately involved in... for those slow on the uptake, the issue is less that there were rapists in the organisation, and more that the hierarchy covered it all up, intimidated victims into silence, protected the paedophiles and let them offend again, and again, and again. All to preserve its own public image at the expense of the morals it was supposed to uphold, and there's evidence that people in pretty significant "senior management" positions knew and opted not to immediately expel these people from the church and hand them over to police. Now that's appalling on a grand scale, this organised structure, one designed for oversight and checks and balances, one with an penultimate authority figure, systematically failed its own people so thoroughly and is still trying to cover its ass today, trying to minimise how much it pays out to victims by crying poverty, and shipping important witnesses overseas away from investigations. Cardinal Pell anyone? The Australian Royal Commission into Child Abuse (by various organisations not limited to, but including the Catholic Church) would like to have a few words with him.

You still haven't confirmed to me whether you're Protestant or Catholic, because you do realise that if it's the latter then the current Pope, supreme authority of the Church, God's hand on earth... thinks that gay people aren't bad and doesn't have a problem with them getting married.

At the end of the day, it boils down to this for me, if you believe homosexuality is a sin, then you're not one of the good guys, you might not be one of the actively harmful bad guys, but you're still legitimising a completely arbitrary and baseless bit of bigotry. There are other points of contention of course, but sometimes it really is that simple as saying "Homophobe? Fuck off then."
 

Nailzzz

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I get the impression that Nietzsche has been bastardized a bit much between his sisters tampering when he went crazy(she attempted to use it to justify Nazi ideas since she was a fan, despite that Nietzsche was no fan of nationalism), and the fact that too many people have a difficult time divorcing the positions espoused by him absent of personal ego and so get offended. It's too easy to see him as a jerk who lacked all empathy which unsurprisingly has been done here despite the fact that he was a very charitable person.

I would instead recommend people read Arthur Schopenhauer. He was a huge influence on Nietzsche and had come to many similar conclusions as Nietzsche long before Nietzsche attempted to expand on them. I get the impressions that Schopenhauer did a better job of explaining where these ideas come from without coming across as divorced from empathy. His position seemed more in line with the goal of acknowledging an inevitable abyss to which we are all destined but did not view it as a reason to treat each other poorly or to take advantage of each other, but instead as a reason to not create more unnecessary suffering beyond what we are already damned to. He felt that divorcing oneself from ego was a good way to insure that one would inflict less suffering on others. More in line with the thinking of great Stoic philosophers before him.
 

TruthInGaming

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All right then, let's take this from the top.

When it comes to distinguishing between man and god, I only believe one of these things actually exists, so for me, that's the relevant part of the equation. Now if you believe otherwise, good for you, enjoy that, just don't predicate your arguments on other people believing it. As such, praying to god to stop those members of his followers that are doing completely the wrong thing would be a remarkably insincere gesture on my part, not to mention certainly seeming to be pointless, as I don't see him stepping in to stop Westborough Baptist for example, in response to the presumably numerous prayers sent to him by believers that aren't actually crazy assholes.

If your only looking at half the equation I wouldn't expect you to come up with a complete answer. Why do you blame God for the things that some people do? I don't construct my arguments around other people believing it nor am I required to do such. I build my arguments around what I believe and attempt to explain them to people who may question them.

I never mentioned rape or none consenting partners. You seem to have come up with that on your own. The entire rest of your rant seems based on this notion and therefore doesn't apply to anything I said. So despite your suggestion for me to "fuck off" perhaps you should reread my comment and attempt again to dismiss the comparison with some reasoning and facts.

The process of the law works both ways. You seem to believe its ok when it works out favorably to your personal views but deem it as corruption and dictatorship under the same process when it does not. Ignoring the hypocrisy of those statements. "A handful of dictators" do you mean the elected officials representing the will of the electorate? I don't doubt the laws regarding societies beliefs on murder are not beliefs shared by murderers. Were those laws passed by a handful of dictators deciding to be the arbiters of moral law as well? You don't seem to understand the intent of the law or approve of the process unless it aligns with your own moral reasoning. Ironically this is the outlook and attitude of real dictators you express so much distaste for in your writing.
You depute the harm of homosexuality, you reject the authority of God to dictate his own terms. Thus its no more surprising that you reject homosexuality as sin then a thief who deputes the harm of stealing and rejects the authority of society to dictate his behavior as wrong to recognize his behavior as sin. I find it interesting you acknowledge the necrophilia argument on the behavior of an individual having influence on other individuals not involved but don't accept this reasoning from a social standpoint on homosexuality. You dismiss STDs as counting because they can happen among straight people. In most cases this would require one party to be unfaithful to their spouse which is also deemed sin according to God. Thus your exception leads you right back to the original problem of sin. I think STDs misses the point however as even in completely monogamous relationships among homosexual individuals this would still be considered wrong from a Christian standpoint. I'm glad you acknowledge this in your writing and I think we can agree on that aspect of it but again I think STDs has more to do with sexual promiscuity then the validity of homosexual behavior. You seem to infer that if AIDs is Gods punishment for gays then God must be an jerk. I don't believe nor have I seen anything to indicate that God created STDs and inflicted it upon the world to wipe out the homosexual population. Rather it would seem God is acutely aware of the mechanical machinery of his creation and knows how it goes wrong when used in ways it was not intended. He kindly warned us. Again all of this misses the point because it has to do with sexual promiscuity no homosexuality in the so called ideal relationship between lifelong consenting partners. We have evidence that people are born with all kinds of conditions and inclinations. This does not somehow validate those actions. Pedophiles by all indications are "born that way," murderously violent sociopaths are "born that way," politicians may even be "born that way." Biology does not validate unacceptable behavior especially if that biology is flawed as Christians believe and these sad and unfortunate cases in world would seem to indicate. I'd also point out much of the "evidence" you speak of is heavily disputed. I don't personally care because I don't have a PhD in genetics to throw my two cents in one way or the others so lets just assume that the evidence does support this claim but lets not delude ourselves that it is a disputed assumption we are making. "the idea of"curing" homosexuality has failed time and again," Except for in cases where people report it hasn't http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-gay_movement. Even without this point I'd also point out that there are thousands of conditions which cannot be cured. This does not change them from being conditions of disease. Why do you think God is making them that way? What makes you think God plays an active role in genetics at all? Do you think he interacts with other physical properties of the world like pushing rain clouds around and shaking the earth for earthquakes? As far as people being damned we are all in the same boat. Christ offered salvation from this condition because all men are sinful and in need of salvation to be made right with God. Sin is what condemns us whether it be sexual, homosexual or otherwise.

I believe God created people with an innate sense of morality. Christianity explains this morality and brings it to a higher standard to fulfill and transcend it. God isn't impressed with our flawed internal morality we've all fallen short of perfection. God offers forgiveness and sanctification which no amount of human morality can obtain.
I would dispute that any significant institution of the Judeo Christian faith claim to be above reproach. Granting the possibility that such could be the case however I fail to see any backing for this in scripture and thus would be forced to conclude that such individuals or institutions are not behaving in accordance with scripture and therefore could not be aptly implied to be behaving in a Christian fashion. People are corrupt. What of it? We are discussing the ideals of Christianity not the failure of those ideals carried out by flawed human beings.

I'm not sure where you see inconsistency. Perhaps you could point it out to me and I'd be happy to give you my account on it. I learn and grow constantly in my faith it is a life long process. I don't preclude Gods ability to beam instructions into peoples head I'm just not aware of him doing such in my case and would be very skeptical of the message if I were. I don't think the bible is fueling my moral gut feelings but I do think it assists me in shaping my response to those feelings. In most cases yes the bible is pretty cut and dry. Things like revelations remain controversial because it is so "revolutionary" that its very hard to understand beyond the gist of what is written. Almost nothing of Christian practice is taken from this book however as it is seen as a prophetic work that will be better understood when the time comes. I disagree with the conclusion that because something appears as morally repugnant it must either be flawed or god = asshole. If the reader had perfect moral reasoning we might be able to conclude this thought but as human beings are flawed we come with flawed reasoning and morality making discernment on something we object to reading a somewhat difficult proposition and certainly more complicated then the "either or scenario" which you present. You can accept things on a lot of levels. Authority, experience, reasoning, and so on but in any case that doesn't assure us that we are right in accepting or rejecting the idea. If the bible was edited by flawed hand they certainly seem to have some strange notions of what is self serving. If I was redacting or adding to the bible I'd change it almost entirely. I can't think of a single case where communicating Gods law in the bible ended up being beneficial to the writer. In most cases it got them killed, imprisoned, and tortured because people don't typically like hearing that God doesn't approve of what they are doing. This is true for all the prophets, Christ and the apostles which followed. In my experience most people are not willing to die standing by what they say and write knowing it is a lie. The worst actions of the Church around the dark ages did not result from the Church changing the text of the bible but rather ignoring what was already written and indeed when you examine the cases of the prophets, Christ, and the apostles in the bible they had the same issues in their day. Looking around today we haven't really changed from what I can tell.

I'm glad we agree human beings are not perfect.

We are getting a little off topic with reproductive rights in society so I'll try to rope us in by relating it to biblical principles so we can evaluate both without loosing sight of either one. In the bible God commands behavior concerning sexual relationships. Individuals are faced with a choice to either follow these commands or reject them. As individuals we are responsible for our choices either way. If you go out and have sex and a child is conceived then that child is the responsibility of you and whoever you conceived it with. It shouldn't have anything to do with me. However, if a democratic government decides to use my money in any way to assist or harm you in your responsibilities to that child then I immediately become involved and have a financial interest regarding that use of those funds. If someone is trying to use those funds to encourage you to have a baby and get food stamps or have an abortion or maternal care it is very much in my interest to be involved with my money represented in the government. Where no such system exists then I really have no business in your private affairs as it doesn't directly or indirectly affect me financially. Without such a system you are responsible for your choices to the people involved primarily whoever had the child with and the child itself. Ultimately if God exist you will presumable answer to him for your choices not me. I can still talk with you about your choices and encourage you regarding those decisions but ultimately it is your decision and you alone with be responsible for the consequences. Under the system of governance which is involved in those choices for or against them I and everyone else who is taxed also become responsible for those consequences. The bible from what I can tell doesn't seem to promote or demote such systems of government but it does advocate fidelity, restraint, and responsibility which are inherent in such choices. I hope that helps to clarify but if there is a point you want to know about specifically let me know so I can expand on it.

I'd agree with your statements about church and state for the most parts with a few caveats. I'd stress that history is important especially on the foundation of something concerning a movement or a ideology. "Diproporionate influence" is kind of an oxymoron but I get what you are saying and I agree. I'm glad to see you acknowledge the influence Christianity had on the formation of the nation in its early stages and that such a formation of the nation we have today may not have come about under a different system or may be radically different from what we have today. It has always struck me as strange that Christ did not go to the rulers of his time but rather they came to him or he was dragged before them and they either accepted or rejected his claims. The same is true of the apostles the best example in Paul being brought before Nero. As far as the best possible consensus sometimes its slavery in democracies or election of dictators who pursue policies of extermination of Jewish people or "great social leaps forward" resulting in the death of millions. I'd also like to point out that the separation of church and state is in every case a delineation of the institutions of the church and the state not the religious and legal aspect influencing decisions of each other.

Religions are more often ideals that shape our worldview not just collections of those people with such moral views issuing statements. A religious person elected to office will act in accordance with their worldview which is why it is important to evaluate worldviews when analyzing candidates to try to determine the candidate who will reflect your worldview or at least what you believe be better of the available options. In example I'd much rather a Buddhist be in office then a Muslim or an atheist but even a Muslim or an atheist would be better then a satanist or anarchist. I am highly skeptical of politicians espousing Christian ideals because I don't think the bible supports politically religious leaders it certainly calls their motives into question and demands a higher level of scrutiny. That's not to say there shouldn't e Christian politicians but rather their Christianity should guide their choices not become the platform they are running on.
When you say "I'm pretty sure [God] didn't put all the words in the heads of the various people who wrote it." What makes you pretty sure of this? "Homophobia" isn't an example of God encouraging people to do awful things. On the contrary Christ demanded that his followers show love and compassion to individuals. Christ does maintain that homosexuality is wrong when concluding it is not an acceptable sexual relationship. There are no meaningful "variations of content from the countless translations from ancient Hebrew to Latin to English, the new stories added to the original root Jewish texts over time, the possibility of revisions in the dark ages when only the priests understood the Latin the texts were written in and had the sole means to reprint it,"

Lets take these one at a time because this is by far the most inaccurate and misleading thing I've seen you write thus far so I want to address it specifically. One if there is a variation in content arising from translation then that is not an accurate translation and would be rejected the same as any other work that is translated. If on the other hand their is an omission or addition identified that too would be rejected and easily identified in comparing these works to each other. We still have Latin and Greek copies of the text so identifying this kind of thing is pretty easy and its also extremely rare to find meaningful differences beyond one line commentary, misspelling and punctuation errors. I am not aware of any "new stories added to original root Jewish text over time." I'd ask you to cite such a story so I can look into it. Conjecturing that some conspiracy occurred across the dark ages among the monks most of whom we have every reason to believe had deep religious motivation not to alter in any way the text they were attempting to literally faithfully duplicate and in many cases had no literal understanding or means to make such revisions even if they wanted to and would also requires us to ignore the the process of scrutiny the monks had in place to prevent such occurrence. Even granting all of that conjecture and theory we would still have to provide an example of where such a thing occurred and had meaningful effect. I know of no such instance indeed though it has been a while since I have reviewed them in depth I believe I am only aware of 5 possible 7 minor errors/commentary depending on how scrict you want to be that have been identified only 2 of which have meaningful possible theological ramifications which could be argued either way but otherwise have no meaningful addition or remission the text. This was why the dead sea scrolls were such an important religious and archaeological find because for decades these theories of possible tampering and phantom boogie men rouge monks were speculated and the dead sea scrolls obliterated them. This very much does get into the supposed variations of content from the countless translations because we go back to the earliest copies we have which are in Hebrew and Greek. There is literally no other document, account, or story, so faithfully replicated and documented as the bible. (Please go back and read that sentence again to let it sink in).

leviadragon99 said:
"The point is, the bible is a patchwork quilt, the fact that there is a new testament and an old one also immediately dismisses the notion that there is one true reliable bible that people should have been looking to either back then or now, if the new testament is the "true" one then people didn't have it a certain length of time ago and couldn't have followed it to stop them doing atrocities, and if the old testament is more true, then why does the new one even exist?"
I don't even know where to begin in addressing this statement but to start by saying you may wish to understand what it is you are saying before you say it. The new testament is a fulfillment of the old testament. The entire old testament is a testimony of mans fall from grace with God and Gods promise that he would provide a perfect sacrifice for mans sin and create a way for man to become right with God. The new testament is a testament on how Christ fulfilled this promise. You need to be familiar with the old testament to understand why the new testament fulfills it. If you reject Christ as having fulfilled it as some Jews still believe today then you reject the entire new testament and only have the old testament are still waiting for it to be fulfilled. No one that I've ever heard of rationally accepts the new testament and rejects the old testament as Christ and the apostles spend considerable amount of time explaining it and why Christ fulfills it.

"But if you think there is one perfect version... which one?" The one we have.

"Which translation, which edition, which testament?"

Do you understand what a translation is? Translations typically rely on expert translators in Greek or Hebrew to translate the text into whatever language they are performing the translation. English. I prefer my bible editions with commentary or footnotes for reference and study NIV, NASB, NES what have you I'll take KJV if I absolutely must but I have a harder time reading it because of the changes in language over time. I may learn something from any edition I pick up. I am not aware of any translation that doesn't accept both the old testament and the new testament.

I'd encourage you to look into the matter yourself on what the text contain rather then relying on what other people to tell you what they want you to believe it contains. If you still have questions which if you are studying it seriously you very well may have then seek expert consultation with other people and examine their arguments concerning the text on their own merits and your own reasoning.

I'm telling you catholic and protestants have the same 66 books with the same content in each bible but depending on your division of Catholicism you may have additional books that you believe are inspired works called the deuterocanonical books which have been recognized as separate additions from the Jewish bible the same as apocryphal literature. I'm not aware of disagreement surrounding those books involving the 66 books we both share and agree as canon of the bible. The same when I walk into a baptist, catholic, or Presbyterian church there is no disagreement between me and the people of that Church because of the means they use to bolster and strengthen their faith. We are all there because of the things we agree on in those 66 books. Even if I walked into a Jewish temple I wouldn't have any disagreement over the old testament but we would disagree over the new testament because they reject Christ having fulfilled the old testament and I believe he did but we are still in agreement over those 37 books of the old testament. I want to stress this is very different from someone who makes intentional omissions, revisions, and changes the translation of any document related to the bible to benefit themselves. Those report they follow Christ but refuse to follow his teaching are not followers of Christ. We refer to these people as cults. The LDS Church and JW are well documented example of this because you can go back to those original documents and point out the changes made and the reasons for them are obvious. Few people take the time or effort to do this which is why part of the reason they are so prevalent. It is not easy to acknowledge that ones worldview is built upon a perversion of the truth but I have seen people accept the facts when presented to them.

The demand for celibacy comes from a recommendation from Paul. You can read it for yourself in 1 Corinthians 7:25-40. It is not a command but a strong and earnest recommendation which Paul acknowledges as his own recommendation and not being from God. The catholic church chooses to follow the recommendation whereas protestants don't require it. It really is as straight forward as that go read it and let me know if you have any questions. There isn't some kind of dispute between catholic clergy and protestant ministers it is a personal choice based on a recommendation.

The bible isn't responsible for misinterpretations made by other people concerning it. The bible is very clear in black and white terms that homosexual behavior is wrong the in the same way that all sexual behavior outside of the defined boundaries of marriage are wrong. Before we go down the path of gay marriage the bible also defines marriage as between a man and a women. I think homosexual behavior gets more attention because it is more outwardly obvious and a socially disputed issue of our time. Like straight individuals having sex with multiple partners or non committed sex between individuals these all fall under the same rules as being sin. Yes that includes divorced individuals who get remarried while their original spouse is alive (Though there are some technicalities unfaithfulness and abuse with this last one it is still lumped with the rest).

As far as following the bible there are a lot of things I don't like about it and if I didn't think them through would probably change if I was writing my own revision of the bible. I don't like being told what I can and cannot do, I don't like authority of God over my life, I don't like having to recognize that my behavior may be immoral, wrong or sinful, I don't like having to tell people I am sorry and make amends when I'd rather just write them out of my life, I don't like trying to show the love of Christ to a homeless guy that smell of urine and is attempting to physically assault me. Like the purpose of all good authority over our lives there are aspects that we may not like or agree with in the moment but that are beneficial for us in the long run. Running PT in the military and getting yelled or having my day regimented to me were not particularly things I wanted to go through or do but have been beneficial in the long run. In the same way when my boss calls me into the office and demands an explanation for my actions I don't particularly enjoy having to be accountable even when I am right or when I'm told to do something I may not particularly like doing I certainly don't appreciate the concept of authority at those moments.

Being in a position of authority myself I understand the other side of that dynamic and the importance that authority plays in our lives. Even without being in authority or ever experience that side of authority it is not hard to articulate the need for it in our lives begrudgingly as I may be admitting it. That is why even if I may not like things in the bible I submit to its authority over my life. I continue to question it but if I don't like the answers I get I still follow its teaching. This is different from saying I disagree with the principle or the morality of the teaching itself. I am not saying that nor do I believe that concerning the bible.

Concerning homosexuality you asked me "how the hell did you come to the conclusion you did?" Laying out my experience with homosexuality I should clarify that ever since day one of my college studies I've known and been approached by guys seeking a homosexual relationship with me. Some of them have been good friends some of them were new acquaintances, some of them were work colleagues, some of them are people I socially frequent with to this day and would consider me their best friend. I struggled for a long time with the conundrum of homosexuality and aligning it with my concept of morality in that two consenting adults who are not harming other should be free to do as they wish and for those who reject Christianity I still believe that from a social standpoint. The same as I would for any of the other examples I gave of sexual immorality previously. They will ultimately answer to God for their choices and not to me if their choices don't affect me. The issue becomes different if someone claims to be a follower of Christ but openly lives a life rejecting the teachings of Christ.

As a Christian there is a lengthy process of removing this hypocrisy from a group of believers and yes I've had to talk that talk and walk that walk even when it cost me dearly but I think that your question relates more to those who have rejected Christ and his teachings and remain outside of the Church.

In essence correct me if I am wrong you want to know why I think homosexual behavior is considered sin by God. Well this is pretty straight forward. I believe Christ is God. Christ defined the only acceptable sexual relations as marriage and defined marriage as between a man and a women. In looking for a reasons as to why this is the case I find that like in every other case of sexual immorality people are damaged by unfulfilled and hurtful relationships. The many homosexual people that I have known despite their best efforts to convey the exact opposite are very lonely damaged people resulting from their homosexual relationships. Many are quick to deny this when initially pointed out to them the same as most people with most sin but I have had many of them tell me later in candid moments that my assessment was correct and they express mourning and regret. Again these sins are unlike others which inflict harm primarily on other people which is not to say that they don't but rather that the primary nature of the sin is self harming. I think that 1 Corinthians 6:18 aptly articulates this when it says "All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body." Like anyone who cares for someone God doesn't desire for us to harm ourselves or others but rather to have fulfilling and meaningful relationships. This doesn't seem to be easy for people to hear regardless of whether they are homosexual or straight. Usually by the time it is being addressed they are so enamored with the feeling of the sin they don't believe it could possible be wrong. I hope that helps to explain my conclusion. It has not been an easy issue for me because of what it has cost me to follow this teaching but from my own experience despite my personal bias and desires. I am forced to conclude it is a sound teaching.

I agree the crimes of people in positions of authority within the church are more then reason for outrage and anger as are all crimes in any position in any institution. We have already agreed that the church in composed of human beings who are flawed and sinful so I'm not sure what your reason for citing this is other then to perhaps insult or offend. I'm not catholic and I'm not insulted or offended by your posting this but I really can't see additional motives behind it beyond attempted shock value. The bible strongly indicates that the institution of the Church as we know it will become corrupted and fall away from the teachings of Christ. This is why it is important to remember that the Church is composed of a body of believers not a some men in robes or a building. I hope the individuals involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Beyond that I'm not sure what you are advocating and I seriously have to question why.

I told you I am a follower of Christ as accounted in the scripture. I don't take issue with Catholics or protestants as I've shared fellowship with both groups. They both acknowledge and accept Christ and I therefore consider them brothers and sisters of my family. You are essentially asking me "Ok your cousin is a catholic and your aunt is protestant your father is God and your mother is the church so which are you protestant or catholic?" The question is flawed because it equivocates on an either or scenario that doesn't exist for me. Since when and where is the pope ok with gay marriage? All that I am aware of is some comments made in passing to a reporter that we need to treat gay people with love. Which echoes the words of Christ and biblical teaching for the last two thousand years. Hardly a revelation of change. He said nothing about their behavior or gay marriage. Even if he had it wouldn't come as a total shock as we've well establish the flawed nature of man even in leadership positions of the church and yes the pope is in need of Christs forgiveness the same as me or you. I do believe he may have a better understanding of the scriptures and perhaps even a better relationship with Christ then myself but this is speculation on my part. The most sinful pagan imaginable with a repenting heart seeking Christ is closer to God then the most religious figure imaginable with a unrepentant heart who rejects Christ.

At the end of the day I have no doubt that the Nazis felt the same about their ultimate solution. If you accept relativistic moralism you have to accept that your "good guys and bad guys" are only conditions of your own perspective perspective and may by change of circumstance easily reverse roles. The 21st century was plagued by this kind of thinking and it is no coincidence that it was aptly prophesized by Nietzsche and others that it would be the most bloody era of human history to date. As Ayn Rand aptly commented "You can avoid reality but you cannot avoid the consequences of reality." If your beliefs are so prejudice and ingrained in your mind that you must label and dismiss others who do not agree with them before hearing them out and rationally considering their arguments you are blind and deaf by your own choice. It would seem by your own statement that your mind was decided before you asked your questions. The truth will not be able to be spoken or shown to you and even if it lies in your path and you stumble head over heels across it you will not be able to recognize it. Jesus often said let those who have ears hear and let those who have eyes see. He wasn't making meaningless statements and gestures to the blind and deaf.

I hope the response answers some of your questions and prompts more to come. I don't want you to take offense to my comment but I'd rather you take offense to a hard truth and learn something regarding the truth in the statement then to cordially remains numb to the gospel. I do encourage you to look into meaning and reasons for the old and new testaments even of only for your own benefit in future conversation concerning them. It is hard to take people seriously in a moderate depth of understanding a topic when they make statements that convey a poor understanding pf basic principles on the subject. My mission however is to meet you at whatever understanding you may have and attempt to elevate that understanding in sharing the love and compassion of Christ. If you can perceive it I rejoice. If you reject it I move on and continue to pray for you.

I will watch for your response. I apologize if I am slow to respond. The heart is will but the time is limited.
 

leviadragon99

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Jun 17, 2010
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TruthInGaming said:
All right then, let's take this from the top.

When it comes to distinguishing between man and god, I only believe one of these things actually exists, so for me, that's the relevant part of the equation. Now if you believe otherwise, good for you, enjoy that, just don't predicate your arguments on other people believing it. As such, praying to god to stop those members of his followers that are doing completely the wrong thing would be a remarkably insincere gesture on my part, not to mention certainly seeming to be pointless, as I don't see him stepping in to stop Westborough Baptist for example, in response to the presumably numerous prayers sent to him by believers that aren't actually crazy assholes.

If your only looking at half the equation I wouldn't expect you to come up with a complete answer. Why do you blame God for the things that some people do? I don't construct my arguments around other people believing it nor am I required to do such. I build my arguments around what I believe and attempt to explain them to people who may question them.

I never mentioned rape or none consenting partners. You seem to have come up with that on your own. The entire rest of your rant seems based on this notion and therefore doesn't apply to anything I said. So despite your suggestion for me to "fuck off" perhaps you should reread my comment and attempt again to dismiss the comparison with some reasoning and facts.

The process of the law works both ways. You seem to believe its ok when it works out favorably to your personal views but deem it as corruption and dictatorship under the same process when it does not. Ignoring the hypocrisy of those statements. "A handful of dictators" do you mean the elected officials representing the will of the electorate? I don't doubt the laws regarding societies beliefs on murder are not beliefs shared by murderers. Were those laws passed by a handful of dictators deciding to be the arbiters of moral law as well? You don't seem to understand the intent of the law or approve of the process unless it aligns with your own moral reasoning. Ironically this is the outlook and attitude of real dictators you express so much distaste for in your writing.
You depute the harm of homosexuality, you reject the authority of God to dictate his own terms. Thus its no more surprising that you reject homosexuality as sin then a thief who deputes the harm of stealing and rejects the authority of society to dictate his behavior as wrong to recognize his behavior as sin. I find it interesting you acknowledge the necrophilia argument on the behavior of an individual having influence on other individuals not involved but don't accept this reasoning from a social standpoint on homosexuality. You dismiss STDs as counting because they can happen among straight people. In most cases this would require one party to be unfaithful to their spouse which is also deemed sin according to God. Thus your exception leads you right back to the original problem of sin. I think STDs misses the point however as even in completely monogamous relationships among homosexual individuals this would still be considered wrong from a Christian standpoint. I'm glad you acknowledge this in your writing and I think we can agree on that aspect of it but again I think STDs has more to do with sexual promiscuity then the validity of homosexual behavior. You seem to infer that if AIDs is Gods punishment for gays then God must be an jerk. I don't believe nor have I seen anything to indicate that God created STDs and inflicted it upon the world to wipe out the homosexual population. Rather it would seem God is acutely aware of the mechanical machinery of his creation and knows how it goes wrong when used in ways it was not intended. He kindly warned us. Again all of this misses the point because it has to do with sexual promiscuity no homosexuality in the so called ideal relationship between lifelong consenting partners. We have evidence that people are born with all kinds of conditions and inclinations. This does not somehow validate those actions. Pedophiles by all indications are "born that way," murderously violent sociopaths are "born that way," politicians may even be "born that way." Biology does not validate unacceptable behavior especially if that biology is flawed as Christians believe and these sad and unfortunate cases in world would seem to indicate. I'd also point out much of the "evidence" you speak of is heavily disputed. I don't personally care because I don't have a PhD in genetics to throw my two cents in one way or the others so lets just assume that the evidence does support this claim but lets not delude ourselves that it is a disputed assumption we are making. "the idea of"curing" homosexuality has failed time and again," Except for in cases where people report it hasn't http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-gay_movement. Even without this point I'd also point out that there are thousands of conditions which cannot be cured. This does not change them from being conditions of disease. Why do you think God is making them that way? What makes you think God plays an active role in genetics at all? Do you think he interacts with other physical properties of the world like pushing rain clouds around and shaking the earth for earthquakes? As far as people being damned we are all in the same boat. Christ offered salvation from this condition because all men are sinful and in need of salvation to be made right with God. Sin is what condemns us whether it be sexual, homosexual or otherwise.

I believe God created people with an innate sense of morality. Christianity explains this morality and brings it to a higher standard to fulfill and transcend it. God isn't impressed with our flawed internal morality we've all fallen short of perfection. God offers forgiveness and sanctification which no amount of human morality can obtain.
I would dispute that any significant institution of the Judeo Christian faith claim to be above reproach. Granting the possibility that such could be the case however I fail to see any backing for this in scripture and thus would be forced to conclude that such individuals or institutions are not behaving in accordance with scripture and therefore could not be aptly implied to be behaving in a Christian fashion. People are corrupt. What of it? We are discussing the ideals of Christianity not the failure of those ideals carried out by flawed human beings.

I'm not sure where you see inconsistency. Perhaps you could point it out to me and I'd be happy to give you my account on it. I learn and grow constantly in my faith it is a life long process. I don't preclude Gods ability to beam instructions into peoples head I'm just not aware of him doing such in my case and would be very skeptical of the message if I were. I don't think the bible is fueling my moral gut feelings but I do think it assists me in shaping my response to those feelings. In most cases yes the bible is pretty cut and dry. Things like revelations remain controversial because it is so "revolutionary" that its very hard to understand beyond the gist of what is written. Almost nothing of Christian practice is taken from this book however as it is seen as a prophetic work that will be better understood when the time comes. I disagree with the conclusion that because something appears as morally repugnant it must either be flawed or god = asshole. If the reader had perfect moral reasoning we might be able to conclude this thought but as human beings are flawed we come with flawed reasoning and morality making discernment on something we object to reading a somewhat difficult proposition and certainly more complicated then the "either or scenario" which you present. You can accept things on a lot of levels. Authority, experience, reasoning, and so on but in any case that doesn't assure us that we are right in accepting or rejecting the idea. If the bible was edited by flawed hand they certainly seem to have some strange notions of what is self serving. If I was redacting or adding to the bible I'd change it almost entirely. I can't think of a single case where communicating Gods law in the bible ended up being beneficial to the writer. In most cases it got them killed, imprisoned, and tortured because people don't typically like hearing that God doesn't approve of what they are doing. This is true for all the prophets, Christ and the apostles which followed. In my experience most people are not willing to die standing by what they say and write knowing it is a lie. The worst actions of the Church around the dark ages did not result from the Church changing the text of the bible but rather ignoring what was already written and indeed when you examine the cases of the prophets, Christ, and the apostles in the bible they had the same issues in their day. Looking around today we haven't really changed from what I can tell.

I'm glad we agree human beings are not perfect.

We are getting a little off topic with reproductive rights in society so I'll try to rope us in by relating it to biblical principles so we can evaluate both without loosing sight of either one. In the bible God commands behavior concerning sexual relationships. Individuals are faced with a choice to either follow these commands or reject them. As individuals we are responsible for our choices either way. If you go out and have sex and a child is conceived then that child is the responsibility of you and whoever you conceived it with. It shouldn't have anything to do with me. However, if a democratic government decides to use my money in any way to assist or harm you in your responsibilities to that child then I immediately become involved and have a financial interest regarding that use of those funds. If someone is trying to use those funds to encourage you to have a baby and get food stamps or have an abortion or maternal care it is very much in my interest to be involved with my money represented in the government. Where no such system exists then I really have no business in your private affairs as it doesn't directly or indirectly affect me financially. Without such a system you are responsible for your choices to the people involved primarily whoever had the child with and the child itself. Ultimately if God exist you will presumable answer to him for your choices not me. I can still talk with you about your choices and encourage you regarding those decisions but ultimately it is your decision and you alone with be responsible for the consequences. Under the system of governance which is involved in those choices for or against them I and everyone else who is taxed also become responsible for those consequences. The bible from what I can tell doesn't seem to promote or demote such systems of government but it does advocate fidelity, restraint, and responsibility which are inherent in such choices. I hope that helps to clarify but if there is a point you want to know about specifically let me know so I can expand on it.

I'd agree with your statements about church and state for the most parts with a few caveats. I'd stress that history is important especially on the foundation of something concerning a movement or a ideology. "Diproporionate influence" is kind of an oxymoron but I get what you are saying and I agree. I'm glad to see you acknowledge the influence Christianity had on the formation of the nation in its early stages and that such a formation of the nation we have today may not have come about under a different system or may be radically different from what we have today. It has always struck me as strange that Christ did not go to the rulers of his time but rather they came to him or he was dragged before them and they either accepted or rejected his claims. The same is true of the apostles the best example in Paul being brought before Nero. As far as the best possible consensus sometimes its slavery in democracies or election of dictators who pursue policies of extermination of Jewish people or "great social leaps forward" resulting in the death of millions. I'd also like to point out that the separation of church and state is in every case a delineation of the institutions of the church and the state not the religious and legal aspect influencing decisions of each other.

Religions are more often ideals that shape our worldview not just collections of those people with such moral views issuing statements. A religious person elected to office will act in accordance with their worldview which is why it is important to evaluate worldviews when analyzing candidates to try to determine the candidate who will reflect your worldview or at least what you believe be better of the available options. In example I'd much rather a Buddhist be in office then a Muslim or an atheist but even a Muslim or an atheist would be better then a satanist or anarchist. I am highly skeptical of politicians espousing Christian ideals because I don't think the bible supports politically religious leaders it certainly calls their motives into question and demands a higher level of scrutiny. That's not to say there shouldn't e Christian politicians but rather their Christianity should guide their choices not become the platform they are running on.
When you say "I'm pretty sure [God] didn't put all the words in the heads of the various people who wrote it." What makes you pretty sure of this? "Homophobia" isn't an example of God encouraging people to do awful things. On the contrary Christ demanded that his followers show love and compassion to individuals. Christ does maintain that homosexuality is wrong when concluding it is not an acceptable sexual relationship. There are no meaningful "variations of content from the countless translations from ancient Hebrew to Latin to English, the new stories added to the original root Jewish texts over time, the possibility of revisions in the dark ages when only the priests understood the Latin the texts were written in and had the sole means to reprint it,"

Lets take these one at a time because this is by far the most inaccurate and misleading thing I've seen you write thus far so I want to address it specifically. One if there is a variation in content arising from translation then that is not an accurate translation and would be rejected the same as any other work that is translated. If on the other hand their is an omission or addition identified that too would be rejected and easily identified in comparing these works to each other. We still have Latin and Greek copies of the text so identifying this kind of thing is pretty easy and its also extremely rare to find meaningful differences beyond one line commentary, misspelling and punctuation errors. I am not aware of any "new stories added to original root Jewish text over time." I'd ask you to cite such a story so I can look into it. Conjecturing that some conspiracy occurred across the dark ages among the monks most of whom we have every reason to believe had deep religious motivation not to alter in any way the text they were attempting to literally faithfully duplicate and in many cases had no literal understanding or means to make such revisions even if they wanted to and would also requires us to ignore the the process of scrutiny the monks had in place to prevent such occurrence. Even granting all of that conjecture and theory we would still have to provide an example of where such a thing occurred and had meaningful effect. I know of no such instance indeed though it has been a while since I have reviewed them in depth I believe I am only aware of 5 possible 7 minor errors/commentary depending on how scrict you want to be that have been identified only 2 of which have meaningful possible theological ramifications which could be argued either way but otherwise have no meaningful addition or remission the text. This was why the dead sea scrolls were such an important religious and archaeological find because for decades these theories of possible tampering and phantom boogie men rouge monks were speculated and the dead sea scrolls obliterated them. This very much does get into the supposed variations of content from the countless translations because we go back to the earliest copies we have which are in Hebrew and Greek. There is literally no other document, account, or story, so faithfully replicated and documented as the bible. (Please go back and read that sentence again to let it sink in).

leviadragon99 said:
"The point is, the bible is a patchwork quilt, the fact that there is a new testament and an old one also immediately dismisses the notion that there is one true reliable bible that people should have been looking to either back then or now, if the new testament is the "true" one then people didn't have it a certain length of time ago and couldn't have followed it to stop them doing atrocities, and if the old testament is more true, then why does the new one even exist?"
I don't even know where to begin in addressing this statement but to start by saying you may wish to understand what it is you are saying before you say it. The new testament is a fulfillment of the old testament. The entire old testament is a testimony of mans fall from grace with God and Gods promise that he would provide a perfect sacrifice for mans sin and create a way for man to become right with God. The new testament is a testament on how Christ fulfilled this promise. You need to be familiar with the old testament to understand why the new testament fulfills it. If you reject Christ as having fulfilled it as some Jews still believe today then you reject the entire new testament and only have the old testament are still waiting for it to be fulfilled. No one that I've ever heard of rationally accepts the new testament and rejects the old testament as Christ and the apostles spend considerable amount of time explaining it and why Christ fulfills it.

"But if you think there is one perfect version... which one?" The one we have.

"Which translation, which edition, which testament?"

Do you understand what a translation is? Translations typically rely on expert translators in Greek or Hebrew to translate the text into whatever language they are performing the translation. English. I prefer my bible editions with commentary or footnotes for reference and study NIV, NASB, NES what have you I'll take KJV if I absolutely must but I have a harder time reading it because of the changes in language over time. I may learn something from any edition I pick up. I am not aware of any translation that doesn't accept both the old testament and the new testament.

I'd encourage you to look into the matter yourself on what the text contain rather then relying on what other people to tell you what they want you to believe it contains. If you still have questions which if you are studying it seriously you very well may have then seek expert consultation with other people and examine their arguments concerning the text on their own merits and your own reasoning.

I'm telling you catholic and protestants have the same 66 books with the same content in each bible but depending on your division of Catholicism you may have additional books that you believe are inspired works called the deuterocanonical books which have been recognized as separate additions from the Jewish bible the same as apocryphal literature. I'm not aware of disagreement surrounding those books involving the 66 books we both share and agree as canon of the bible. The same when I walk into a baptist, catholic, or Presbyterian church there is no disagreement between me and the people of that Church because of the means they use to bolster and strengthen their faith. We are all there because of the things we agree on in those 66 books. Even if I walked into a Jewish temple I wouldn't have any disagreement over the old testament but we would disagree over the new testament because they reject Christ having fulfilled the old testament and I believe he did but we are still in agreement over those 37 books of the old testament. I want to stress this is very different from someone who makes intentional omissions, revisions, and changes the translation of any document related to the bible to benefit themselves. Those report they follow Christ but refuse to follow his teaching are not followers of Christ. We refer to these people as cults. The LDS Church and JW are well documented example of this because you can go back to those original documents and point out the changes made and the reasons for them are obvious. Few people take the time or effort to do this which is why part of the reason they are so prevalent. It is not easy to acknowledge that ones worldview is built upon a perversion of the truth but I have seen people accept the facts when presented to them.

The demand for celibacy comes from a recommendation from Paul. You can read it for yourself in 1 Corinthians 7:25-40. It is not a command but a strong and earnest recommendation which Paul acknowledges as his own recommendation and not being from God. The catholic church chooses to follow the recommendation whereas protestants don't require it. It really is as straight forward as that go read it and let me know if you have any questions. There isn't some kind of dispute between catholic clergy and protestant ministers it is a personal choice based on a recommendation.

The bible isn't responsible for misinterpretations made by other people concerning it. The bible is very clear in black and white terms that homosexual behavior is wrong the in the same way that all sexual behavior outside of the defined boundaries of marriage are wrong. Before we go down the path of gay marriage the bible also defines marriage as between a man and a women. I think homosexual behavior gets more attention because it is more outwardly obvious and a socially disputed issue of our time. Like straight individuals having sex with multiple partners or non committed sex between individuals these all fall under the same rules as being sin. Yes that includes divorced individuals who get remarried while their original spouse is alive (Though there are some technicalities unfaithfulness and abuse with this last one it is still lumped with the rest).

As far as following the bible there are a lot of things I don't like about it and if I didn't think them through would probably change if I was writing my own revision of the bible. I don't like being told what I can and cannot do, I don't like authority of God over my life, I don't like having to recognize that my behavior may be immoral, wrong or sinful, I don't like having to tell people I am sorry and make amends when I'd rather just write them out of my life, I don't like trying to show the love of Christ to a homeless guy that smell of urine and is attempting to physically assault me. Like the purpose of all good authority over our lives there are aspects that we may not like or agree with in the moment but that are beneficial for us in the long run. Running PT in the military and getting yelled or having my day regimented to me were not particularly things I wanted to go through or do but have been beneficial in the long run. In the same way when my boss calls me into the office and demands an explanation for my actions I don't particularly enjoy having to be accountable even when I am right or when I'm told to do something I may not particularly like doing I certainly don't appreciate the concept of authority at those moments.

Being in a position of authority myself I understand the other side of that dynamic and the importance that authority plays in our lives. Even without being in authority or ever experience that side of authority it is not hard to articulate the need for it in our lives begrudgingly as I may be admitting it. That is why even if I may not like things in the bible I submit to its authority over my life. I continue to question it but if I don't like the answers I get I still follow its teaching. This is different from saying I disagree with the principle or the morality of the teaching itself. I am not saying that nor do I believe that concerning the bible.

Concerning homosexuality you asked me "how the hell did you come to the conclusion you did?" Laying out my experience with homosexuality I should clarify that ever since day one of my college studies I've known and been approached by guys seeking a homosexual relationship with me. Some of them have been good friends some of them were new acquaintances, some of them were work colleagues, some of them are people I socially frequent with to this day and would consider me their best friend. I struggled for a long time with the conundrum of homosexuality and aligning it with my concept of morality in that two consenting adults who are not harming other should be free to do as they wish and for those who reject Christianity I still believe that from a social standpoint. The same as I would for any of the other examples I gave of sexual immorality previously. They will ultimately answer to God for their choices and not to me if their choices don't affect me. The issue becomes different if someone claims to be a follower of Christ but openly lives a life rejecting the teachings of Christ.

As a Christian there is a lengthy process of removing this hypocrisy from a group of believers and yes I've had to talk that talk and walk that walk even when it cost me dearly but I think that your question relates more to those who have rejected Christ and his teachings and remain outside of the Church.

In essence correct me if I am wrong you want to know why I think homosexual behavior is considered sin by God. Well this is pretty straight forward. I believe Christ is God. Christ defined the only acceptable sexual relations as marriage and defined marriage as between a man and a women. In looking for a reasons as to why this is the case I find that like in every other case of sexual immorality people are damaged by unfulfilled and hurtful relationships. The many homosexual people that I have known despite their best efforts to convey the exact opposite are very lonely damaged people resulting from their homosexual relationships. Many are quick to deny this when initially pointed out to them the same as most people with most sin but I have had many of them tell me later in candid moments that my assessment was correct and they express mourning and regret. Again these sins are unlike others which inflict harm primarily on other people which is not to say that they don't but rather that the primary nature of the sin is self harming. I think that 1 Corinthians 6:18 aptly articulates this when it says "All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body." Like anyone who cares for someone God doesn't desire for us to harm ourselves or others but rather to have fulfilling and meaningful relationships. This doesn't seem to be easy for people to hear regardless of whether they are homosexual or straight. Usually by the time it is being addressed they are so enamored with the feeling of the sin they don't believe it could possible be wrong. I hope that helps to explain my conclusion. It has not been an easy issue for me because of what it has cost me to follow this teaching but from my own experience despite my personal bias and desires. I am forced to conclude it is a sound teaching.

I agree the crimes of people in positions of authority within the church are more then reason for outrage and anger as are all crimes in any position in any institution. We have already agreed that the church in composed of human beings who are flawed and sinful so I'm not sure what your reason for citing this is other then to perhaps insult or offend. I'm not catholic and I'm not insulted or offended by your posting this but I really can't see additional motives behind it beyond attempted shock value. The bible strongly indicates that the institution of the Church as we know it will become corrupted and fall away from the teachings of Christ. This is why it is important to remember that the Church is composed of a body of believers not a some men in robes or a building. I hope the individuals involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Beyond that I'm not sure what you are advocating and I seriously have to question why.

I told you I am a follower of Christ as accounted in the scripture. I don't take issue with Catholics or protestants as I've shared fellowship with both groups. They both acknowledge and accept Christ and I therefore consider them brothers and sisters of my family. You are essentially asking me "Ok your cousin is a catholic and your aunt is protestant your father is God and your mother is the church so which are you protestant or catholic?" The question is flawed because it equivocates on an either or scenario that doesn't exist for me. Since when and where is the pope ok with gay marriage? All that I am aware of is some comments made in passing to a reporter that we need to treat gay people with love. Which echoes the words of Christ and biblical teaching for the last two thousand years. Hardly a revelation of change. He said nothing about their behavior or gay marriage. Even if he had it wouldn't come as a total shock as we've well establish the flawed nature of man even in leadership positions of the church and yes the pope is in need of Christs forgiveness the same as me or you. I do believe he may have a better understanding of the scriptures and perhaps even a better relationship with Christ then myself but this is speculation on my part. The most sinful pagan imaginable with a repenting heart seeking Christ is closer to God then the most religious figure imaginable with a unrepentant heart who rejects Christ.

At the end of the day I have no doubt that the Nazis felt the same about their ultimate solution. If you accept relativistic moralism you have to accept that your "good guys and bad guys" are only conditions of your own perspective perspective and may by change of circumstance easily reverse roles. The 21st century was plagued by this kind of thinking and it is no coincidence that it was aptly prophesized by Nietzsche and others that it would be the most bloody era of human history to date. As Ayn Rand aptly commented "You can avoid reality but you cannot avoid the consequences of reality." If your beliefs are so prejudice and ingrained in your mind that you must label and dismiss others who do not agree with them before hearing them out and rationally considering their arguments you are blind and deaf by your own choice. It would seem by your own statement that your mind was decided before you asked your questions. The truth will not be able to be spoken or shown to you and even if it lies in your path and you stumble head over heels across it you will not be able to recognize it. Jesus often said let those who have ears hear and let those who have eyes see. He wasn't making meaningless statements and gestures to the blind and deaf.

I hope the response answers some of your questions and prompts more to come. I don't want you to take offense to my comment but I'd rather you take offense to a hard truth and learn something regarding the truth in the statement then to cordially remains numb to the gospel. I do encourage you to look into meaning and reasons for the old and new testaments even of only for your own benefit in future conversation concerning them. It is hard to take people seriously in a moderate depth of understanding a topic when they make statements that convey a poor understanding pf basic principles on the subject. My mission however is to meet you at whatever understanding you may have and attempt to elevate that understanding in sharing the love and compassion of Christ. If you can perceive it I rejoice. If you reject it I move on and continue to pray for you.

I will watch for your response. I apologize if I am slow to respond. The heart is will but the time is limited.
Oh for... now you're just fucking with me. Have my reply in quotes, then your reply below that, it's not hard, this thing where you mingle the two together to have the rebuttals directly after the initial paragraphs is just annoying and not necessary for me to keep track of which rebuttal goes with which paragraph.

The thing is, from my perspective I do believe I am looking at the full equation, the people who do bad things on this plane of existence, I blame THEM for using god as an excuse. I talk about what blame god may hypothetically deserve to actually try and draw a line between the actions of his followers in spite of him, and what actions they take BECAUSE of him, an important distinction if we're trying to present him as perfect, if he sincerely wants something evil and it's not just his followers getting it wrong, then he's an asshole end of story, if it's not actually what he wants, then his followers should cut it the hell out and you should be on the front lines trying to make them do so, my entire argument has been about trying to parse that which can and cannot be blamed on him if we accept that he exists.

No, you talked about a man marrying a "child" as in someone that's underage, that's statutory rape there friend, dance around it all you like, but you either fucked up in calling a person of legal age a child, or you compared paedophilia to homosexuality, so the "fuck off" point still stands, maybe take a look back at what you actually wrote and choose the words better next time.

Okay, trying to pick apart that long rant on dictators, your point boils down do "well of course you find this morally wrong, you're a criminal" which doesn't really pass mustard, so no, god doesn't get to set his own terms if those terms are completely arbitrary, just like we don't let governments pass policies completely unopposed without them first talking to us about the merits. I don't consider it corruption when something goes against what I want, I consider it corruption when a group THAT IS NOT THEMSELVES ELECTED exerts pressure by money and favours on the people who are actually elected to achieve a result that does not represent the majority the elected people are supposed to be representing, it is directly comparable to big business pushing for a contract that harms the public good.

Yes, I recognise that necrophilia causes LEGITIMATE harm to third parties, because it is their family that has been directly affected by those actions, someone getting offended that two random strangers is gay is not a legitimate harm, it is someone being precious about something that has nothing to do with them.

Okay then, so your views on "promiscuity" are fucking medieval as well, good to know. Here's a thought, maybe people could have sex with other people BEFORE they get married, then they're not being unfaithful to their spouse, and if they're using safe sex methods, they're not going to get STDs, so your argument of the immorality of having sex falls apart yet again.

So your argument comes right back around to "because god said so" no reason WHY homosexuality is apparently immoral, just that it is... yeahno, that line of thought can sod right off, because again, morality without a purpose is meaningless.

Hey, the difference between homosexuals and paedophiles is that the latter HARM PEOPLE how are you still not getting that? Paedophiles invariably rape if they act on their impulses, the obviousness of their immorality is displayed in the practical concerns.

And funnily enough, some sociopaths actually manage to challenge their nature constructively and not become murderers or the like, big business has a lot of them, and if you tried to eliminate all the ruthless types from big business, big business wouldn't exist anymore, it's not a pleasant trait, but it does not automatically make people monsters... likewise for politicians, some of them aren't actually horrible, you don't exactly do yourself any credit with these oversimplifications, they highlight how ludicrous your case against homosexuality is.

Okay, you sent me a link that doesn't quite work, but I'm going to quote the actual wiki page on that, ahem.

"The ex-gay movement relies on the involvement of individuals who formerly identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual but no longer do; these individuals may either claim that they have eliminated their attraction to the same sex altogether or simply that they abstain from acting on such attraction.

There have been various scandals related to this movement, including some self-claimed ex-gays having been found in same-sex relationships despite having denied this, as well as controversies over gay minors being forced to go to ex-gay camps against their will, and overt admissions by organizations related to the movement that conversion therapy does not work"

So yeah, abstinence rather than actually "curing" that trait, brainwashing kids, people who were "cured" being in gay relationships afterwards, and even the organizations themselves openly admitting their process doesn't work, seems pretty conclusive to me. People can be harassed into simply not doing something, that doesn't fundamentally change their desires.

I'm not even going to bother responding to the rest of this, I'm just tired of you and your spectacular level of bullshit, accepting that god wants something without ever questioning WHY or even seemingly if it's actually him wanting it, I won't be responding in future, I'm just glad your influence is limited to people willing to bicker with you on the internet, and I look forward to you being forced to increasingly only repeat your bigotry to the five people in your Westborough Baptist book club when more and more civilised nations legalise gay marriage.
 

TruthInGaming

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Apr 29, 2015
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leviadragon99 said:
TruthInGaming said:
All right then, let's take this from the top.

When it comes to distinguishing between man and god, I only believe one of these things actually exists, so for me, that's the relevant part of the equation. Now if you believe otherwise, good for you, enjoy that, just don't predicate your arguments on other people believing it. As such, praying to god to stop those members of his followers that are doing completely the wrong thing would be a remarkably insincere gesture on my part, not to mention certainly seeming to be pointless, as I don't see him stepping in to stop Westborough Baptist for example, in response to the presumably numerous prayers sent to him by believers that aren't actually crazy assholes.

If your only looking at half the equation I wouldn't expect you to come up with a complete answer. Why do you blame God for the things that some people do? I don't construct my arguments around other people believing it nor am I required to do such. I build my arguments around what I believe and attempt to explain them to people who may question them.

I never mentioned rape or none consenting partners. You seem to have come up with that on your own. The entire rest of your rant seems based on this notion and therefore doesn't apply to anything I said. So despite your suggestion for me to "fuck off" perhaps you should reread my comment and attempt again to dismiss the comparison with some reasoning and facts.

The process of the law works both ways. You seem to believe its ok when it works out favorably to your personal views but deem it as corruption and dictatorship under the same process when it does not. Ignoring the hypocrisy of those statements. "A handful of dictators" do you mean the elected officials representing the will of the electorate? I don't doubt the laws regarding societies beliefs on murder are not beliefs shared by murderers. Were those laws passed by a handful of dictators deciding to be the arbiters of moral law as well? You don't seem to understand the intent of the law or approve of the process unless it aligns with your own moral reasoning. Ironically this is the outlook and attitude of real dictators you express so much distaste for in your writing.
You depute the harm of homosexuality, you reject the authority of God to dictate his own terms. Thus its no more surprising that you reject homosexuality as sin then a thief who deputes the harm of stealing and rejects the authority of society to dictate his behavior as wrong to recognize his behavior as sin. I find it interesting you acknowledge the necrophilia argument on the behavior of an individual having influence on other individuals not involved but don't accept this reasoning from a social standpoint on homosexuality. You dismiss STDs as counting because they can happen among straight people. In most cases this would require one party to be unfaithful to their spouse which is also deemed sin according to God. Thus your exception leads you right back to the original problem of sin. I think STDs misses the point however as even in completely monogamous relationships among homosexual individuals this would still be considered wrong from a Christian standpoint. I'm glad you acknowledge this in your writing and I think we can agree on that aspect of it but again I think STDs has more to do with sexual promiscuity then the validity of homosexual behavior. You seem to infer that if AIDs is Gods punishment for gays then God must be an jerk. I don't believe nor have I seen anything to indicate that God created STDs and inflicted it upon the world to wipe out the homosexual population. Rather it would seem God is acutely aware of the mechanical machinery of his creation and knows how it goes wrong when used in ways it was not intended. He kindly warned us. Again all of this misses the point because it has to do with sexual promiscuity no homosexuality in the so called ideal relationship between lifelong consenting partners. We have evidence that people are born with all kinds of conditions and inclinations. This does not somehow validate those actions. Pedophiles by all indications are "born that way," murderously violent sociopaths are "born that way," politicians may even be "born that way." Biology does not validate unacceptable behavior especially if that biology is flawed as Christians believe and these sad and unfortunate cases in world would seem to indicate. I'd also point out much of the "evidence" you speak of is heavily disputed. I don't personally care because I don't have a PhD in genetics to throw my two cents in one way or the others so lets just assume that the evidence does support this claim but lets not delude ourselves that it is a disputed assumption we are making. "the idea of"curing" homosexuality has failed time and again," Except for in cases where people report it hasn't http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-gay_movement. Even without this point I'd also point out that there are thousands of conditions which cannot be cured. This does not change them from being conditions of disease. Why do you think God is making them that way? What makes you think God plays an active role in genetics at all? Do you think he interacts with other physical properties of the world like pushing rain clouds around and shaking the earth for earthquakes? As far as people being damned we are all in the same boat. Christ offered salvation from this condition because all men are sinful and in need of salvation to be made right with God. Sin is what condemns us whether it be sexual, homosexual or otherwise.

I believe God created people with an innate sense of morality. Christianity explains this morality and brings it to a higher standard to fulfill and transcend it. God isn't impressed with our flawed internal morality we've all fallen short of perfection. God offers forgiveness and sanctification which no amount of human morality can obtain.
I would dispute that any significant institution of the Judeo Christian faith claim to be above reproach. Granting the possibility that such could be the case however I fail to see any backing for this in scripture and thus would be forced to conclude that such individuals or institutions are not behaving in accordance with scripture and therefore could not be aptly implied to be behaving in a Christian fashion. People are corrupt. What of it? We are discussing the ideals of Christianity not the failure of those ideals carried out by flawed human beings.

I'm not sure where you see inconsistency. Perhaps you could point it out to me and I'd be happy to give you my account on it. I learn and grow constantly in my faith it is a life long process. I don't preclude Gods ability to beam instructions into peoples head I'm just not aware of him doing such in my case and would be very skeptical of the message if I were. I don't think the bible is fueling my moral gut feelings but I do think it assists me in shaping my response to those feelings. In most cases yes the bible is pretty cut and dry. Things like revelations remain controversial because it is so "revolutionary" that its very hard to understand beyond the gist of what is written. Almost nothing of Christian practice is taken from this book however as it is seen as a prophetic work that will be better understood when the time comes. I disagree with the conclusion that because something appears as morally repugnant it must either be flawed or god = asshole. If the reader had perfect moral reasoning we might be able to conclude this thought but as human beings are flawed we come with flawed reasoning and morality making discernment on something we object to reading a somewhat difficult proposition and certainly more complicated then the "either or scenario" which you present. You can accept things on a lot of levels. Authority, experience, reasoning, and so on but in any case that doesn't assure us that we are right in accepting or rejecting the idea. If the bible was edited by flawed hand they certainly seem to have some strange notions of what is self serving. If I was redacting or adding to the bible I'd change it almost entirely. I can't think of a single case where communicating Gods law in the bible ended up being beneficial to the writer. In most cases it got them killed, imprisoned, and tortured because people don't typically like hearing that God doesn't approve of what they are doing. This is true for all the prophets, Christ and the apostles which followed. In my experience most people are not willing to die standing by what they say and write knowing it is a lie. The worst actions of the Church around the dark ages did not result from the Church changing the text of the bible but rather ignoring what was already written and indeed when you examine the cases of the prophets, Christ, and the apostles in the bible they had the same issues in their day. Looking around today we haven't really changed from what I can tell.

I'm glad we agree human beings are not perfect.

We are getting a little off topic with reproductive rights in society so I'll try to rope us in by relating it to biblical principles so we can evaluate both without loosing sight of either one. In the bible God commands behavior concerning sexual relationships. Individuals are faced with a choice to either follow these commands or reject them. As individuals we are responsible for our choices either way. If you go out and have sex and a child is conceived then that child is the responsibility of you and whoever you conceived it with. It shouldn't have anything to do with me. However, if a democratic government decides to use my money in any way to assist or harm you in your responsibilities to that child then I immediately become involved and have a financial interest regarding that use of those funds. If someone is trying to use those funds to encourage you to have a baby and get food stamps or have an abortion or maternal care it is very much in my interest to be involved with my money represented in the government. Where no such system exists then I really have no business in your private affairs as it doesn't directly or indirectly affect me financially. Without such a system you are responsible for your choices to the people involved primarily whoever had the child with and the child itself. Ultimately if God exist you will presumable answer to him for your choices not me. I can still talk with you about your choices and encourage you regarding those decisions but ultimately it is your decision and you alone with be responsible for the consequences. Under the system of governance which is involved in those choices for or against them I and everyone else who is taxed also become responsible for those consequences. The bible from what I can tell doesn't seem to promote or demote such systems of government but it does advocate fidelity, restraint, and responsibility which are inherent in such choices. I hope that helps to clarify but if there is a point you want to know about specifically let me know so I can expand on it.

I'd agree with your statements about church and state for the most parts with a few caveats. I'd stress that history is important especially on the foundation of something concerning a movement or a ideology. "Diproporionate influence" is kind of an oxymoron but I get what you are saying and I agree. I'm glad to see you acknowledge the influence Christianity had on the formation of the nation in its early stages and that such a formation of the nation we have today may not have come about under a different system or may be radically different from what we have today. It has always struck me as strange that Christ did not go to the rulers of his time but rather they came to him or he was dragged before them and they either accepted or rejected his claims. The same is true of the apostles the best example in Paul being brought before Nero. As far as the best possible consensus sometimes its slavery in democracies or election of dictators who pursue policies of extermination of Jewish people or "great social leaps forward" resulting in the death of millions. I'd also like to point out that the separation of church and state is in every case a delineation of the institutions of the church and the state not the religious and legal aspect influencing decisions of each other.

Religions are more often ideals that shape our worldview not just collections of those people with such moral views issuing statements. A religious person elected to office will act in accordance with their worldview which is why it is important to evaluate worldviews when analyzing candidates to try to determine the candidate who will reflect your worldview or at least what you believe be better of the available options. In example I'd much rather a Buddhist be in office then a Muslim or an atheist but even a Muslim or an atheist would be better then a satanist or anarchist. I am highly skeptical of politicians espousing Christian ideals because I don't think the bible supports politically religious leaders it certainly calls their motives into question and demands a higher level of scrutiny. That's not to say there shouldn't e Christian politicians but rather their Christianity should guide their choices not become the platform they are running on.
When you say "I'm pretty sure [God] didn't put all the words in the heads of the various people who wrote it." What makes you pretty sure of this? "Homophobia" isn't an example of God encouraging people to do awful things. On the contrary Christ demanded that his followers show love and compassion to individuals. Christ does maintain that homosexuality is wrong when concluding it is not an acceptable sexual relationship. There are no meaningful "variations of content from the countless translations from ancient Hebrew to Latin to English, the new stories added to the original root Jewish texts over time, the possibility of revisions in the dark ages when only the priests understood the Latin the texts were written in and had the sole means to reprint it,"

Lets take these one at a time because this is by far the most inaccurate and misleading thing I've seen you write thus far so I want to address it specifically. One if there is a variation in content arising from translation then that is not an accurate translation and would be rejected the same as any other work that is translated. If on the other hand their is an omission or addition identified that too would be rejected and easily identified in comparing these works to each other. We still have Latin and Greek copies of the text so identifying this kind of thing is pretty easy and its also extremely rare to find meaningful differences beyond one line commentary, misspelling and punctuation errors. I am not aware of any "new stories added to original root Jewish text over time." I'd ask you to cite such a story so I can look into it. Conjecturing that some conspiracy occurred across the dark ages among the monks most of whom we have every reason to believe had deep religious motivation not to alter in any way the text they were attempting to literally faithfully duplicate and in many cases had no literal understanding or means to make such revisions even if they wanted to and would also requires us to ignore the the process of scrutiny the monks had in place to prevent such occurrence. Even granting all of that conjecture and theory we would still have to provide an example of where such a thing occurred and had meaningful effect. I know of no such instance indeed though it has been a while since I have reviewed them in depth I believe I am only aware of 5 possible 7 minor errors/commentary depending on how scrict you want to be that have been identified only 2 of which have meaningful possible theological ramifications which could be argued either way but otherwise have no meaningful addition or remission the text. This was why the dead sea scrolls were such an important religious and archaeological find because for decades these theories of possible tampering and phantom boogie men rouge monks were speculated and the dead sea scrolls obliterated them. This very much does get into the supposed variations of content from the countless translations because we go back to the earliest copies we have which are in Hebrew and Greek. There is literally no other document, account, or story, so faithfully replicated and documented as the bible. (Please go back and read that sentence again to let it sink in).

leviadragon99 said:
"The point is, the bible is a patchwork quilt, the fact that there is a new testament and an old one also immediately dismisses the notion that there is one true reliable bible that people should have been looking to either back then or now, if the new testament is the "true" one then people didn't have it a certain length of time ago and couldn't have followed it to stop them doing atrocities, and if the old testament is more true, then why does the new one even exist?"
I don't even know where to begin in addressing this statement but to start by saying you may wish to understand what it is you are saying before you say it. The new testament is a fulfillment of the old testament. The entire old testament is a testimony of mans fall from grace with God and Gods promise that he would provide a perfect sacrifice for mans sin and create a way for man to become right with God. The new testament is a testament on how Christ fulfilled this promise. You need to be familiar with the old testament to understand why the new testament fulfills it. If you reject Christ as having fulfilled it as some Jews still believe today then you reject the entire new testament and only have the old testament are still waiting for it to be fulfilled. No one that I've ever heard of rationally accepts the new testament and rejects the old testament as Christ and the apostles spend considerable amount of time explaining it and why Christ fulfills it.

"But if you think there is one perfect version... which one?" The one we have.

"Which translation, which edition, which testament?"

Do you understand what a translation is? Translations typically rely on expert translators in Greek or Hebrew to translate the text into whatever language they are performing the translation. English. I prefer my bible editions with commentary or footnotes for reference and study NIV, NASB, NES what have you I'll take KJV if I absolutely must but I have a harder time reading it because of the changes in language over time. I may learn something from any edition I pick up. I am not aware of any translation that doesn't accept both the old testament and the new testament.

I'd encourage you to look into the matter yourself on what the text contain rather then relying on what other people to tell you what they want you to believe it contains. If you still have questions which if you are studying it seriously you very well may have then seek expert consultation with other people and examine their arguments concerning the text on their own merits and your own reasoning.

I'm telling you catholic and protestants have the same 66 books with the same content in each bible but depending on your division of Catholicism you may have additional books that you believe are inspired works called the deuterocanonical books which have been recognized as separate additions from the Jewish bible the same as apocryphal literature. I'm not aware of disagreement surrounding those books involving the 66 books we both share and agree as canon of the bible. The same when I walk into a baptist, catholic, or Presbyterian church there is no disagreement between me and the people of that Church because of the means they use to bolster and strengthen their faith. We are all there because of the things we agree on in those 66 books. Even if I walked into a Jewish temple I wouldn't have any disagreement over the old testament but we would disagree over the new testament because they reject Christ having fulfilled the old testament and I believe he did but we are still in agreement over those 37 books of the old testament. I want to stress this is very different from someone who makes intentional omissions, revisions, and changes the translation of any document related to the bible to benefit themselves. Those report they follow Christ but refuse to follow his teaching are not followers of Christ. We refer to these people as cults. The LDS Church and JW are well documented example of this because you can go back to those original documents and point out the changes made and the reasons for them are obvious. Few people take the time or effort to do this which is why part of the reason they are so prevalent. It is not easy to acknowledge that ones worldview is built upon a perversion of the truth but I have seen people accept the facts when presented to them.

The demand for celibacy comes from a recommendation from Paul. You can read it for yourself in 1 Corinthians 7:25-40. It is not a command but a strong and earnest recommendation which Paul acknowledges as his own recommendation and not being from God. The catholic church chooses to follow the recommendation whereas protestants don't require it. It really is as straight forward as that go read it and let me know if you have any questions. There isn't some kind of dispute between catholic clergy and protestant ministers it is a personal choice based on a recommendation.

The bible isn't responsible for misinterpretations made by other people concerning it. The bible is very clear in black and white terms that homosexual behavior is wrong the in the same way that all sexual behavior outside of the defined boundaries of marriage are wrong. Before we go down the path of gay marriage the bible also defines marriage as between a man and a women. I think homosexual behavior gets more attention because it is more outwardly obvious and a socially disputed issue of our time. Like straight individuals having sex with multiple partners or non committed sex between individuals these all fall under the same rules as being sin. Yes that includes divorced individuals who get remarried while their original spouse is alive (Though there are some technicalities unfaithfulness and abuse with this last one it is still lumped with the rest).

As far as following the bible there are a lot of things I don't like about it and if I didn't think them through would probably change if I was writing my own revision of the bible. I don't like being told what I can and cannot do, I don't like authority of God over my life, I don't like having to recognize that my behavior may be immoral, wrong or sinful, I don't like having to tell people I am sorry and make amends when I'd rather just write them out of my life, I don't like trying to show the love of Christ to a homeless guy that smell of urine and is attempting to physically assault me. Like the purpose of all good authority over our lives there are aspects that we may not like or agree with in the moment but that are beneficial for us in the long run. Running PT in the military and getting yelled or having my day regimented to me were not particularly things I wanted to go through or do but have been beneficial in the long run. In the same way when my boss calls me into the office and demands an explanation for my actions I don't particularly enjoy having to be accountable even when I am right or when I'm told to do something I may not particularly like doing I certainly don't appreciate the concept of authority at those moments.

Being in a position of authority myself I understand the other side of that dynamic and the importance that authority plays in our lives. Even without being in authority or ever experience that side of authority it is not hard to articulate the need for it in our lives begrudgingly as I may be admitting it. That is why even if I may not like things in the bible I submit to its authority over my life. I continue to question it but if I don't like the answers I get I still follow its teaching. This is different from saying I disagree with the principle or the morality of the teaching itself. I am not saying that nor do I believe that concerning the bible.

Concerning homosexuality you asked me "how the hell did you come to the conclusion you did?" Laying out my experience with homosexuality I should clarify that ever since day one of my college studies I've known and been approached by guys seeking a homosexual relationship with me. Some of them have been good friends some of them were new acquaintances, some of them were work colleagues, some of them are people I socially frequent with to this day and would consider me their best friend. I struggled for a long time with the conundrum of homosexuality and aligning it with my concept of morality in that two consenting adults who are not harming other should be free to do as they wish and for those who reject Christianity I still believe that from a social standpoint. The same as I would for any of the other examples I gave of sexual immorality previously. They will ultimately answer to God for their choices and not to me if their choices don't affect me. The issue becomes different if someone claims to be a follower of Christ but openly lives a life rejecting the teachings of Christ.

As a Christian there is a lengthy process of removing this hypocrisy from a group of believers and yes I've had to talk that talk and walk that walk even when it cost me dearly but I think that your question relates more to those who have rejected Christ and his teachings and remain outside of the Church.

In essence correct me if I am wrong you want to know why I think homosexual behavior is considered sin by God. Well this is pretty straight forward. I believe Christ is God. Christ defined the only acceptable sexual relations as marriage and defined marriage as between a man and a women. In looking for a reasons as to why this is the case I find that like in every other case of sexual immorality people are damaged by unfulfilled and hurtful relationships. The many homosexual people that I have known despite their best efforts to convey the exact opposite are very lonely damaged people resulting from their homosexual relationships. Many are quick to deny this when initially pointed out to them the same as most people with most sin but I have had many of them tell me later in candid moments that my assessment was correct and they express mourning and regret. Again these sins are unlike others which inflict harm primarily on other people which is not to say that they don't but rather that the primary nature of the sin is self harming. I think that 1 Corinthians 6:18 aptly articulates this when it says "All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body." Like anyone who cares for someone God doesn't desire for us to harm ourselves or others but rather to have fulfilling and meaningful relationships. This doesn't seem to be easy for people to hear regardless of whether they are homosexual or straight. Usually by the time it is being addressed they are so enamored with the feeling of the sin they don't believe it could possible be wrong. I hope that helps to explain my conclusion. It has not been an easy issue for me because of what it has cost me to follow this teaching but from my own experience despite my personal bias and desires. I am forced to conclude it is a sound teaching.

I agree the crimes of people in positions of authority within the church are more then reason for outrage and anger as are all crimes in any position in any institution. We have already agreed that the church in composed of human beings who are flawed and sinful so I'm not sure what your reason for citing this is other then to perhaps insult or offend. I'm not catholic and I'm not insulted or offended by your posting this but I really can't see additional motives behind it beyond attempted shock value. The bible strongly indicates that the institution of the Church as we know it will become corrupted and fall away from the teachings of Christ. This is why it is important to remember that the Church is composed of a body of believers not a some men in robes or a building. I hope the individuals involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Beyond that I'm not sure what you are advocating and I seriously have to question why.

I told you I am a follower of Christ as accounted in the scripture. I don't take issue with Catholics or protestants as I've shared fellowship with both groups. They both acknowledge and accept Christ and I therefore consider them brothers and sisters of my family. You are essentially asking me "Ok your cousin is a catholic and your aunt is protestant your father is God and your mother is the church so which are you protestant or catholic?" The question is flawed because it equivocates on an either or scenario that doesn't exist for me. Since when and where is the pope ok with gay marriage? All that I am aware of is some comments made in passing to a reporter that we need to treat gay people with love. Which echoes the words of Christ and biblical teaching for the last two thousand years. Hardly a revelation of change. He said nothing about their behavior or gay marriage. Even if he had it wouldn't come as a total shock as we've well establish the flawed nature of man even in leadership positions of the church and yes the pope is in need of Christs forgiveness the same as me or you. I do believe he may have a better understanding of the scriptures and perhaps even a better relationship with Christ then myself but this is speculation on my part. The most sinful pagan imaginable with a repenting heart seeking Christ is closer to God then the most religious figure imaginable with a unrepentant heart who rejects Christ.

At the end of the day I have no doubt that the Nazis felt the same about their ultimate solution. If you accept relativistic moralism you have to accept that your "good guys and bad guys" are only conditions of your own perspective perspective and may by change of circumstance easily reverse roles. The 21st century was plagued by this kind of thinking and it is no coincidence that it was aptly prophesized by Nietzsche and others that it would be the most bloody era of human history to date. As Ayn Rand aptly commented "You can avoid reality but you cannot avoid the consequences of reality." If your beliefs are so prejudice and ingrained in your mind that you must label and dismiss others who do not agree with them before hearing them out and rationally considering their arguments you are blind and deaf by your own choice. It would seem by your own statement that your mind was decided before you asked your questions. The truth will not be able to be spoken or shown to you and even if it lies in your path and you stumble head over heels across it you will not be able to recognize it. Jesus often said let those who have ears hear and let those who have eyes see. He wasn't making meaningless statements and gestures to the blind and deaf.

I hope the response answers some of your questions and prompts more to come. I don't want you to take offense to my comment but I'd rather you take offense to a hard truth and learn something regarding the truth in the statement then to cordially remains numb to the gospel. I do encourage you to look into meaning and reasons for the old and new testaments even of only for your own benefit in future conversation concerning them. It is hard to take people seriously in a moderate depth of understanding a topic when they make statements that convey a poor understanding pf basic principles on the subject. My mission however is to meet you at whatever understanding you may have and attempt to elevate that understanding in sharing the love and compassion of Christ. If you can perceive it I rejoice. If you reject it I move on and continue to pray for you.

I will watch for your response. I apologize if I am slow to respond. The heart is will but the time is limited.
Oh for... now you're just fucking with me. Have my reply in quotes, then your reply below that, it's not hard, this thing where you mingle the two together to have the rebuttals directly after the initial paragraphs is just annoying and not necessary for me to keep track of which rebuttal goes with which paragraph.

The thing is, from my perspective I do believe I am looking at the full equation, the people who do bad things on this plane of existence, I blame THEM for using god as an excuse. I talk about what blame god may hypothetically deserve to actually try and draw a line between the actions of his followers in spite of him, and what actions they take BECAUSE of him, an important distinction if we're trying to present him as perfect, if he sincerely wants something evil and it's not just his followers getting it wrong, then he's an asshole end of story, if it's not actually what he wants, then his followers should cut it the hell out and you should be on the front lines trying to make them do so, my entire argument has been about trying to parse that which can and cannot be blamed on him if we accept that he exists.

No, you talked about a man marrying a "child" as in someone that's underage, that's statutory rape there friend, dance around it all you like, but you either fucked up in calling a person of legal age a child, or you compared paedophilia to homosexuality, so the "fuck off" point still stands, maybe take a look back at what you actually wrote and choose the words better next time.

Okay, trying to pick apart that long rant on dictators, your point boils down do "well of course you find this morally wrong, you're a criminal" which doesn't really pass mustard, so no, god doesn't get to set his own terms if those terms are completely arbitrary, just like we don't let governments pass policies completely unopposed without them first talking to us about the merits. I don't consider it corruption when something goes against what I want, I consider it corruption when a group THAT IS NOT THEMSELVES ELECTED exerts pressure by money and favours on the people who are actually elected to achieve a result that does not represent the majority the elected people are supposed to be representing, it is directly comparable to big business pushing for a contract that harms the public good.

Yes, I recognise that necrophilia causes LEGITIMATE harm to third parties, because it is their family that has been directly affected by those actions, someone getting offended that two random strangers is gay is not a legitimate harm, it is someone being precious about something that has nothing to do with them.

Okay then, so your views on "promiscuity" are fucking medieval as well, good to know. Here's a thought, maybe people could have sex with other people BEFORE they get married, then they're not being unfaithful to their spouse, and if they're using safe sex methods, they're not going to get STDs, so your argument of the immorality of having sex falls apart yet again.

So your argument comes right back around to "because god said so" no reason WHY homosexuality is apparently immoral, just that it is... yeahno, that line of thought can sod right off, because again, morality without a purpose is meaningless.

Hey, the difference between homosexuals and paedophiles is that the latter HARM PEOPLE how are you still not getting that? Paedophiles invariably rape if they act on their impulses, the obviousness of their immorality is displayed in the practical concerns.

And funnily enough, some sociopaths actually manage to challenge their nature constructively and not become murderers or the like, big business has a lot of them, and if you tried to eliminate all the ruthless types from big business, big business wouldn't exist anymore, it's not a pleasant trait, but it does not automatically make people monsters... likewise for politicians, some of them aren't actually horrible, you don't exactly do yourself any credit with these oversimplifications, they highlight how ludicrous your case against homosexuality is.

Okay, you sent me a link that doesn't quite work, but I'm going to quote the actual wiki page on that, ahem.

"The ex-gay movement relies on the involvement of individuals who formerly identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual but no longer do; these individuals may either claim that they have eliminated their attraction to the same sex altogether or simply that they abstain from acting on such attraction.

There have been various scandals related to this movement, including some self-claimed ex-gays having been found in same-sex relationships despite having denied this, as well as controversies over gay minors being forced to go to ex-gay camps against their will, and overt admissions by organizations related to the movement that conversion therapy does not work"

So yeah, abstinence rather than actually "curing" that trait, brainwashing kids, people who were "cured" being in gay relationships afterwards, and even the organizations themselves openly admitting their process doesn't work, seems pretty conclusive to me. People can be harassed into simply not doing something, that doesn't fundamentally change their desires.

I'm not even going to bother responding to the rest of this, I'm just tired of you and your spectacular level of bullshit, accepting that god wants something without ever questioning WHY or even seemingly if it's actually him wanting it, I won't be responding in future, I'm just glad your influence is limited to people willing to bicker with you on the internet, and I look forward to you being forced to increasingly only repeat your bigotry to the five people in your Westborough Baptist book club when more and more civilised nations legalise gay marriage.
Well sir you seem to read what I've said. Misunderstood it. Argued against it. Convincing yourself I'm a bigot for the sole reason of writing me off so you don't actually have to try and understand or think through what I am trying to explain to you. Such is your choice. I'm not here to force understanding upon you but rather provide you with the opportunity to choose to learn.

The topics of this discussion seem to boil down to a few points I will try to elucidate them below.

1. You argue God may be evil because his followers do evil things. You have not answered why God is responsible for their actions. You argue that God commands evil things. By what right do you argue these things are evil? Does God lack the authority? Does he need to ask permission for the right? Can you articulate why they are evil?

2. You seem to be trying to impose current laws on a theoretical question. A very interesting flaw in your think since we are discussing theoretical questions being imposed on current laws. If the child is consenting then presumable if they are able to consent then they have the knowledge to consent the same as anyone homosexual or otherwise. Age becomes irrelevant in the theoretical question and demands an answer. You claim that its rape and we have laws against it. I could say the same about homosexuality in some states to which your response would be that its totally different because they are two consenting parties. The point was not to argue over current laws but rather to address the hypocrisy in your thinking which you have demonstrated far better then I could have hoped. I just hope now you have the sensibility to recognize it. So here is my question. If someone is a pedophile and they engage in a relationship with a child who consents to it and they live their life together growing old and dying devoted to each other you'd have no problem with that?

3. You recognize people who are able to control their behavior in the tenancy towards violence. This is my point and you are agreeing with me. You do realize this don't you? I'm glad you can bring yourself to this step in the demonstration of the idea I am trying to present to you but you stopped short of connecting the dots to ask yourself why you can't expect the same from homosexuals. If you are telling yourself their is a difference between violent behavior of murders and non violent behavior of homosexuality refer to point two and I will entrust you are smart enough to connect the dots to ask yourself the next question. Use this as a point to move on to what you acknowledged about necrophilia and the legitimate harm it causes to third parties. You should begin to see the error in your argument. I am trying to oversimplify this point for you because you didn't seem to understand it and while I am glad you do now I find it humorous you still think you are disagreeing with me.

4. You claim my views on promiscuity are medieval as well and seem content that statements passes as some kind of argument. It doesn't. As far as people having sex before "marriage" which I take from the context of your comment as a ceremonial procession of a man and a women professing public lifelong devotion towards each other the bible is actually in agreement. Upon a women and a man having sex for the first time they are then considered married before God. The public vows can come before or after it doesn't really matter. Really more of a formality of accountability.

5. I believe homosexuality is wrong and harmful not only because God says so but because I have found it to be true and reliable in my own personal life and from observations and statements from other people who have practiced it. How did you miss the rest of that?

6. Your issue with the ex-gay movement is that its not successful for everyone and some people how abused it? Can you name me something that involves people working on problems that have not had these issues? Because of some statements by some people you doubt the statements of all those people? We can't believe those people reporting they have been helped with their homosexual identity because other people have not been helped? It seems pretty conclusive to you? What exactly is your logic here?

7. You are not going to respond because you are writing off the rest of what I've written as "bullshit" which is another example of you substituting an insult for an argument. That's an awfully specific eluding to guilt by association but whatever let me assure you I'm not a member of any West borough Baptist book club nor do I to my knowledge know even one person who is a member.

8. I am detecting a lot of illogical and unwarranted hostility on your part. As for my part I wish you well and desire nothing but your well being in the form of your free and voluntary reconciling with God. My attempts to explain and answer your questions should not be taken in any other context. You closed your comment concerning civilized nations legalizing gay marriage. Perhaps tomorrow they will legalize pedophilia as was the case in ancient Greek and Roman times. I certainly hope that is not the case and if it was I would not morally accept it for the same reasons I morally reject homosexuality.