"Teachings of Christ": Please refer me to the passage of the bible directly quoting Jesus (not some monk 400 years later) saying ANYTHING about homosexuality at all.

This entire thread has been insulting to me from the very first post. Don't come in here with your judgmental bible beating and then act all innocent and wounded when I turn it around on you. If you're going to give it, you need to learn to take it.

Please read my post over again Anonymous. I have nothing against people being open about who they are, and I would hope that I've been entirely open about who I am in this thread.

I may have phrased it poorly, so let me reiterate.

It is not any person being openly or proudly GLBT that is the issue... but rather a pastor/Christian leader openly and proudly saying, "I am living in direct contradiction to the teachings of God." If a person chooses to be a 'Christian', the main component is turning away from what we do that is wrong (in God's eyes) and turning towards God. In essence, we are saying, "God, I accept that your view is greater than mine. You are now my Lord and Master."

We all have failings, but if a person is going to step into leadership and become a teacher and role model for others in their faith, then that person should be exactly that... a role model that reflects the teachings of Christ. Absolutely many fail, and when they do, our response should be the same; love and a call to return to being holy as God is holy.

 

Hope that helps clarify the issue. I looked over the article you linked, and it was quite interesting. I'd love to discuss certain topics with the author, because as a follower of Christ I do take what the Bible says seriously. Please note however that the article you link to is not about GLBT as leaders in the church, which is a very different though connected topic, and it is this latter that I have been solely discussing.

Yes, it can seem like that when you impose the ideas of other faiths upon the Christian message. Personally I much prefered the image of Christ as the original vampiric undead.

But such statements really reflect a deep misunderstanding of what the Bible actually says.

 

I don't give a rat's ass about what the Bible actually says.

I do, however, care what the Christians actually do.

In the examples I mentioned, that would be a celebration of human sacrifice and (symbolic) cannibalistic rituals.

I think you end up then with a very interesting problem. Who is a 'Christian'? 

Is any person who says, "Yup, I'm an American. Grew up around churches. I must be a Christian" = a Christian?

My analogy would be Kung Fu. If a person watched a lot of Kung Fu flicks and fantasized a lot about it, should I consider them a fair representation of Kung Fu? Surely I should speak and look to a person who has invested time and study into what they desire to be. Within places that use a belt rating system, a black belt is not an 'expert', but rather a student who has now mastered the basics... and is now ready to learn the 'real' art. 

You would get some great fodder for rants by focussing on 'anyone' who styles themselves a Christian, but it certainly wouldn't in any way be a rational or ethical treatment of Christianity. 

If you're going to judge Christianity and Christians, please feel free to do so... but please do so on the basis of those who actively live according to what the Bible teaches. 

Where does he say that?

 

Mark 7:17-23. There are other relevant passages as well, which I could try to recall if you're interested. Some people have the gift for memorizing vast amounts of scripture. Unfortunately I'm not one of them.

Jesus is quite clear that he does not do away with the teachings of the Old Testament (the 'Law and the Prophets' which cover most of the traditional Jewish Torah), but rather fulfills them. In essence, God does not change his mind like shifting shadows. In regards to the 'law', it never made us 'right' before God, but rather was like a guide to teach us about our fallen nature. Like a good guide, it is not void when you reach your destination, but rather you no longer require its supervision. The guide is not wrong, but it has served its purpose.

The 'destination' in this case is Jesus Christ. This is why Christians go on about 'repentance' as a prerequisite for faith in Jesus Christ. Until we are guided to understand that we are 'sinful' (not meaning 'bad' in a human context, but meaning fallen short of the high standards set by God), we are not really ready to come to Christ.

Dinnae look under the kilt laddie! 

The thing is the jews have an issue with regards of jesus and the whole spiritual thing mentioned there as they have believed and still do that those are physical things to be done, not spiritual. As well they believe no one stands between them and god. But that's a different issue and topic.

However the dating of the gospels I have read and understood are Mathew 50-70 CE, John 85 - 100 CE, Luke 80 -100 CE, Mark 68 - 73 CE then there are the other ones, Thomas could be 50 - 60 CE but other sources state 150 CE, Peter first have of the second century, James some time in the 2nd century, and there are a few other gospels I believe, but i haven't bothered with them.

I never said 0 CE is the birth of Jesus or his death, I said they were either babies, children or not even born. However outside of these gospels there is no evidence that jesus existed, or isn't a collection of stories about other so called messiahs. Many where considered messiahs or christus during that period in history.

 

This is false. The issue with this passage is not whether it was modified slightly but whether it was inserted in its entirety by church historian Eusebius - a man who encouraged fraud in support of his faith. It's widely accepted Josephus did not write this passage - most christian scholars avoid it like the plague. No earlier jewish versions of the text contain this insertion. It pointedly seeks to ratify christianity in a single paragraph and is certainly not a useful piece of evidence in support of your case. LatinCanuck, look up this conjecture over Josephus and Eusebius and read more. There's plenty to be found, none of it complimentary. 

 

Sounds good Latin. I'd echo Atheistextremist's post above too... read up on the Josephus issue. I think you'll find it's been heavily politicized, but that the core issue is hardly a smoking gun.

Why do you look at how some elements of Jewish society reject Jesus though, and not also at the reverse... why do some accept him as the Messiah? This to me is the greater mystery. Rejection is easy, accepting such a radical paradigm shift is fascinating. In essence, any Jew who accepts the claims of Jesus is altering their perception of how YHWH is 'one'. 

I'm all with you on the weeding out falsehoods side, and please call me on anything I post which you think may be less than truthful.

 

If God is 'real', then we do not need any falsehood or sales pitch in discussing him.

If God is not true, then we should stamp Christianity out. 

 

Clearly.

Hm. First he required human sacrifice. Then he decided that wasn't necessary, but that sacrificing innocent animals would be sufficient as a substitute. Then he decided he didn't need slaughtered animals, but repentance would be enough. I'd be interested in what cockamamie definition for "changing one's mind" you've made up so it doesn't describe this.

Also, you're welcome to address the other question I've asked twice now (and others have as well) whenever you'd like. In the meantime, I'll assume you don't have an answer that isn't totally offensive and/or blatantly ignorant.

 

I saw that I thought I was having a homoerotic fantasy. Man - the beauty parlour on that ship would be absolute mayhem...

 

 

You make yourself look like an ass every time you use GLBT.  Just say gays or homosexuals.  Trying to be that inclusive necessarily leaves out so many others.

What the hell do you mean by, '...certain leanings towards GLBT tendancies...'?  People don't have gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered tendencies.  People have sexual tendencies (being transgendered isn't a sexuality and it's certainly not something someone chooses), and it makes no sense to describe the sexual tendencies of people merely by creating the false dichotomy of those of 'straight' people and those of everyone else.

Choice isn't involved in sexual tendencies.  You no more choose your sexual tendencies than does anyone else.  And you do realize, don't you, that something necessarily cannot be a choice if it is not conscious?  Further, your anecdote is not justification for deciding that choice can play a role.  It's perfectly illegitimate.

Now, you clearly show in this thread that the Bible is open for interpretation.  Gay people who find that they can be pastors are taking a different reading of the Bible than you.  I would find it difficult to believe that you could claim to have the truer interpretation, mostly because there isn't a Christian who doesn't believe that her interpretation is true.  I won't be surprised if you retort with an obvious fallacy.  I await your true Scotsman.

(Much as I hate to up their visitor count, I've found this website to have good information regarding homosexuality and the Bible.  religioustolerance.org)

I use GLBT merely to be respectful, so please take it in that light.

Of course a 'choice' can be subconscious. Subconscious does not mean lacking in processing/thought, but rather that the processing is taking place at a level we are not actively aware of. In the words of Mark Hallet (National Institute of Health), "Your consciousness is only aware of some of the things your brain is doing." Just as the colors and images on cereal boxes are designed to influence our decisions, our choices can and often are subconscious. Perhaps the Scotsman is living in your own crannog?

The Bible is open to some interpretation, but like anything else, there is more and less valid interpretation. That's why there is variation among Christian believers... there are matters that are open to various interpretations, and those things can and should be discussed. There are also interpretations that takes isolated passages out of context, or which otherwise ignore key points... these obviously are less valid interpretations, and some verge into gross distortion. If you like, we could get into the Biblical reasoning on the GLBT issue and you can decide which you feel is most valid, but I would suggest a private conversation for that.

And of course people believe their interpretation is true... that's why its 'their' interpretation. They have accepted and taken ownership of it. That does not mean that people do not take in and consider other ideas though.

 

Are the things you're terming 'fallacies' merely reflective of my voicing viewpoints you don't choose to accept?

As to Religious Tolerance, I'm quite familiar with them. Part of the problem in any discussion is evidence; what is included or excluded, and how it is phrased. RT purports to be "a multi-faith group consisting of an Agnostic, Atheist, Christian, Wiccan and Zen Buddhist" and thus unbiased, but until recently their website was rather vague about the fact that Bruce A. Robinson was virtually the sole author and contributer. Please look over their opening webpage on 'Homosexuality' and note the different use of language to describe the GLBT and Christian positions. 'Fair' appraisal of an issue requires that we look at writers on various sides of an issue, so I'm happy to look at what Mr. Robinson has written... but I would consider it a rather biased source.

Kilt comments- Nothing homoerotic about them. My kilts in my cubboard and I wear it whenever I go to a ceilidh, and I have no problem joking about how my legs look in them . Why is it that your first thought is that a comment has to be sexual?

 

What about slotting in the fundamental that some people are flat out gay? I have a couple of gay friends - they're just plain old gay. They pretty much always have been. Most their outs were extremely painful and if they could have switched straight to avoid the dislocation with family and friends then they would have. But they were gay. I don't buy into examples that try to creep around the edges of tolerance and into a zone where gayness is the result of some personal damage or subconscious shortcut or social problem. Ten per cent of mammals are gay. The science is done. Who the hell knows. God might have a crocodile skin manbag and go around with a pink cashmere sweater tied round his neck drinking camomile tea. 

 

 

 

 

 

I think I get you Dragoon, I just don't see that choice plays a part in sexuality.

I choose to ride a motorcycle, eat ice cream and watch test match cricket live. I didn't choose to like girls. I was in love with Heather Muir when I only 4 years old and I wanted to marry her. Helen Anderson was my next love when I was 6. When I was 8-10 it was Katherine Powell - though I also had a thing for Caroline Brooking in fifth class. In first form it was Sharon Keighley and at the end of that year after she rejected me, I fell for Marie Henderson from Waipawa at Riverbend Christian Camp - a sweeter person I have not met - though that did not stop me from pashing Melodie Carruthers under an upturned rubber dinghy in the swimming pool in her backyard in the summer of 1978. Being at an all boy's boarding school cramped my style from 11yo to 17 but I still managed to fall in love with Rosemary Fogerty in third form and then in the fourth I fell for Michelle Simpson proprly and that lasted till my late 20s.

I never made any decisions about any this, I just went with my gut instinct. Do you seriously think gay people are any different? That they are not just going with what is natural to them? If you insist on god being 100 per cent perfect then I appreciate you don't want to admit the hand of the potter shook - gay people have to have made a choice of some sort to be gay or god's short-circuiting freewill, right? 

 

 

 

Quoting that Kombi-driving tripper John is not going to work that well for me, I'm sorry. John says if we love the world we don't love god? Could you disentangle the commandment: Love your brother from this, please? I'm confused. 

What teachings am I following as an atheist when I do the things that feel naturally right to me that are morally correct? Surprisingly, Dragoon, this happens a lot. Instead of raping, murdering, bashing my neighbours and so on, I tend towards being a reasonably nice person. Most other people who haven't been drinking are above the baseline for niceness, too. And where does freewill fit in a world plan where humans are incapable of doing anything good, save just trusting in the mercy of "Him and the one He sent"?

Lines like "Why do the nations rage and war" slip off the keyboard's tongue so sweetly but while I agree there is war, there is plenty of peace, too. And a reasonable amount of justice - though more for the rich, I concede. It's not just greed that drives economies. It's basic needs, inventiveness and innovation, and just reward for labour. I agree things could be better but kids no longer work in mines and cotton mills and that's a step in the right direction. 

I'm nearly 43. I have no desire for power, I have given up on the idea of a woman with a man-sized sex drive - there's no point lusting after something that doesn't exist. And unfortunately for me, while I like looking at girls, I'm monogamous. Onanism is no doubt a dire sin but I did not create my testosterone or my dick and at least it helps me sleep. I don't hope for riches. Like other people my age I am realising that material is irrelevant aside from the ability it gives you to protect and support people you love. And as for being number 1 - no parent is - unless the pride is referred and occurs through elevation of an extension of their own bodies in their genetic child but care is needed here. If we sail to close to this reef we might neuter towering god-concepts like love...

 

 

 

 

 

But it's not respectful.  It is wholly ridiculous.  Transgendered people are not (necessarily) homosexual and who you're really talking about are homosexuals.  Trying to be inclusive as you are by using GLBT show off your ignorance and is more exclusive.  You're missing two-spirited people and a host of other sexual and gender identities.  Since you're obviously talking about people who have sex with people of the same sex, it is ridiculous to use GLBT.

 

No, it really can't.  That doesn't even make sense.  Further, choice is an illusion that can be very simply demonstrated not to actually exist.

This would be a very silly argument to have.  Choice is a conscious experience, necessarily.  But you're not talking about the choice between purchasing different brands of cereal, you're talking about people choosing their sexuality.  People do not choose their sexuality, not even in the illusory sense.

Unnecessary.  There is no valid interpretation of a piece of literature.  It's an almost entirely a subjective experience.  That must be difficult to reconcile with a belief that the Bible is a book of 'truth'.

I'm afraid I don't understand.  I never thought that the comment was sexual and never wrote anything to suggest that I did.  I was pointing out that what I had said wasn't a joke.  You're subtly employing the No True Scotsman fallacy, a fallacy you seem to be entirely unaware of.

No, you're literally employing logical fallacies.  Shall I begin to make a list of them for you?

This is extraordinarily ironic coming from someone whose belief is necessarily based in faith.  I don't particularly care what you think of Religious Tolerance.  It is one website offering a viewpoint.  There are many others.  I was merely using it to show that there is a viewpoint counter to your own that appears to be every bit as valid as your own, given the laughable idea of correct biblical interpretation.

The crux of your position is that you can't see how a homosexual can consistently be a Christian and be a Christian 'leader'.  The truth is that it doesn't matter and I don't very much care what you think a Christian 'leader' ought to be.  As far as I'm concerned, and as Christians demonstrate, there is only one criteria for being a Christian and the rest of it is just fluff.  What you're doing is using your interpretation of Christianity to justify a thinly veiled bigotry.  "The problem isn't that homosexuals are sinners", as you put it, but, "that if they are openly and proudly GLBT, then their life choice is directly in disobedience to God's teachings."  -If they're not any more a sinner than you, then I can't imagine how their lives are directly in disobedience to God's teachings, from their perspective.  The problem here would seem to be your interpretation of the Bible as condemning homosexuality and your further belief that homosexuals are less fit than heterosexuals (and now you must see the absurdity of your using GLBT) to be 'leaders' in a Christian church.  Do you know what cognitive dissonance is?  You suffer from it.

I'm getting more impressed with atheists every day. Thank you.

While being gay is only one small facet of a personality as complex as anyone else's personality, it is simply who I AM, period. I didn't decided it. I can't ignore it. I can't change it. So essentially, god puts my soul into this body and says "here's your body, with all its needs and desires. Isn't that a great body I gave you? But don't even think that you can ever be a 'church leader' in that body. I didn't make yours perfectly enough for that." It's completely ridiculous.

Also, Dragoon, keeping this in mind, I'd like you to go back and replace every mention of "GLTB" with "black people," "women," "the physically disabled," or any other category of person you choose--for that matter, "heterosexuals"--to see how disgusting this looks to me.

I aim to please.

*clapclap* Less talk, more buttsex.

You're not really interested in having a discussion at all are you?  It would explain how you've failed to address any pertinent point in my post.  I'm probably feeding a troll now, but I'm going to respond to your above post.

The bible is not a collection of historical sources anymore than the Bhagavad Gita is.  You're about to employ circular reasoning.  Please, don't do this as it is only annoying.

I don't know what you mean by my 'comment on faith in the context of the Religious Tolerance website'.  I was not speaking of faith in the context of that website.  I was talking about faith as you have it; the belief in something despite evidence or in spite of evidence to the contrary -you know, what faith is.  The irony noted is on you talking about evidence.  Evidence is something that your belief is necessarily devoid of, being a belief based on faith.  Faith means not thinking critically.  A person who has faith in something is precluded from thinking critically about it because then theirs wouldn't be a position of faith.  Do not now equivocate on different meanings of the word faith.  When we're talking about religious belief, we're talking about belief without evidence.  That's faith.

So far you've employed the no true Scotsman fallacy, conflated terms and equivocated on terms.  Minor, but annoying fallacies.

No, you clearly seem to suffer from cognitive dissonance.

The 'T' in GLBT is for transgender, not transexual.  But it doesn't matter since you're clearly talking about homosexuals (people who have sex with people of the same sex, which necessarily includes bisexuals).  You can start being honest about what your discussing whenever you want and drop the patronizing "inclusivity" of GLBT.

Like I said, I read it the first time. I'm familiar with this type of moral blind spot you're displaying here, so I'm quite happy to explain this untill you get it : Being religious doesn't give you the right to discriminate. If a capable gay guy wants the job, and you don't want to give it to him because he's gay, then it really doesn't matter how you personally interpret the bible.

 

You have no way of knowing if he's living in contradiction to the teachings of god. You just choose to interpret the bible that way. Heck, you can't even know if the people who wrote that thing even recognised homosexuality. They might have been talking about people who will fuck anything if they're drunk enough.

Your decision to condemn openly gay priests remains your decision. You can't blame god or the bible. It's you. So I ask again : Why ?

You want him to reflect your personal interpretation of the teachings of christ. Different thing entirely.

Well, if you really think your arguments make sense, then it would seem you have convinced yourself that your current interpretation of the bible is the correct one. How can you possible know that ? You can't, so any decision you make based on that interpretation is simply your own opinion, completely devoid of any supernatural morality.

You're a follower of your own current interpretation of christ, as are all christians. This is what makes biblical arguments and bible quoting so completely and utterly useless. No matter what side of the argument you christians are on, you all claim that god has your back. Even when you switch sides, you just claim you suddenly had a "deeper understanding", or what the heck, even a personal visit from god to clear things up.

I'm not saying that you and the author of that article couldn't have a sensible discussion, but after all the theological bickering is over, I think you'll be left with the same question I put to you : Why ? Why do you choose to interpret the bible that way ? What are your reasons for doing that ?

Lol. Oh, he's got you there.

That's not just funny, it also works as a valid biblical interpretation, which is worth just as much as yours are.