LGBTQ+ Rights and Religion

@Euo - Your intellect is obvious through all your posts. I think you know that. I was merely suggesting another explanation. As L Mage pointed out, I was a gay-basher. There's nothing I'll ever be able to do to remove that shame. The only thing I can do is to take the shame of those failures and learn to do better.

The Bible says that when we are born again, we're to work at being better. That we must "crucify" the old person and constantly generate a new by strength of the Holy Spirit. In short Euo, I work to be a better man than I was. To that end, I'm hyper-sensitive to saying, doing, or even thinking anything that suggests that a homosexual or transperson is somehow not as much a creation of the Creator as I am, and no less deserving of the dignity and respect that goes with it.

Now, does that mean I can't still fail. As Paul would say "God forbid." But see, when you say that I have this view of homosexuals but cannot mention any indication of anything that actually says that..... And keep in mind that several people in these threads have said they aren't necessarily used to the kind of Christian me, Carc, Loni, et al are...well, you can see why I feel justified in asking, "Are you sure I'm that way, or do you just think I am?"

@L Mage - (Sigh) Dude, sometimes I confuse me. But as I said, the Bible gave me the hope needed to keep living when I thought every day was going to be as bad as the one before, if not worse.

Like the leper Jesus healed, the very least I could do is show my gratitude by being a loyal follower of his Word, and in so doing, carrying out his paramount commandment to show the same love and respect to others, as he showed to me.

Re: Luke - That passage is often called the New Testament in a nutshell. Along with the verse nearly every new Christian learns.

"For God loved the world so much, he sacrificed his very own Son, so that whoever would trust in him would never perish. But would have life eternal."

You...just can't understand how much hope that gives you when the grave seems so much better than waking up to face another day.

edited 23rd Oct '12 2:40:05 PM by TheStarshipMaxima

It was an honor

<started trawling through the thread to find a couple of the posts she remembers... and gives up, as they were somewhere around the 150s... maybe 140s... maybe?>

I'll get back to it in the morning... it's getting to 11 pm and my brain is on slow-down. And, I'll need to go through another thread.

Unlessssssss... anybody know where I can get intravenous caffeine (and wholesale sized Japanese mixed crackers/ nibbles/ arare)?

...

What? I neeeeed wasabi, too! Oh... and sesame seeds... <drools> Argh: I've just given myself a major craving.

Edit: mixing up senbei for arare... I am tired.

edited 23rd Oct '12 3:01:21 PM by Euodiachloris

Safeway and your local heroin dealer for the second and first respectively.

@Starship

Unrelated, but I just read your post out loud to my girlfriend and asked her for a vaguely fitting bible passage. Then she told me:

How can she recite all of those things so perfectly? XD

By the way, I think I should mention that this was in reference to me and not really to you, so that I shouldn't hate you for uh... things.

edited 23rd Oct '12 3:21:35 PM by kay4today

Starship... "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." Timothy 1.

"Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church." Corinthians 1.

"But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved. For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head. A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man" Corinthians 1.

So, not only does the bible say that women are not allowed to speak at all in church, or preach, or be in a position of authority over men, but it also implies a fundamental inequality between the sexes. Women are, apparently, not in the image and glory of God, while men are.

I fail to see how you can possibly interpret these passages literally, without factoring in social context, without crossing the line into complete and utter misogyny. I don't believe you're a misogynist, Starship. You're capable of interpreting bible passages within their social context; you just won't do so for the ones about homosexuality.

edited 23rd Oct '12 3:50:25 PM by LoniJay

Be not afraid...

I was created for men, but I'm a lesbian?

Damn, I'm a failure.

@Pyke

Chuck Norris has views on gay rights? O.o

@Starship

But, and this is me being honestly curious here, is it the Bible's word or the God's ideals that got you through those times? Because if it's the latter, then aren't you doing disservice to your god by committing intellectual dishonesty in not applying the reason and scrutiny he gave you to the Bible?

"You are never taller then when standing up for yourself"

Chuck Norris is unusually politically active even among actors, yeah. And he's about as orthodox right as it gets.

That include the part that says pi is equal to 3, or that rain falls into the sky through holes in the celestial dome?

Really Maxima, you can tell the difference between having great respect for a man who gave a great speech, and venerating a particular copy of the tape he gave the speech on? Especially when there's a historical record of tons of people mixing and editing the tape?

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Let's be fair here, the pi=3 thing is a pretty reasonable shortcut for a nomadic carpenter ballparking things with the length of his arm. Really now.

Well yes, but no one is calling the Bible the Word of Carpenter. Heck, even if it was the Word of God, it's entirely possible that it would have been a useless transcription if God was describing concepts that Bronze Age shepherds had no language with which to describe.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

I'm pretty sure "Three cubits and one tenth of a cubit and four hundredths of a cubit and one thousandth of a cubit etc" would have been a bit much for poor Huram and his lower arm that was sadly lacking in logarithmic divisions. The cyborg bronzecrafter with slide rules for arms didn't come about until the 1600's.

Again, that means that it can't be the exact word of God. At best, it's the word of God dictated to fallible and extremely limited humans who can and evidently have adjusted the message for their tribal and later political needs, and who definitely did not possess the understanding necessary to make the value judgments that would be necessary to interpret messages regarding the issues we face today, assuming God exists and actually has something to say about homosexuality that 21st century people should care about.

When an atheist like myself is bending over backwards to give a God-based argument the benefit of the doubt and it's still not cutting the mustard...

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

IIRC that passage wasn't even God speaking, it was just a brief record of the neat stuff Huram made for Solomon.

So we can conclude that was a failure on the part of the record taker, yes?

So how much of the Bible can we conclude to be the same?

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

We don't know which is why most logical people don't believe it's 100% factual.

edited 23rd Oct '12 7:42:12 PM by Kostya

Thank you.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

The fact the book directly contradicts itself means it can't be 100% factual. And many who claim it's factual do not literally follow it like that.

We call those hypocrites. It's one or the other. You're either cherry-picking or you're not. In this case, I can't think of a single person who doesn't cherry pick whatsoever. The fact there's more than one "true"(by that, I mean people believe it's correct) version of it, means that nobody can for sure be right.

Which is the reason why the spirit of the meaning behind it is more important than "exact words" or "face value".

Quest 64 thread

Is it even possible not to cherry-pick a work that contradicts itself?

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Nope.

I don't know how people can argue they aren't cherry-picking at all. In fact, it's literally impossible. But as one thing I've learned, it's gotten to be stated directly why you can't take everything at face value without contradictions. Otherwise, some just won't realize it. It's obvious in this topic, but many other forums also have that issue.

Quest 64 thread

Agreed. The Bible is a wondrous thing: it teaches you that contradiction is a part of being human and also a part of humanity thinking about Really Big Things.

Word of God? Possibly: using several pens and lenses. The first rule of Biblical scholarship is to get into the head of the person (or committee) that wrote the particular book you're looking at, even if you don't always know who they were. This way, you can accept their various biases for what they are and understand them without making the mistake of accepting them at face value.

The same thing should be done when approaching any text, really. Including the Q'ran. Once upon a time, it actually wasn't a hanging offense to ask questions of the Prophet's views and words (hence, so many schools of thought). These days... good luck with that...

Which is it? Is the Bible the Word of God or Man? If it's the word of Man, then you can go ahead and look at historical context, and the biases of the authors, and accept or reject portions of it depending on how they fit with the historical record and our modern sensibilities.

But if it's the Word of God, then historical context doesn't matter. The authors don't matter. And your own judgment and opinion certainly don't matter. If the Bible were truly a God's word, then the meaning should be self-evident from the page, and followers of that God should obey whatever it says without regard to their own judgment or reason.

The line of reasoning that I and other atheists and skeptics have really isn't that hard to follow:

1- Christians believe the Bible is the Word of God.

2- Christians believe people should obey the Word of God.

3- The Bible has passages that support slavery, the oppression of women, and the killing of homosexuals.

4- Therefore, Christians believe people should support slavery, the oppression of women, and the killing of homosexuals.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

Fantastic. Now people outside TV Tropes think I'm a nut!

A good question L Mage. Here's the short version of what happened, I constructed an idea of what God's ideals were like based on how people who called themselves Christians behaved. I was miserable.

Then, as I started rejecting the behavior Christians, I started actually looking at the words on the page. And it saved my life. It takes reason and scrutiny to separate the words from the people who claim to follow it.

It was an honor

Slavery was "destroyed" later as an allowed concept. Irrelevant if taking the whole.

Likewise, if there are contradictions, taking the latest entry would be the best bet unless one is clearly far more moral.

And very few take the "killing over that stuff" part, we all know that. In fact, those are the ones that often go to jail. We're not insane, sorry. We actually do not ignore parts of it, even the ones who say to follow it all call that bull. The list of those is smaller than you think.

To directly answer;

1: No, some believe certain parts are the Word of God. Many also believe that certain parts are utter bullshit.(killing over eating shellfish? Really? Yeah, the culture has changed)

2: Correct.

3: Slavery gets abolished in the Bible later on, depending the version and how it's worded. The oppression of women has been severely lessened, and it's very rare to see a Christian who even follows that these days, unless they were sexist as is. The last part, no sane person as is follows. If somebody actually follows that bullshit, that means they were already insane for more reasons than the Bible and are murdering people under a false interpretation of God. Killing people for being less hygienic is frowned upon by most Christians.

4: Only the extremely insane people actually think that. Which is not anywhere close to the majority of Christians.

So no, that's not really what happens. The generalization is basically unjustified here. Especially when the Bible even says to avoid death. In the Commandents itself; "Thou shall not kill". The majority of Christians do not take Leviticus' words exactly as law, like, ever. At worst, they believe some of that stuff is wrong, and wants it stop/fighting for it to stop, but killing is not generally our main option. And to be frank, we should not support that logic as it's only purely insane logic and not any logic that does the world or any person anything good. We're not idiots, Laywerdude. We're also not all stupidly insane. Some of us actually, you know, have a heart.

Quest 64 thread

Then why claim to follow the Bible? I've seen Christians engage in massive acts of mental gymnastics to essentially justify whatever they want to do already, then claim that they have moral backing from the Bible. You can do the gymnastics if you want, or you can just be honest and say that it doesn't matter what the Bible says, slavery is bad, women should be equal to men, kings don't rule by divine right, we shouldn't kill people just for being different, and there's nothing wrong with being gay.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.