Gay marriage must be evil, because it confuses fundamentalist’s children — or so says NOM’s latest ad:
Yeah, we can’t have kids be taught a new way of thinking. That sounds too much like “education.”
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If children get confused, they might ask questions!!! OH NOES!!!
And as we all know, questions are the Devil’s work!
Silly Tree of Knowledge. Why does knowledge have to be an enemy of religion? This is one relationship that’s seemed to be on rocky ground from the start…
Knowledge is not an enemy of Christ Tele, its our own, unrenewed minds and thinking that opposes the truth. That is why we are implored to be “renewed in the spirit of our minds” lest we become our own worst enemies. God is not anti-thinking, but rather anti-anti-God thinking, if that makes any sense, ha.
So if we are thinking, and it happens to be against the claims of religion, then your god’s against it?
John C, if you’re anti-any thinking about anything, then you’re partially anti-thinking. Thinking is like free speech…both should be sacrosanct.
Confused? Only if they’re brainwashed fundamentalist ignorami. Oh, wait…
I hate how they use children to make it appear as if the “Little ones” will be so confused.
To me, that’s more patronizing of children by Christians. Kids understand way more that we give them credit for, and at an early age, too. I think it’s easier for a child to understand that people who love each other should be together than to understand that because the Bible says so people of the same sex shouldn’t love each other.
My nieces and nephews, when little, wanted the whole extended family to live together, because they loved us all. Children don’t care who loves them, as long as someone does. Love is love no matter where it comes from, and children need it.
Lulz… Children at that age don’t get confused, they just blindly accept what they’re told. It’s an evolved survival response. Ironically, it’s also what allows religion to perpetuate – we don’t question what we learn at that age and we’re resistant to the concept that it may be wrong. Just like Dawkins calls it: “The virus of faith”. That same evolved response is almost certainly the same reason that I don’t see any difference in terms of equality between men, women, black, whites, asians, eskimos, gays, straights, bisexuals, transgenders, atheists, theists or any other group – because I was taught very young to treat everybody as an individual and not pigeon-hole them into categories like that. Of course, I have since found theists who I dislike intensely, but that’s on an individual basis!
lol
doing generalizations in order to classify facts -dangerous, ready to eat, water close- seems to be also an evolutionary survival response. It’s also the basis of any empirical science. So if you dislike a great proportion of theists of a precise religion/sect, you may induce that you won’t like the next theist of that religion/sect you know.
Anyone else find it irronic that the govener is called lynch?
Uh, not really.
Verbal irony: the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning (similar to sarcasm, but not bitter). Ex: “as pleasant and relaxed as a coiled rattlesnake” (Kurt Vonnegut from Breakfast of Champions).
Dramatic irony: the device of giving the spectator an item of information that at least one of the characters in the narrative is unaware of, thus placing the spectator a step ahead of at least one of the characters. Ex: In Othello, the audience knows that Desdemona has been faithful to Othello, but Othello doesn’t. The audience also knows that Iago is pulling the strings, a fact hidden from Othello, Desdemona, Cassio and Roderigo.
Tragic irony: the words and actions of the characters belie the real situation, which the spectators fully realize. Ex: In the William Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo finds Juliet in a drugged death-like sleep, he assumes her to be dead and kills himself. Upon awakening to find her dead lover beside her, Juliet kills herself with his dagger.
Situational irony: a discrepancy between the expected result and actual results when enlivened by ‘perverse appropriateness’. Ex: When John Hinckley attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, all of his shots initially missed the President; however a bullet ricocheted off the bullet-proof Presidential limousine and struck Reagan in the chest. Thus, a vehicle made to protect the President from gunfire was partially responsible for his being shot.
Irony of fate / cosmic irony: stems from the notion that the gods (or the Fates) are amusing themselves by toying with the minds of mortals with deliberate ironic intent. Ex: In O. Henry’s story The Gift of the Magi, a young couple are too poor to buy each other Christmas gifts. The wife cuts off her treasured hair to sell it to a wig-maker for money to buy her husband a chain for his heirloom pocket watch. She’s shocked when she learns he had pawned his watch to buy her a set of combs for her long, beautiful, prized hair.
Lots of people have that last name. Some of them run for office or are politically influential. Most of them don’t try to hang people.
http://wiki.name.com/en/Lynch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lynch_(jurist)
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?root=%2Fmoa%2Fatla%2Fatla0088%2F&tif=00743.TIF&cite=&coll=moa&frames=1&view=50
and my favorite singing comedian
Even if his name were Governor Jack Ketch, it wouldn’t be ironic.
Try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdVbbMc4miw
Walter Lanyon (1887-1967)
In his book “The Laughter of God” Lanyon opens with some of the most beautifully descriptive words that I have ever read. Not poetry, but rather simple prose that yet comes through as a sort of cross between both speech and music…can you hear it?
“Deep in my soul I heard the laughter of God, ringing in silvery cadences through the timbrels of my being, breaking the human bonds and limitations as a strong yet gentle wind in the forest sweeps aside the strands of cobweb. The hard, fast knots that I had tied slipped loose, and the snarls of beliefs broke free. The river of my human life, frozen by a thousand and one false ideas and teachings, broke joyously into expression and went bounding to the infinite sea of Life, to be lost and found at the same time. One dark cave of fear after another was illuminated by the light of this laughter, and swampy areas of sick thoughts were dried up instantly. Parched sands of hopelessness and futile efforts were drenched by the livings waters, sucked in-absorbed instantly like a wave breaking on the sands. God laughing at me, and my puny efforts to make heaven appear, to attain the Sonship. Not the laugh of derision, but of infinite compassion, a laughter so deep and sweet, so pure and glorious that everything in the nature of struggle gave way before it.
And the breath of that glorious laughter blew all the dirty rags of personal teaching and self aggrandizement away from me, and at first the fierce joy that proceeded from the unheard-heard peals of laughter made me afraid-afraid that everything worth while was being taken from me, and that I should be naked, but no sooner had the filthy rags of personality blown free than I was clothed in a panoply of light, and in this glorious raiment of light I saw for the first time the glory of the spirit made flesh”.
Isn’t that beautiful? Now I ask you…where did THAT come from? Does it sound “religious”, oppressive to you or is there a unveiling of liberty and truth within it? Just wondering.
To me, it sounds like overly wordy poetry that lacks any kind of formal structure or cadence. If I were to grade this in one of my classes it would get a low B.
Of course, that would have to be a class on spirit-led living whose verbage and message are uniquely distinct and other-worldly. Respectfully “grading” assumes a standard, a pre-requisite by which one grades, and Christ is the only…One.
Respectfully
So in other words, the only people capable of judging the words of a believer are other believers who have the exact same religion as the author? Doesn’t that sound a little self serving? Or flat out idiotic?
What’s with the ellipses when you people say what you have to say? I mean, if you know what you’re talking about, just say the damn thing. It comes out like a total space cadet or like you’re taking short pauses to huff the lord:
Yeah, um….the thing I….love about….Christ….he’s so….dreamy… I could….pray for….hours….and, like… wow, man. You just….don’t know what you’re….missing.
This is a written medium, however. We don’t need to know about how slow it takes you to come up with words.
Nope. Bad prose is bad prose. That’s the attitude that leads to *shudder* Christian music. One of the things that makes me really annoyed about the whole Christian “culture” is that overwhelming tendency to applaud mediocrity, particularly in the expression of the arts, when it’s done in God’s name. I think he’d be offended, if I thought he cared at all.
“Nope. Bad prose is bad prose. That’s the attitude that leads to *shudder* Christian music. One of the things that makes me really annoyed about the whole Christian “culture” is that overwhelming tendency to applaud mediocrity, particularly in the expression of the arts, when it’s done in God’s name”
i share your sentiments , my church ( i only go so i don’t have to argue with my parents) is full of bad actors and lame dancers backed by horrendous rappers , but they always thank god for the amazing talent he has blessed their church with
I remember having feelings like that when I got a $350 handbag on clearance for $80. It’s a pretty divine handbag. I love that thing on my arm, and it loves me.
Ahh but the joys of materialism are only fleeting dear Kodie…:)
I find them more comforting and enjoyable than squandering my desires to something false. That’s the thing I don’t understand – this world is a big, juicy peach, and if you believe in god, that god made the earth and all the things in it, that this planet supports life and commerce and utility for humans, you would congratulate me and appreciate my handbag as much as I do instead of patronizing me. It’s a freakin’ work of art and you’re denying god’s love for the artist who made that purse through god just for me, and that I could afford to have it. What kind of blasphemer are you?
That’s a little harsh there Kodie…I wasnt even thinking like that at all.
No, you weren’t, were you.
But so is Kodie…
What the hell does that have to do with the current topic?
thats a sweet post, thx.
I see it as a heartfelt piece of purplish writing, which always annoys me, but that has a sort of grace to it. But then I prefer this quote:
“I can believe things that are true and things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not.
I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.
I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.
I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.
I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.
I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.
I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.
I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.
I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too.
I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.
I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”
I was with you until
I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating
I hate that kind of overgeneralization. It’s incredibly lazy, and often serves no purpose other than to make the writer or speaker feel superior.
How’s that for deep problems communicating? ;P
*That’s* irony.
Haha, I know. It isn’t my opinion, though (or the character’s opinion, as the quote is not mine).
In fact, methinks that’s actually the point of the quote – the character states she can believe anything, even contradictory things (I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.) or naĂŻve generalizations as the one you mentioned, because people can believe anything. I thought was a fitting counterpoint to the quote by TheMysticMoment.
It’s a quote from American Gods by Neil Gaiman, btw. The whole book’s about belief and how the older gods and folkloric personages lose their power as society shifts. So just like some people believe in god today, they probably won’t (population-wise) tomorrow. The gods are forgotten, the new gods will be as well, because they’re born from our hearts (in Mr. Gaiman’s words), they do not exist without belief, and to our hearts they will return when they are forgotten.
Oh, lame… So lame. I go out of my way to teach my daughter that marriage here is between two people who love each other and want to be together for a very long time. She’s two, and she’s more accepting than these adults.
Oh, and this reminds me of something I saw on lol News:
http://punditkitchen.com/2009/05/24/political-pictures-becky-fisher-word-christ/
all we need is love, all together now, all we need is love, love, love is all we need.
Of course John Lennon also wrote, I am the walrus, coo-coo-catchu, gotta love him!
It’s GOO GOO GA JOOB. Read the liner notes.
John C is probably the Eggman.
But who’s the Walrus?
thanks for the correction, I have been singing it wrong all these years….aaahh
“If my dad married another guy who’d be my mom!?”
Is the adult that wrote that line for you to say retarded? You’d be adopted, and you wouldn’t have a “mom”. Also, allowing gays to marry doesn’t really have any effect on that whatsoever. If you have a single parent, then you still don’t have a mom/dad in the traditional sense. Nevermind that the traditional sense is on a decline these days, as more than 50% of marriages end in divorce.
Argh, it’s so retarded. I mean hell, the religious right should SUPPORT gay marriage, since that’d do wonders for the adoption industry, which would help a lot with the pro-life movement!
“Don’t have an abortion, you’re depriving a loving gay couple of a child!”
Well, his mom would still be his mom, but then he’d have twice or maybe 3x as many dads as most people get to have. Friggin’ lucky, that’s what.
Several of my mates have gay parents. One dude in particular says that having two mums and a dad is bloody awesome, because you get extra presents at birthdays, extra emotional support when you need it, plus an extra large extended family. And after all, that’s what kids need – a nice big network of relatives and friends. Gender doesn’t matter.
Heterosexuals need to stop confusing Gay children.
rAmen!!!
WIN.
One thing is for sure, the predominant popular culture (minus Hollywoods interpretation of pop culture) in this country has a hard time accepting this:
http://www.theinsider.com/photo/1767413_Adam_Lambert_of_American_Idol_Kissing_Another_Man
I hope they never will.
I hope they never will.
Why not? Why is it scarier than everyone eating shellfish and wearing multithreaded cloths and having gardens and farms with more than one crop?
because gay sex is icky,
…unless it’s between attractive women.
…and then it’s totally not gay. It’s “experimentation.”
Oh, NOES! A man showing another man affection?? Well, we might as well launch all the ICBMs and call it a day.
Why do you care that some men are attracted to other men?
I don’t care if they are attracted to each other, what bothers me is they want to flaunt it to the rest of us, run naked through the streets and even shock us with gay parades and public sex. They are continually getting busted for public nudity and sex at our parks and they think that they should have special rights. Not equal rights, (something that our constitution has given all of us.)
that bothers me and the rest of sane America.
What on earth are you talking about? Running naked through the streets? Public Sex? Wha…?
Apparently there was also a gay couple getting it on in the abortion clinic dumpster dwade happened to look in while minding his own pro-choice business and saw a aborted fetus.
checked Youtube, the parades are too extreme to show the uncut versions, sorry. Are you people living under a rock?
This is common information.
I hope all your children, biological and/or foster, come out to you as gay.
(Note that since there is nothing wrong with being gay I’m not wishing anything bad on dwade’s children, just for a situation that blows is little fundy mind, hopefully blows it open, but I’d settle for all over the wall).
Kids: “Daddy, we’re gay”
1. Dwade: My god, I’ve been so wrong, gays are just like everyone else, they deserve every right that others have.
2. Dwade: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY-03vYYAjA
My kid’s teach me that Gay isn’t right. And for foster kids, I will gladly accept them as my own. I am more concerned for peoples souls ultimately. The struggles in life will be there I am certain.
much love Joe! (not being Gay here)
classic video, thx.
And I do believe that Gays should have rights, just not marital rights, not benefits from their employers.
This is a slippery slope, in a society that has an “anything goes” mentality, and no standard from God’s Word….where does it stop?
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/01/us/aclu-will-defend-group-that-advocates-legalizing-sex-between-men-and-boys.html
Larry Craig and Ted Haggard taught plenty of people that gay wasn’t right, while being quite gay, secretly.
ACLU/NAMBLA
consent is the magic ingredient. What 1, 2 or even more consenting adults do is not the states business, rape is bad and is the state’s business. Children can’t consent.
@Joe B,
Can’t have it both ways, it shouldn’t be the states business to approve of gay marriage either…
Rape is the state’s business, Consensual sex isn’t. I don’t see how that conflicts or even ties into gay marriage other than a counter to the “slippery slope”.
“Can’t have it both ways, it shouldn’t be the states business to approve of gay marriage either…”
What business is it of the church to oppose it?
checked youtube, saw video of san fran 2008 gay pride parade, which contained:
people on bicycles
people on colorful floats
a couple of people kissing each other on the lips (oh NO!)
and hugging (ah!)
some tee-shirts that reveal almost all of the arm (gasp!)
lots of rainbows
…which pretty much matches my experience of being a bystander at such a parade in Providence.
Don’t be coy. Post this supposed evidence of public saturnalia via link. If you’re concerned about the content, just put a NSFW next to it.
Often, “common knowledge” is simply common prejudice by people who have never actually experienced what they are heaping scorn upon.
do you really think Youtube would leave a video up with naked people, please. Maybe they have calmed down a bit over the last ten years, so society will accept their lifestyle, I did witness these events, they probably got wise and realized that the bad press would be detrimental to their cause.
WHAT A SHOCKER
dwade has a anecdote without ANY supporting evidence.
Uhh, have you SEEN youtube?
If that sort of stuff was going on, it would be on youtube. If it had been on youtube once, it would be there again. All the copyright law and moderating in the WORLD couldn’t keep that stuff off the air.
Sounds like you’ve been getting too much news from the Focus on the Family News Network. ;)
Behold the mind of a religious person…
“I don’t care if they are attracted to each other, what bothers me is they want to flaunt it to the rest of us, run naked through the streets and even shock us with gay parades and public sex.”
Gay people have been forced to confront their sexual identity. If we allowed them to do that, it would then force the rest of us to also confront our sexual identity, which would no longer enable the sexual repression which has been a staple of certain religious traditions. Gays = shocking people into actually thinking about their sexuality = bad.
I’ve never seen any of that, so I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I don’t think you do, either. I know plenty of gays and none of them would do anything like that. I’m sure there are some crazy ones — just like there are plenty of crazy heterosexuals — but to speak of them so insultingly as a group just shows your bigotry and that you’re drunk on Christian kool-aid.
Or, as I’m fond of saying, dwade’s “stuck on stupid.”
Dude, Dwade, where do I live, ’cause I want to go there. Sadly, my sinful life has been devoid of naked, luscious gay people making out in public.
That’s sad. I’m not religious and all I get to see is two guys in a suit kissing goodbye. Not even a tongue kiss. Shame.
I find it quote ironic that people seem to think it’s OK for heterosexual couples to snog and cuddle and make out in public, but when it’s homosexuals it’s suddenly the last days of Rome.
As for the state having no business in marriage: it’s all or nothing, buddy. Marriage is a legal contract. It’s a merely legal business, much like buying a house or selling your car.
If the state has no say in marriage, then civil heterosexual marriages shouldn’t exist either – the employers shouldn’t have to give benefits to any married person, ever. To do otherwise is discrimination – which is the whole point of it.
Your religion’s opinions are only relevant to those who believe in it, not to the country’s development. That’s what separation of church and state means, or should mean.
I couldn’t care less for your God’s moral, I don’t believe in him.
meant to say “where do you live” in the 1st line.
I’ve never seen gay people do anything like that. I did go to a Gay Pride Day once and it was quite tame.
A LOT more tame than the Carnival Parade I went to. How about Marti Gras? You want to see lots of heterosexual flesh, flashy skimpy outfits and women baring their breasts?
And how many heterosexual friends have you known to share stories about getting caught ‘making out’ in their car or whatever in a public place?
bad link…hmmm
http://votefortheworst.com/20090301/adam_lambert_likes_take_pictures_himself_making_out_some_dude
I probably shouldn’t have watched that… as it only pisses me off. I’ve yet to meet someone who was raised by loving and caring gay parents who says they are psychologically scarred. However, I have met people who were severely damaged psychologically by a family who raised them to hate gay people, which meant when they came out their ‘loving and caring’ religious right family, they were disowned.
Children can handle being told that “god is himself, and his own son, and the holy spirit at the same time. Children can handle being told that god sent his only son to be born of a virgin (funny how you can mention “virgin” and that’s not about sex but if you merely mention gay/lesbian you’re telling everybody about the graphic details of your hot sex life) and be brutally murdered to appease his own bloodlust. They can handle that the son became Zombie Jesus after three days in a tomb.
But tell children some children have two mommies or two daddies rather than one of each (or only a mommy/daddy)? OMG, they’re going into meltdown!1!1 Their little brains can’t handle it. Someone clear the room their heads are going to explode!
I was about to say the same thing, then I noticed you’d said it here so well.
Proof that kids are fine with gay marriage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw2Pau65-T4
That’s proof that kids in CA are OK with it, the rest of the sane country thinks it’s a distorted view of the family…..every state that tried to leaglize gay marriage was unanimously struck down.
but maybe I’m old fashioned. I had an experience with living next to a gay couple before gay was cool. They were fighting daily, shouting, throwing each other out of their front window and had the cops over several times a week. If they had kids, those kids would be miserable.
As long as the gay community stays in CA, we can also live happy and normal lives in the rest of America. Another human odditiy as a result of sin.
legalize
I lived next door to a heterosexual couple who would drink themselves into oblivion and threw pots and pans and everything else at each other at 2AM. The cops did get called, many times. If they had kids, they would be miserable.
You’re argument is ridiculous.
they are probably divorced now and both of them are Gay.
not content just making up your own anecdotes anymore huh?
Gotta make up details of other peoples.
“they are probably divorced now and both of them are Gay.”
Are you implying that no true straight couples would ever have arguments?
You’re venturing awfully close to “No True Scotsman” Land.
Bahaha, y’know, I once had a couple neighbours… the husband was a fireman (big, strong man, too) and he had a habit of beating his wife stupid (while his children watched), so one day she opens the door and runs over to us, crying for help, with her little boy standing in the corridor and watching. My mother – who is a single mother with two daughters – was the only to open the door and let her call the cops, which she did.
Man’s never, ever crossed my mom’s path again.
In what way are kids from, say, Idaho, different from the ones in California?
And I think I speak for everyone when I say to this:
every state that tried to legalize gay marriage was unanimously struck down.
Huh?
“every state that tried to legalize gay marriage was unanimously struck down”
Jeez, Elemenope, haven’t you heard that New Hampshire has been vaporized for it’s horrendous transgression by a unanimous vote of the trinity?
lol
I think I would have heard. My fiancee is from NH, her dad lives there.
On the other hand, if Maine were to suddenly disappear in divinely generated vapor, I think it might take a few days to notice.
I’ll keep an eye on Iowa. Though if it’s the whole state not just the state supreme court that ruled on it that’s being struck down, then I guess you’ll know by my disappearance.
hey let’s not bring up Iowa, since that would show that actually there is at least one state where laws forbidding gay marriage were unanimously struck down by that state’s supreme court; and we can’t bother dwade with such pitiful annoyances like facts when he wants to blindly assert a general principle.
Incidentally do you think that a state being ‘struck down’ is distinct from a state being ‘smote’?
I guess Iowa, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut aren’t true Scottsmen, I mean sane states either.
In addition to the 5 other states cited above, I don’t think unanimous means what you think it means. No measure put to the voters in the states that have put gay marriage rights up for a vote was approved unanimously.
Yay segregation
more radically liberal states…
it’s also interesting to me that CA has the worst financial issues in the whole US. Is it any wonder?
They amended the state constitution to ban gay marriage (prop 8) but God is still smiting them with poverty?
and Iowa is so radically liberal that it went for Bush in 2004
I love how Iowa is “radically liberal”…a state that voted for George Bush in 2004, a state that was virtually a toss-up between Gore and Bush in 2000…
dwade, I respect you, but you just keep saying things that just have absolutely no basis in reality…please stop.
I’ve lived my whole life in the most liberal city in Iowa (the county, not the city, not the campus, the county, went 3 to 1 for Obama) and I know that Iowa is at the most a swing state.
Funny you say that, because that describes a lot of Christian and otherwise religious couples I’ve seen. In fact, lots of them made of bigots and with children, too.
Okay, this is why Poe’s Law is so weird. On the one hand, this commercial is way too stupid to be anything but trolling. On the other hand, it looks like NOM is actually serious. So the advocates of gay marriage should take heart. If this is the best the other side can come up with, you’ve already won.
(Also, Anna and Eve? Totally hot.)
Wait till these children realize that if the human race began with only Adam and Eve then that makes us a very inbred race. Incest must have abounded. Why is homosexual bad if incest is good? Talk about confusing.
Another reason more people are turning gay. and America is “slowly” accepting this perverted lifestyle..
The Bible has lost respect in people’s eyes (both within and without the church) to the extent that the culture as a whole now does not take the Bible’s morality seriously at all. The increasing acceptance of homosexual behavior and gay marriage is a symptom of the loss of biblical authority, and is primarily due to the compromise the church has made with the secular world’s teaching on origins.
In other words the Church is asleep, this is a good topic for your next post Daniel.
Another reason more people are turning into shellfish eaters. and America is “slowly” accepting this perverted lifestyle..
The Bible has lost respect in people’s eyes (both within and without the church) to the extent that the culture as a whole now does not take the Bible’s morality seriously at all. The increasing acceptance of shellfish eating behavior and shellfish eater marriage is a symptom of the loss of biblical authority, and is primarily due to the compromise the church has made with the secular world’s teaching on origins.
In other words the Church is asleep, this is a good topic for your next post Daniel.
hey get your own material Joe!! :P
says the man whose blog is just copy-pastes of other peoples writing.
not all. right Daniel?
If it weren’t for Doubt in the supposed moral authority of the Bible we would still be owning slaves and treating women and children like property. We would still be in the dark ages and believing that illness was caused by demons rather than coming to the realization of “germ theory” which has saved the lives of many millions of people. You want to argue about this being the church compromising with the secular world, but those compromises have been very necessary for us to move beyond first century ideologies and understandings of the universe around us. And those compromises have allowed Christianity to remain even remotely relevant in the modern world, because Doubt is inherently human and if the church hadn’t compromised it would have destroyed itself long ago. What cannot bend, breaks.
@Soulless,
My post was in reference to current day Church in America, I cannot argue that the Church “historically” is flawed and have not incorporated the essential teachings of God’s Word. Like science, new things are realized everyday. We should choose to obey it’s teachings. Then we can experience the fullness of what God intended.
I hope that someday you will discover your soul.
dwade, these were not flaws of the church, these were flaws *of the Bible*. You know, supposedly God’s word. Which handed down laws that tolerated if not encouraged slavery, abuse of women, and so forth. The church has only moved past these things in the Bible by flat-out ignoring them.
I agree to disagree
So you don’t think that the presence of slavery in the ten commandments is any indication that the bible was wrong in any way? You see, this is why I call people like you liars. You are either lying about slavery in the bible, or lying about how the presence of slavery in the bible makes you feel.
Precisely we ignored what the Bible had to say Because along the way we Doubted and determined the Bible was wrong. And the Bible was VERY wrong.
If I ever lose my faith in you, there’ll be nothing left for me to do…
Sting
dwade,
Your Sting quote makes no sense in the current context.
dwade,
I hope one day you’ll come to realize how and why mind/brain unity is very well established and you will understand that a “soul” would serve no function since who you are is entirely contained within the brain and the mind does not survive the death of the brain that generates it.
You seem pretty sure of yourself there Souless, did you read that somewhere in a science book? Did you speak to the dead? Cuz you seem quite still alive and haven’t yet “crossed over’ so you couldn’t have actual, experiential knowledge of this rather severe finality that you speak so confidently of. So like your brethren always ask me…how do you know for sure?
You dont have a soul, you have a body, you are a soul. There is more to this life than we can see with our natural eyes, so much more.
I have a pretty good imagination.
The best and most compelling argument for mind/brain unity I’ve ever read on the link below. It’s quite long, but well worth the read. The case studies it cites in of themselves are fascinating.
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/ghost.html
It’s logic. If who you are can be changed, as often happens, by brain damage then who you are is entirely dependent upon the integrity of the brain, and that being the case if there is an afterlife who you are as an individual will not be going there. Also contrary to religious people’s understanding, a “soul” existing beyond the life of the body would be contrary to the laws of thermodynamics. The first law only applies to closed systems. A living human body is a non-isolated open system because we are still taking in oxygen, water, and food. Similar to a working power-plant which burns coal. Eventually we become an isolated open system, meaning we are no longer taking in oxygen, water, and food. We call that Death then we become subject to the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy takes over just like it would in a coal power-plant if the fuel and/or oxygen is cut off. Who would claim that the power keeps being generated when the fuel is extinguished? The same goes for the bio-electrical energy that is your mind.
Kodie…good reply, :)
Soulful…
Life is Love, and Love is of God He being that which fills “all in all” with Himself for “in Him we live and move and have our very being”. Pneuma.
In Him was the light of life that would indwell and enlighten every man for He is that very light, but if the light in us be darkness, of how dark is that light indeed. So then, let us love the Light. You are more than you know and of an inestimable worth, a priceless treasure in Love’s His eyes.
@Mystic Moment
Your quoted ethereal description of the god you believe in aside, I see no reason place implications or connotations to “Life”, “Love”, or “Light” beyond that which intersects with the material world. Life is experience, Love is an emotion and humanity being at its best, and Light is just the section of the electromagnetic spectrum which we can see with our eyes. Worth is a subjective term which I’m not concerned about from external perspectives. We each decide worth, and I don’t care about how others judge my worth, whether in hyperbole or not, least of all the eyes of a god for which I have no use and do not need.
Oh but we all need Love Souless and He is Love.
All the best, light and love to you.
@ Mystic Movement
You’ve just relabeled the emotion we call “Love” and called it God. I see no purpose in that, and the fact that we all need Love is quite irrelevant to whether or not a God is indeed “Love”. No god that I’ve ever seen depicted was “Love”. Take the Biblical god for example, the Biblical god is not Love because Love does not give people Ultimatums like Yahweh does. That “Love me or burn” nonsense is not very loving at all.
Proof plz.
“The Bible has lost respect in people’s eyes (both within and without the church) to the extent that the culture as a whole now does not take the Bible’s morality seriously at all. ”
Did you just say “the Bible’s morality”? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA…………. whew…good one!
“The Bible has lost respect in people’s eyes (both within and without the church) to the extent that the culture as a whole now does not take the Bible’s morality seriously at all. The increasing acceptance of homosexual behavior and gay marriage is a symptom of the loss of biblical authority, and is primarily due to the compromise the church has made with the secular world’s teaching on origins.”
That’s because the bible doesn’t run our country. You know, as in, that’s your problem, not ours? Someone ought to take away the rights of the ignorant and see how you’d like it when you can’t do normal stuff everyone else gets to do. I mean, not really, just hypothetically, I don’t want to take away rights from people, not even dwade.
“Turning” gay? What is it, some kind of contagious disease?
There have been gay people all through history. It just is finally becoming acceptable, and people aren’t killed for it, so people actually — gasp — let people know what they are in public, just like everyone else does.
do we have any gay readers who could pay our friend a visit and cough on him?
I’m gay. Trust me it’s not a disease, and I was fully aware of my attraction to people of my same gender as a child all the way back in first grade. In second grade I had a crush on the boy who sat in front of me. He was adorable with his leather biker jacket and white t-shirt. What can I say, Happy Days was big back then.
: )
I know that.
I’ve just written off Dwade has capable of change and think it would be funny for someone to freak him out.
I agree. He probably is incapable of change, but then what should we expect? He think he has his morality from a god. Does he own any slaves do you think? You know, kind of like how Mormons still marry more than one woman even though it’s not legal. And if he doesn’t own any slaves, why not? His god said it was okay with him!
soulless,
if you have any debt, YOU are a slave, if you work for an employer, YOU are a slave, this is the context in many cases in the Bible. We are to be pleasing to our masters and to work for them as unto the Lord.
Other slaves worked for masters in exchange for food and shelter, it wasn’t a bad thing as you make it out to be. Some slaves were abused, just like getting abused in your job. Hopefully this puts it in context for you. Misinterpreting the Bible is prevalent amongst the skeptics.
Slaves are property. If you have any debt, you need to pay it back, but that is a contract when you borrow money. If you have a job, you are in a mutual agreement with your boss or your clients to provide the labor and they pay you an amount you agree to. However, your boss doesn’t own your time, he rents it. The employee can leave at any time, and the employer can’t sell you to someone else, he can only tell you to go home and don’t come back. How much more stupid are you going to get today?
Come on. The Africans abducted by the slave traders didn’t have it so bad. They got food and shelter, AND JESUS, THEY GOT JESUS and all they had to do was work for their owner for their entire lives and have their children work for their owner for their whole live, and their chlidren’s children, etc. That sounds like a fair exchange doesn’t it?
@dwade
The Bible specifically says you can beat your slaves as long as they don’t die in the first couple of days from the beating and you can will them to your decedents because you own them as property.
Is Bank of America going to beat me? Can they pass me down like property? Obviously not.
@dwade
When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.
Exodus 21:20-21
Doesn’t sound so rosy to me.
Then there is the coercion to remain a slave in the next verses.
“If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward, only he will go free in the seventh year. But if he was married before he became a slave, then his wife will be freed with him. If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master. But the slave may plainly declare, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children. I would rather not go free.’ If he does this, his master must present him before God. Then his master must take him to the door and publicly pierce his ear with an awl. After that, the slave will belong to his master forever.” (Exodus 21:2-6)
Now you are getting into a study on God’s judgment. He does judge sin you know?. (or maybe you don’t)
Don’t cherry pick verses to amplify your cause. If you read the Bible in context you understand what is truly written and the meaning intended.
If you are truly interested in studying God’s judgment, I will be happy to oblige.
And I am not claiming slavery as right in this present day, It is a sin in my mind.
@dwade
Typical. When verses that are clearly in support of a position in opposition to the Bible believer is used it’s called “cherry picking”. Convenient. The fact that those verses are even in the Bible is despicable, and I welcome you to read them in context. Their meanings do not change. If your God thought that slavery was a sin then your god would have out and out said so. He certainly didn’t have a problem creating edicts to follow, but he didn’t because slavery was fine and dandy to your very immoral god and even by your own standards something that your god thought was okay you consider to be “sin”. Are you disagreeing with your god? Is your god wrong about this matter? How could a god who is supposedly “perfect” be so wrong about slavery?
JoeB,
“africans” refers to a nationality, not a race.
Africa is not one country so African is not an nationality.
and secondly, that doesn’t have anything to do with the point of my comment
Oh, and get this. That boy’s name from the second grade was Fabian. Isn’t that cute? LOL I saw him as an adult years later. He was a very clean cut and respectable young man. Very nice too, my mother even liked him.
I know… T.M.I.
LOL
contrary to popular belief, you are not born gay. You are born with a need for affection. You will get it however you feel works best for you. I am glad people don’t use that as a standard for all of lifes choices.
and I agree it’s not a disease. Sexual perversion is a result of sin.
So as a child in second grade I was “sexually perverted” because I was attracted to the boy who sat in front of me? Being gay isn’t about sex, one can never have sex one’s entire life and still be very gay. It’s about who one is attracted to. If you are only attracted to people of the same gender as yourself you are homosexual whether you ever have sexual relations or not.
you needed affection. You chose homosexuality.
God designed you for women. The physical make up of a man and woman should clue you in on this fact. Children can have sexual experiences early in life. Some experience it with other children, Some kids unfortunately become targets of others sexual sin.
So why is homosexuality prevalent in many animal species? Animals can’t sin…
You are under the assumption that everyone is born heterosexual. That’s a bit like a right handed person who can’t imagine someone being born left handed. You have limited knowledge of this because you aren’t gay. You choose to listen to a book written by humans who didn’t have a clue what being homosexual was and was under the same assumption that all humans are born heterosexual. You are all mistaken.
If you are implying that I was molested or had sexual relations at an early age you’re mistaken about that also. I didn’t have sex till I was 22 but I have always been gay.
If I were to even attempt to have a relationship with a woman it would be very unfair to her. I am not attracted to women. Does sexual attraction not figure into your nonsensical equation or not? Do you somehow have the idea that I’m really attracted to women but I choose to just have sex with men? Again, you would be mistaken. I am attracted ONLY to men, and I don’t have sex with men I’m not both attracted to and have a relationship with.
@El:
Clearly it’s a result of the curse on creation. God punished Adam for his sin by turning penguins gay. (Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time.)
So, when did you choose to be heterosexual?
So when did you choose to become heterosexual?
God, who created you and I, made us heterosexual.
We’ve already had this talk about you not knowing everything about god.
So we really shouldn’t have to have this talk about you not knowing if he made some people homosexual.
Please educate yourself on the intrinsice relationship between brain development and sexuality before you make another post in this thread.
Thank you,
The 21st Century.
The 21st Century? Oh John, dont you know? Have you not heard? He is the ancient of days yet beyond all time and space, not limited as we are, with Him a day is as a thousand years.
A “higher education” is needed indeed and the spirit would teach you, that Light that would (Himself) dwell within you. Then, you would have no further need for a teacher, for the spirit knows all things.
No, JC, you fail to understand the relationship between your body’s plan (DNA, genotype) and your body’s outcome (phenotype). Therefore,you have no way to judge our factual statements against your dogma…
Phew, I thought there really were two of them.
LRA…I know you know your science girl, and I am not disputing physical things, but there IS most definitely a spiritual component, element that science is all took quick to dismiss because it can’t “test” it, can’t prove it.
I could tell you (true) and personal stories, events that I have personally experienced that can’t be “explained” away as mere coincidence, etc. So there is another, higher realm, its called the heavenly (meaning spiritual) realm and its beautiful.
Go ahead, tell it. It will be explained by coincidence.
Miss Kodie…you have pre-disposed it so? Isn’t that in direct violation of your beloved laws of science and objective testing measures? Under such a bias I think I would rather not share then…for you would surely miss both the beauty and the One.
JC,
I really appreciate the Godly wisdom that you bring to these posts. The Spirit is at war with the flesh, it is quite obvious as I read these blogs. These dear friends will hopefully consider that the spirit and flesh will never agree.
I discovered this 20 years ago and my life has been a complete 180 degree turn. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts nor or His ways our ways….(paraphrasing here)
Blessings.
Oh Mystic,
You’re so full of ethereal shite.
Thx Dwade, I appreciate you, the light which you have received. Obviously, the forum regulars know me all too well as you can plainly tell. The secret (just between us, lol) is that Father gives you a great love for them, a love not all your own.
No matter what they say…love them anyway!
@dwade
The “Spirit” isn’t at war with the flesh. Religious people’s minds just have an overwhelming desire to be more than just a body and their person more than just a result of brain function.
Why is it that so many of us have no problem accepting mortality, such as myself, yet live happy, full, and productive lives without this thing you crave so much?
John, I’m not biased more than I just think you don’t know what coincidences are or how to recognize them. Also, why the sock puppet?
JC, understood.
I guess Johnny C got tired of “being” the only woo-filled loonybird, so he creates a sockpuppet to give the impression that there are two woo-filled loonybirds.
Kodie…
I’m wasn’t trying to, nor am I under the false impression that I was fooling anyone with The Mystic Moment name seeing as all here know me and my avatar by now. If not by my avatar then for sure by my style of writing, content, etc. You seem kinda new to me (I left for a couple months and just recently returned) so maybe thats why you would call it a “sock puppet”.
I am very familiar with the difference between a mere coincidence and when the eternal, spiritual (may it be on earth as it is in heaven) realm invades my “earthly” (physical, natural) realm. So, I am merely offering what we call in my field, radiology a “differential diagnosis” to the forum members, another view, perspective from which to consider things.
Roger…
Are you sure my words belong in the “looney bin” as you say and not the “liberty bin”? And what is the true message and offer that Christ makes? Do you know?
Truth is always liberating my unbelieving friend, liberating indeed.
@soulless,
Why is it that so many of us have no problem accepting mortality, such as myself, yet live happy, full, and productive lives without this thing you crave so much?
I, like you lived apart from Christ for many years and thought life was grand. Then I realized the world around me was a mere smokescreen. Like a heavy veil covering my eyes. I realized that I had moved into the occult. It was subtle.
I didn’t know how bad it was until God opened my eyes to the truth. It’s the difference between night and day. Chains fell off, prison door flew open and I was free. There is no comparison to His Light, not physical light, spiritual light. He gives you new eyes to see, new feet to walk, a new heart to serve. God really is the ultimate definition of Love.
Blessings
@dwade
I had the exact opposite experience. I was a Christian for most of my life. Then after a great deal of study of the Bible and everything dealing with religion I realized it was all a sham. My chains that keep me a slave to religion fell away and I was free to think for myself.
It’s typical that in your story that being free of religious dogma is actually slavery. In the religious system one becomes shackled to real freedom is always demonized in some way.
Love is Love. The Christian god is not Love. The Christian god is an Ultimatum. “Love me and do as I would have you do, or you will burn for all eternity”. That’s not Love. That is slavery.
@soulless,
You are correct in that religion is slavery. Man made religion. The Bible explains true, pure religion as,
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being spotted from the world.
Anyone have trouble with this type of religion?
Look, I was an atheist when I showed up here, and haven’t believed in god my whole life. I have attempted to consider it, I think it’s important to check yourself and not going blindly along. But the more dwade says, and other religious contributors, the more implausible god sounds by the hour and by the day.
@dwade
I call bullcrap. Simply being a good person and keeping clean isn’t a religion that’s good sense which does not in any way automatically have to do with some god and certainly not the malarkey in the Bible which was mostly utter lies.
If you’re going to bring the Bible into this that’s what religion has done as well. The Heaven/Hell thing and the gigantic Ultimatum. I remind every Bible believer of that because they need to see it for what it is. It’s not a choice, it’s an Ultimatum. “Love me and do as I would have you do, or burn for all eternity”. That’s not Love and it’s nothing I want anything to do with.
Maybe he made you and I like that (though I don’t think he even exists or created us), but obviously he didn’t make homosexuals heterosexual, otherwise they wouldn’t be homosexual!
Hey, considering what passes for a “perfect” creation in His eyes, it’s not surprising that so many of the “heterosexuals” He created turned out gay. Heck, with His error rate, it’s a wonder any of us are straight!
@ Andrew
LOL Really, makes you wonder what the thinking was suppose to have been for those born with both male and female genitalia. Indecision perhaps?
To mix two favorite topics around here
Evolution explains homosexuality much better. A gay creature won’t be too great at passing it’s own genes, but it’s beneficial to have a certain % of your social/tribal group as non-breeding adults. More providers, less mouths to feed from all those “animal urges”. A social creature with a gay aunt/uncle/sibling will have more support from within the group since that relative won’t have their own offspring to take care of, than one with only breeding relatives.
Continuing
So then if you are one of those that can reconcile religious believe with science, then taking the “Joe the Plumber” view and keeping homosexuals away from your children is defying god’s will. They evolved (with or without a divine nudge, depending on your views) the trait to help care for their relatives children.
Oh, Joe B, there you go bringing science into this. Gawrsh, don’t you know that the homosexhuhls are depraved individuals who can’t wait to go sodomize kindergartners and destroy every heterosexual marriage?
@Joe B
I’ve thought the same thing. Not only is it evolutionary population control but also a quality control mechanism. More people to take care of the kids than are breeding them themselves. I’ve pointed this out to others but it gets dismissed every time. They would rather gay people serve no valuable function in society. That makes gay people easier to condemn.
What does “heterosexual” mean to you exactly?
If homosexuality is a choice so is heterosexuality.
If their are two states, and everyone in state B is there by choice, then everyone in state A is also there by choice, if only the choice not to go to state B.
Exactly, and how many heterosexual males could honestly find a guy sexually attractive by choice? You either do or you do not. These “everyone is heterosexual” people just don’t seem to understand that.
Which is why I think all the “homosexuality is a choice” people have homosexual desires (see by post below).
If you aren’t choosing your “public” orientation then why would you think anyone else is choosing theirs?
Yes, pretty much everything in life boils down to choice, its called…free will. The problem is the influences, some of us don’t understand the forces of influence and sadly we wind up becoming our own worst enemy.
That’s why we desparately need to walk in the Light. That light is lovingly offered to us, but since most of us confuse the Light (Himself) with that dreaded, dead external and useless thing called “religion” we never enter in on the Lighted path of Life ITself.
We can’t love Christ if we dont love and long for Truth.
And how does that…statement…explain homosexuality, JC?
Did I choose to be white John C?
Because I really love rap music, and think I might have chosen wrong.
@John C
So when did you choose to be right or left handed? Where was the “Free Will” in that?
“Free Will” is an illusion. We all live under some form of Determinism. My evidence for that is the very intricately woven series of Cause/Effect sequences that occur in our lives. Even the options for our choices in life are determined by the Cause/Effect system we live under. And the choices we make are based on the results of past Cause/Effect series. There is no “Free Will”.
Free Will was created long ago by people so they could deny their own responsibility toward others and so we could easily place blame and punish people.
Souless…
A man will always behave like the person he THINKS he is. And since you THINK you are gay, hence you manifest that behavior from your inner consciousness/reality.
Let me ask you a question….who told you that you were gay? Did Father tell you that? The problem is we have lost our reference point…Christ that perfect and pattern Son in whose high and lovely image we were also (originally) created. You do not perceive what or who you (mankind) were prior to the disruption (sin, death, separation) and therefore have no pattern from which to emulate the life within.
I am not interested in you changing your external “behavior” for that would merely be more “religion”. The true transformation, the human solution to all waywardness is an internal change of nature, His within for…Christ IN you is the mystery of the ages Col 1:27. Christ (His glorious nature) is your true identity, every man coming forth from the great heart of the Father. The journey is ever homeward, graceful, enlightening and merciful. Or have you not heard? His very nature, His name IS Love (1 John 4:16).
There is more to this “Christ” than you know Souless…there is surely more.
So if I just believe I’m a right handed black man, then ….
@John C
Joe has a point. Why should anyone go along with what you’re saying here John. If I believed I was right handed would I be right handed in spite of the fact that my brain is wired to be naturally left handed? Obviously not. You are still denying the brain wiring /sexual orientation connection. I’m both gay and left handed because my brain is wired that way.
No one told me I was gay. My being “gay” was from inner observation at an early age. I knew that if one was attracted to the same gender one was gay. It’s really that simple. What did your Jesus know about sexuality? He supposedly was male and had no sexual relationships with women but was known to be in the company of many men. Sounds gay to me.
The “original sin” idea that you seem to be referring to with the “separation” word. Is an absurdity based on false information. Genesis is not factual. We live in a natural world that is Billions of years old and was here Long before we ever evolved from more primitive ape species.
The most important thing to know about Jesus is that HUGE Ultimatum. “Love me or Burn!” That’s the only thing I need to know and it says everything about Christianity. It was created by men who wanted to control people.
@ JC
So you’re saying I chose to be handicapped and left handed both.
Hey, maybe I can choose to be black and lesbian. Then I’ll fit in all minorities! Then again, I already chose to be latina (nevermind that I don’t remember picking it – I’d always prefered the black race, really), so maybe not. And I feel no particular urges towards women. Mm…
When people make a statement like that the only reasoning that I can understand is that the speaker had gay or bisexual desires and “chose” to behave purely straight. They think it’s a choice, because they made a choice to be sexual in a way that doesn’t align with their orientation.
I have been straight for as long as I can remember. I never chose my sexual orientation.
I think you’re right about this. We can’t know the minds of others, but their actions and their expressed beliefs do give us clues to what is going on in people’s minds. So it makes sense that someone who also cannot know that sexual orientation is not chosen, but they themselves have done so due to some external pressure be it religious or cultural, may just hold ideas that sexual orientation is chosen by others as well when in fact it isn’t.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with that one.
Remember, according to the bible the world’s first relationship was 2 dudes, and they loved each other.
Whom might they be?
That god dude, and that adam dude.
Sunny,
No, in the begiining He made them male and female…in one. The soul represents the female aspect and the spirit the male aspect. This is why marriage and the “coming together” of a man and a woman is referred to as a spiritual mystery…it reflects the Godhead and original matrix.
There is more to the story than you (currently) know or appreciate, respectfully speaking.
blah blaah blah blah blah – John C.
Sunny,
Your light is dim my friend, you are walking by the light of the moon which has no light of its own…walk in the (true) light and then you will surely…see!
“What’s with the ellipses when you people say what you have to say? I mean, if you know what you’re talking about, just say the damn thing. It comes out like a total space cadet or like you’re taking short pauses to huff the lord:
This is a written medium, however. We don’t need to know about how slow it takes you to come up with words.” – Kodie
I agree it just makes them appear even more stupid than usual.
And this makes 5.
I use ellipses quite frequently…why don’t you quit before you embarrass yourself…or I will tell you what you can do…now what do you think of that?
I like ellipses…its ok with you that a man can be gay but not that John C likes ellipses? Do I sense a double standard here guys? lol
“I use ellipses quite frequently…why don’t you quit before you embarrass yourself…or I will tell you what you can do…now what do you think of that?”
I was talking to John C. He’s not here to talk, hes here to preach and babble nonsense at us.
Embarrass myself? When I was clearly quoting someone else and agreeing with them?
Knock yourself out, pal.
You, could, like, using, commas, a lot, also, but, it’s, still, incorrect, usage.
My entire post was a joke, sir.
/internet sarcasm detector FAIL
It was out of Batteries. :(
How would you know? If you claim that the “default” sexual setting is “heterosexual,” then how do you know you’re heterosexual, dwade? Oh, why bother. You’ve made up your mind that homosexuality is wrong, perverted, etc., and will twist whatever “evidence” you “find” (or conjure up) to suit your “argument.” You claim that gays should not be discriminated against in employment, but make a dubious claim that us getting married would somehow destroy the fabric of society…lack of evidence be damned. You won’t bother to read ANY of the scientific evidence that argues that sexuality may be hardwired into our brains, but will claim a “god” hardwired humanity with heterosexuality; further, you’ll tell those of us who tell you that we knew we were attracted to the same gender around the same time you were figuring out you liked the opposite gender that we “chose” our sexual orientation (which is so full of WRONG, I hardly know where to begin).
Your willing ignorance is hardly an attribute that an internet warrior for Jeebus should have on ready display.
Roger,
even a logical mind can make the discovery that male and female genitalia were (designed) to fit together. Like a hand in a glove, perfect design. Why, if homosexuality was “natural” as you say, would this be so?
Every part of your body has a specific purpose, the eye’s job is to see, the hand to grasp, the feet and legs to walk (you get my point here)….a males sexual organ and a females sexual organ were designed to work together. This is also the source for human existance. In other words, if you are denying this, and you are correct, you would not even exist. This to me is clearly a right or wrong issue, based on the facts of the physical design of the human body.
every part dwade?
not going there sorry.
come on dwade. All I was going to do was ask why you had nipples.
or by “not going there” do you mean, not backing up your claims when you get called on BS.
I think that God gave me nipples so you would ask me, why do I have nipples?
There, that’s an honest answer. Thats like asking why do I have eyebrows or a belly button…hmm, Joe I dont know what time it is for you, but maybe you should consider calling it a night.
blessings and Grace,
sola gratia
That’s a pretty self important view of the world. Men have had nipples for (6,000 to many millions) of years just so someone could ask you about it and you could say goddidit.
Joe B,
That’s a great summary of religion you’ve got there.
Dwade…FYI, Roger is also gay (or thinks he is) in case you didnt know. He has shared this in the past.
Just so you know…
1. What is the point of pointing out that I’m gay, JC? Do you not think I’m quite capable of speaking for my self?
2. “thinks he is”? So. What do you “think” you are? How dare you reduce my identity to a figment of my imagination while you blather on and on and ON about your…”revelations” all the while ignoring repeated attempts to get you to ground your “arguments” in at least one shred of reality and empirical science.
And with that, I’m done with you. I’m done poking at you in jest and attempting to seriously engage you, hoping that you’d say something that wasn’t smothered in woo. You claim to be a humble person (first mistake: humble people never have to say they are), but you are a disingenuous, duplicitous (the sockpuppet confirmed as much for me), and arrogant person who refuses to actually engage in debate.
You attempt to claim a “gnosis” that rises above religion–however, when people put to you the question of how you learned of God, Jesus, etc, you evade and write a bunch of nonsense. You know you can answer honestly and clearly, yet you choose to be obtuse. I have more respect for an outright troll than I do you; at least with a troll there is no pretense. However, with you, JC, you repeat the same. damned. bits of solipsistic nonsense, devoid of rhyme or reason, devoid of logic and sense.
Your comments about homosexuality have been representative of your nonsense. You claim to be all up in your “spirit world,” but you cannot mask your homophobia with a bunch of nonsense gobbledygook. In short, I’d invite you to sack up and actually SAY something, but you’d more likely respond with some saccharine, disingenuous bit of “love” (which it would patently isn’t) and never actually answer a question or challenge.
“How dare you reduce my identity to a figment of my imagination while you blather on and on and ON about your…”revelations”"
This is also irony…John C reducing someone’s identity to a figment of their imagination when he has no little or no evidence that substantial parts of his identity are anything more than that….
You missed the point Roger…I could see where dwade’s conversation was headed and was just trying to let him know so he could be delicate and sensitive when speaking with you, I was trying to “protect” you in a way, not demean you in any way. Take care.
Then women shouldn’t shave, men shouldn’t shave, nobody should get haircuts or wear make-up. The end of my finger should be a pen that never runs out of ink. Our hands were designed to hold things, but obviously we should have been kangaroos because I can’t drink a cup of hot coffee with my hand and keep my money dry. Looks like god really messed it up for us.
I’m seriously having trouble taking dwade seriously.
“There is PROOF! I SEEEN it. Wha? No, Of course I can’t show it to you.”
I can not accept someone would be so dense and obscure and god-damn offensive while claiming to be having a civil discussion.
And @ male and female parts fitting together well – ahhahaahahaaaaahhhahaahahaha.
POE.
my favorite argument against design
A reply to the old “The Banana, Atheist’s Nightmare”
“The Pineapple, Creationist’s Nightmare”
“Like a hand in a glove, perfect design”
Eyes that work *perfectly* backwards.
An appendix that ruptures *perfectly*.
A god that if he existed would be *perfectly* incompetent.
And human ingenuity allows us to use things for other than their apparent purpose. You ever see MacGyver? That’s what gays are. Gays are the Angus MacGyver of sex. You don’t hate MacGyver, do you?
Also, not every part of our body has a purpose. The appendix is pretty useless and is left over from the days when our diets consisted of raw meat. Wisdom teeth are also pretty useless, and in fact, cause problems and have to be removed. And, as it has been pointed out already, men’s nipples seem pretty useless.
Haha, yes, and the goosebump reflex, and the tailbone, and useless ear muscles, and plica semilunaris on the inside corner of the eye, and… that’s just humans. Remnants of pelvic bones in snakes? Wings on flightless birds? Blind eyes on cavefish? Vestigial organs are evidence of poor design or no design.
Two words: bisexual people. They exist, ya know.
Also, I want a refund. My eyes (which were designed backwards by default) are faulty. I’ve myopia (which is curable by unnatural surgery). Also, my legs, they don’t work properly – I’ve had arthritis since I was less than a year old. I can’t walk at all. I never have.
In fact, my body seems to have been perfectly designed to die from high fever and pain before I even knew what life was.
Male and female genitalia go perfectly together, except when they don’t. Like, y’know, happens with intersexed people, which are neither perfectly male or perfectly male. It’s rich that you say male and female, when those lines are blurred in nature (and then corrected via decidedly unnatural surgery). Or like when a man simply can’t get it up for the opposite gender, or women who experience no pleasure with the default piece of the Godly Lego Set. Just bugs in the “perfectly designed” machine, no?
Then again, this is the same designer who created wasps that can only reproduce by paralyzing and inserting their eggs inside a living creature’s live body and have their larvae feed on it. Same creature who designed those immoral, sinful penguins and bonobos and dolphins and horses and giraffes and goats and sheep and…
If I designed software like your god designs things, I’d be out of a job.
So how do you explain hermaphroditism? Is that an entirely new sex that god specially makes once in a wihle, or does god screw up the conception process now and then? What about XXY males?
What if someone tried to tell you that you weren’t born heterosexual, because that’s not what their holy books says? You’d laugh your head off at them.
And that’s what we’re doing at you, too. You sound hilarious. No, I know all the homosexuals, who’ve had lifelong experiences with their homosexuality, say they were born gay. But MY BOOK, MY BOOK, it says you’re wrong! My book! God wrote it! Really!
Well Doug, my holy book says you weren’t born heterosexual. It says you actually like dogs. You may deny it, but MY BOOK Doug! MY BOOK! It says you like dogs, it doesn’t matter what you say, you’re just denying TheTruth™!
“You’re just denying the truth”
And of course, people will obviously accuse you of having your own religion from the tone of these comments. Why do you force your truth upon me, Daniel?
And two seconds later, someone will accuse of having no basis for truth or morality at all.
So which charge is it?
People make fun of atheists for having no basis in objective truth, and then call our truth claims “religion”. Isn’t it hilarious that people denigrate atheists by calling them religious? That says a lot about religion, doesn’t it?
Lastly, all of you who are arguing against homosexuality while ignoring the scientific evidence never get to lecture me on being close-minded again.
Religious people recognize that you can’t get make up statements and call them facts, which is why they complain so much when atheists make claims from science which they think are false. If only believers would apply the same scrutiny to religion, maybe they would have a new perspective…as I’ve said before, everyone tends to believe in critical thinking, but some people just apply it selectively.
Then how is it that we make gay rats in utero by exposing them to certain hormones? Sexuality, like all human traits, is strongly influenced by genes:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17015344?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.PMC_FreeArticle_ad&linkpos=1&log$=pmcad5_article
(response to Wade’s ignorant claim that people aren’t born gay)
To every season turn.
“The Bible has lost respect in people’s eyes (both within and without the church) to the extent that the culture as a whole now does not take the Bible’s morality seriously at all”
I’d like the Bible to lose respect as a basis for morality. Is it okay to torture your children for all eternity? Is it okay to punish finite offenses with infinite punishment? Is it okay to condone rape, slavery, and genocide? Is it okay to create gay people and then stigmatize and punish them for absolutely no reason? What about women? What about people of other religions?
The Bible says a lot of good things about morality. Love your neighbor as yourself. Visit those in prison. Take care of the poor and sick. I appreciate that. But it’s clearly not an infallible guide, and there are plenty of other things for which we can base our morality besides the Bible. Confucius and Buddha are two excellent examples with which I would begin.
Tele…
Are you sure that the King James translators had it right with “eternity”? I think that is best translated in the original greek as an eon/aeon, or an age, a dispensation of time.
What does the following verse mean…as in adam all died (spiritual death/separation), so in Christ all men shall be made alive (spiritually, etenally)? 1 Cor 15:22 What if there is a grand plan, great restoration? What if we are living an illusion, the adamic dream? What if we (mankind) would awaken? Hmm….
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I’m talking about theology. What are you talking about, and where are you getting your information?
I’m talking about Life which is what Christ (not theology or religion) is all about.
What is Life and where does it come from and how does it come to you?
Christ IS the very essence of life, is Life Himself for all things were created in and through Him and we are in that One Life (there is only one life in the entire universe) having been made a living soul by the breath (pneuma) of God which gave the spirit to man(kind) by which we have become “living souls”. The higher level is that of a life-giving spirit if Christ would be allowed to rule and reign from the throne of our surrendered spirits, as it was before the great disruption, in the pristine, the undefiled, the paradaisical condition.
And how do you know any of this? And why do you believe it?
I know it only by the internal witness of the indwelling spirit and I always believe Father (the Spirit) for He is utterly trustworthy and incapable of lying.
Or did you not know that I and my Father are One?
The better question is…what has been the result of my believing such (seemingly) outlandish and fairy tale-like claims?
John, those are pretty “new age” ideas you are revealing here. I thought you were christian, but of course, I forgot every christian has his own set of beliefs.
BTW, animals are also part of the unique spirit?
That god sounds indecisive. What if he were more efficient, and instead of building a dollhouse and having so many temper tantrums, he just put a big open house sign on the heaven if that’s what he’s trying to get at. I mean, the god you keep describing is literally toying with his creation, he’s not being forthright and he sounds like he hates everyone and wants them to be confused.
Indeed. Ask the Hindus and Sikhs and Muslims if they are confused.
If you are right about this Christian God, s(he) seems like an awfully malicious character….
It means that Paul didn’t understand evolution.
“Another reason more people are turning gay. and America is “slowly” accepting this perverted lifestyle..”
You do realize that you are calling specific people on this blog perverted. You are offensive, Wade. You make stoopid claims and refuse to back them up. You judge people, despite YOUR bible’s command to judge not. You are ridiculous. And you wonder why I get mad at you…
Let’s hope that he and those that are like minded continue. They’ve lost the current young generations and will continue to do so as it is pretty easy to see that their arguments lead to bigoted social policies. Even young evangelicals are turning against them.
Hey the post count shot up while I was out having dinner. I guess Dwade showed up to spew more of his blotavating bullshit.
RE: Hey the post count shot up while I was out having dinner.
you’re welcome Daniel.
“Exactly, and how many heterosexual males could honestly find a guy sexually attractive by choice? You either do or you do not. These “everyone is heterosexual” people just don’t seem to understand that.”
I find it difficult to believe there are people who truly don’t understand something that logical. But it doesn’t mesh with their ideology, so they’ve stifled that understanding. They’ve hidden it away in the recesses of their minds.
Of course nobody chooses their sexual orientation. I didn’t choose to be heterosexual and Soulless didn’t choose to be homosexual. “On March 23, 1991, I sat down and – once and for all – made a conscious choice to be heterosexual. As I recall, it rained heavily that day. It seemed a storm was gathering.” Puh-lease.
free will. God’s will or your own. You get to choose.
So, if I understand…
You’re actually attracted to men? You have that urge, but you CHOSE to only like women?
I choose to obey God
@ dwade
You are naturally attracted to men but choose to be with women because of your god?
Your god didn’t do that with men who are only naturally attracted to women. So why pick on you?
@soulless,
If you mean “attracted” as I can appreciate the beauty of men and women. Yes, God is an awesome designer. He made attractive men and women. For me to look at an attractive guy and think, hey, he’s quite handsome!! The same would be to look at an attractive woman and think, she’s beautiful….
The above mentioned instances are not the same as thinking “I want to sleep with him and have sexual relations.”
I choose to be with my wife because she was designed specifically for me and me alone. And it is the most natural experience. No condemnation, no guilt, no doubt.
It’s a beautiful thing when your free will lines up with God’s will…FREEDOM!!
I love the smell of repression in the morning. It smells like christianity.
@dwade
I’m not talking about appreciating beauty for aesthetics.
I’m talking about sexual attraction. If the sight of a handsome man gives you an erection you’re at least bi-sexual and if you couldn’t get an erection at the sight of a beautiful women if your life depended on it you’re probably gay.
Let’s create a scenario. I’m not sexually attracted to women. I get married to a woman because it’s expected of me either by some god, society, my mother, whatever reason. There is no way I’m going to be functional with a woman in any sexual way. What sort of faux Freedom is this?
Repression equals religion in its cultural context, but Christ? He IS life and liberty indeed…you just dont (yet) know, but you will, you will.
That doesn’t really follow.
I’ve never wanted to sleep with men, but I’ve always wanted to sleep with women. For me, there’s no choice.
I can appreciate the beauty of another human being, male or female, but sexual attraction is something else entirely.
I’ve had a male best friend, and a female best friend. Both of whom I’ve shared secrets with, grown as a person with, and had deep emotional ties to. However, I never had sexual attraction to my male friend. Not so with the female. For the longest time, I was in love with her. In some ways, I still am, but it’s out of respect for her sexuality (she happens to be lesbian) that I don’t let that get in the way of our friendship. I have been one of those incredibly lucky people to have more than one incredible friend in my life.
I have no choice in that sexual attraction.
And if it matters, the male friend was bi-sexual.
Both of these people were fantastic people that I could’ve known for my entire life. My male friend is dead now, and unless death separates me from the female friend, we will remain steadfast friends for the rest of our lives. The only real difference between them is their sex, and as a result, my sexual attraction.
I’ve never gotten aroused, ever, thinking about the male friend. The same cannot be said about the female.
Where is this “choice” you mention?
I cannot CHOOSE to not like my female friend. It’s not an option. I can choose to not act on those feelings, however.
Gay people cannot choose who they are attracted to, either. There is no choice in that. They can choose to not act on that, and if that is THEIR choice, then so be it. It is not for you, or anyone else, to tell someone else how to live their life. Nor is it for you, or anyone else, to judge someone based upon how they live their lives, so long as they are not doing harm to anyone else. If you truly believe that God created everything, then you are judging his creation, for he created them the way that they are.
“It’s a beautiful thing when your free will lines up with God’s will…FREEDOM!!”
It’s a suspicious thing when what you think lines up with the version of god you believe in….BUSTED!!
@soulless,
you will not be able to discover the truth about real love and relationships until you meet the One who designed it. Anything else is a cheap imitation. He created you and gave you a special plan for your life. My hope is that someday, you will discover that Jesus Christ is , who He claimed to be, and you will be able to utilize your life experiences to draw others to Him.
I choose to obey Shiva.
Great meaningless statement, dwade.
So you believe that God willed for other animals in nature to be homosexual? Will they be condemned if they do not “accept God’s ways”? Do you also believe that an animal saviour was necessary for their transgressions?
Its a false premise to declare that homosexual acts are commonplace within the animal kingdom. And yes, the animals are fallen too…but only as a result of man (the pinnacle creation) having brought death (sin) into the whole realm and lowered all creation along with him.
Have you ever wondered why there are animals? If God (as us crazy Chrsitains say) created the earth and all…what purpose do animals serve? They represent the emotions within man(kind). So we have gentle, loving, sweet creatures and also devouring brutes and beasts…one day the Lion (flesh) will lie down with the Lamb (spirit).
Oh, so that’s why god made mosquitoes.
So the animals caught “the gay” from people. I’m sure neither of us wants to think about how that happened.
“Its a false premise to declare that homosexual acts are commonplace within the animal kingdom”
1. Humans are also animals.
2. Why is that a false premise for other animals?
No, humans are humans. That’s why they’re called…human. Animals are a lower form of expression (of the life of God) but were not made in the express image and likeness of the Father as we were, that’s why man (fallen man) has so many problems, because he has forgotten where and Who he came from, his true paternity.
If we, as Christ says…would just awaken to who we REALLY were and are.
Seriously, if god made man in his image, why do we need to be forcefully awakened to see what you’re seeing? Do you know what you’re saying? You are limited in your faculties if you deny that humans are actually animals, you are not waking up. You are asleep, not able to see what’s REAL. Come into the light where we know basic things and not drooling this Christ all over the place. I have to tell you if I were Jesus, I wouldn’t want you to talk about me anymore.
“Animals are a lower form of expression (of the life of God) but were not made in the express image and likeness of the Father as we were, that’s why man (fallen man) has so many problems, because he has forgotten where and Who he came from, his true paternity.”
Humans are higher than animals because we don’t react to fear and lust like animals, we don’t stake our territory like animals, we don’t engage in mating rituals like animals, and we certainly aren’t related to animals…oh wait, none of those things are true.
John C, I respect your mysticism…but you can’t deny reality. Sure, you add a layer of added filling on the outside of reality sometimes…but now you are replacing the filling of reality with a falsehood. Please don’t do that…
Be nice girl, be nice! You would have me to awaken to a nightmare, I on the other had would have you to awaken to the truth, in the light or glory.
Tele-
You know I appreciate you and our many, many past discussions. I can sincerely say that whatever wording comes forth, I truly believe and express. I never intentionally dismiss facts or mislead anyone, its just not my style or my nature. Its just that you and I have such disparate viewpoints, thats all.
But I appreciate that we can still, both make the effort with one another anyway…thx for being…Tele. All the best.
See that you call it a nightmare. You are frightened of things that aren’t frightening. Look at me, I’m not frightened. You cope with things in a strange way, and you make up definitions that aren’t true. I think you think you’re god. What you think isn’t what you heard – it’s actually what you think!
John C, it appears you don’t want to consider alternative points of view beacuse they scare you, for some reason.
So you only subscribe to things that comfort you? So much for your truth search.
TRJ…
No, I already found the Truth (Himself) 25 years ago, the only thing that “scares” me as you said is the thought of believing a lie, now that is a scary proposition indeed.
Believe the Truth, for it is impossible for Him to lie and He is love.
Sorry, I can’t believe a Truth that is in opposition to reality.
TRJ…
That’s the whole point, which “reality” are you gonna believe? The one you “see” with you physical eyes or the heavenly (spiritual, unseen) reality that Christ brings into our earth (physical, bodily). This is the meaning of…”may it be on earth as it is in heaven” Christ being the literal intersection of the two realms. He longs to bring His eternal, true, undefiled, prisitine truth into our corrupted world thereby restoring us to how things (we) were prior to the fall, sin, separation.
Again, its just too good for us to believe and so we…dont. But oh if we did.
Which reality are you going to believe? The one you can sense, or the one you can’t?
John:
I knew the instant I hit Send that you’d interpret my comment as if it was about a schism between observable reality and spiritual perception. That is what you always do.
Well, maybe I was being too vague. I was referring to your refusal to categorize humans as animals, since it sounded to me like you were denying that humans are the product of evolution, preferring instead instant creation. If that is indeed what you think then you’re in denial of the truth (with a lowercase t).
That’s cool TRJ, I appreciate you…I am merely offering a “differential diagnosis” to what is so commonly heard today.
Who are you offering it to? To be blunt, nobody here is convinced by your insubstantial symbolism; even other Christians disagree with your interpretations. So are you hoping against all signs to the contrary to bring us to the Light, or are you really just constantly reaffirming yourself?
TRJ…
I was under the mistaken impression that this was a forum for such discussions on religion, faith, science and skepticism?? I’m looking for those adventurous souls who would venture out of the boat, skim the water with me…muse about and explore together, any takers? ha
Wow.
This has to be the most inhumane, shallowest (is that even a word?), arrogant interpretation of human existence I’ve ever had the displeasure of seeing.
If this is freedom, I am glad to be a slave to reason. I will gladly conjoin with my perhaps inferior, but infinitely more diverse, ingenious and beautiful fellow lifeforms.
Between the likes of you and those with a mind like yours, full of empty mysticism and self-justification, and the dogs and wolves and lions, horses and dolphins and eagles, wasps and beetles and salmons, penguins and giraffes and elephants, and all the millions of living things that exist in this beautiful world, I will partake in the company of animals, thank you.
Keep your Christ and the stale bubble of his love.
I’ll remain with the world, with all its flaws and wonders.
John:
Of course this is a forum for debate, you’re right about that. But preaching is not debating. Productive discussion involves justifying your arguments; it’s not simply assertion of absolute Truths which serve as their own premises. You haven’t even gotten to the point where you attempt to explain why your beliefs are correct. You just constantly say they are.
TRJ…
I cant explain it to you,i it wouldnt make any sense to you anyway as He is spirit, flesh can not comprehend the things of the spirit. Not because I am any better than you, just that you have not yet believed, received for yourself. I can only point you to toward Home, but you must walk that lighted path for yourself.
See? Even that little bit makes no sense to you at all. So, thats why people stick with things like “God is love and He loves you”, etc. Which of course is true but also quite over-simplified. A great discovery awaits those who want to know.
I think they cling to it so tightly because there really isn’t another place to put up a resistance. Once you acknowledge that people are born with their sexual orientation then it’s a very “slippery slope” to equality. If people are born that way where can you make an argument against equality.
They are holding on tight because it’s their last place to make a stand for that particular bronze age superstition that they’ve attached themselves to.
I always wondered what the whole deal was with “We’ll have to teach our kids about gays!” …Don’t you have to anyway?
Exactly, they are already teaching their kids about gays.
What they really mean is, “Stop making me look like a bigot”.
Yes, people may have to actually teach their children about sex…and acknowledge their own sexual identities…and end the cycle of sexual repression enabled by certain religions.
Oh, the horror, indeed.
People are afraid. This is why I not only disbelieve in religion, but oppose many forms of religion. Much of it is thinking based on fear, which tends to paralyze and constrict.
Tele….
We agree! Both fear and religion (in its culturally understood context) rather stink. Dead things do that ya know…they stink. But the fragrance of the broken alibaster jar (His life within) that precious oil of the spirit flowing forth, out of us, now that is a heavenly scent indeed!
@Dwade
People like you frighten me.
Seriously……
People like you with such utter contempt for scientific advances and discovery that contradict your precious 2000 year old fairly tale, should not be aloud to reap such rewards that science has brought.
Always just ploughing on with utter conviction about God.. His will and plans, like you have some kind of insight that everyone else is missing.
I have news for you m8
Billions of other people on this planet claim to “know’ God…. Have a relationship with him, claim to know his will and plans that directly conflict with what you consider to be absolute truth.
Let me guess. All this poor fools that claim to “know” God with the same, or even more conviction then you are just wrong…?
Suffering from indoctrination?
Sadly deluded?
Poor fools that will end up suffering an eternity in hell?
Wake up……
If dwade’s version of Christianity is true, then what does it tell us?
It tells us that we are created perfectly, that if we sin we will be turned gay, that if we are gay we need to repent, that God loves us even though He caused us to sin more (that God is vindictive like Al Capone or any other mob boss — God wants you in His organization, not the other organizations! You know He’s a good guy because He feeds a few of the people — they can’t live on bread lines alone. You know how Capone set up bread lines during the Great Depression.)
I don’t have a bad opinion of this God character, because I don’t believe in any gods. I think this composite is a reflection of those who compiled the narratives of the religion. I think the version of Christianity you hear from each individual tells you a lot about someone’s individual character.
A god of fear and retribution and punishment may be worshipped by a decent and loving human being. And that is just one tragedy of religion. What posits itself to be the ultimate source of morality may in fact be the ultimate corruptor. When people who are afraid, worship a god who they’re afraid of, and then scare other people into worshipping the same god because of fear…then I become afraid. Fear and lust have been intertwined throughout the evolution of humanity…and throughout the evolution of God. Why do we still let this control our lives? We have survived well enough without divine intervention — even if there is a god or gods, I still credit humanity with the lion’s share of our advances. We should shed religion — it is a primeval and unwieldy burden. Let’s manage our emotions in a more responsible way — let’s get over our fears.
I don’t want to be afraid anymore. None of us should have to be afraid.
You are right Tele…none of us should have to be afraid. Fear puts a distance, a great chasm between us and God. Knowing Father is like moving from one severe degree of fear to ever progressive freedom from fear for…perfect love casts out ALL fear. Fear is an impurity and a residual effect of the disruption (the fall). Now consider the old sage…
“Nothing is inexorable but love. For Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love’s kind must be destroyed. And ‘our God is a consuming fire.’ It is the nature of God so terribly pure that it destroys all that is not pure as fire. He will have purity. It is not that the fire will burn us until we worship thus, if we do not worship God, but that the fire will burn us until we worship thus, but as the highest consciousness of life, the presence of God. In the outer darkness, where the worst sinners dwell, God hath withdrawn himself, but not lost his hold. His face is turned away, but his hand is laid upon him still. His heart has ceased to beat into the man’s heart, but he keeps him alive by his fire. And that fire will go searching and burning on in him, as in the highest saint who is not yet pure as he is pure. But at length, O God, wilt thou not cast death and hell into the lake of fire even into thine own consuming self? Death shall then die everlastingly, and hell itself will pass away, and leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day. Then indeed will thou be all in all. For then our poor brothers and sisters, every one,-O God, we trust in thee, the consuming fire, shall have been burnt clean and brought home.” George Macdonald (1824-1905).
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” Noam Chomsky (b. 1928).
Hahahaha… As an English major, I know the story behind that sentence. I may be reading too much into this, but if not, you are funny.
It can only be the thought of verdure to come, which prompts us in the autumn to buy these dormant white lumps of vegetable matter covered by a brown papery skin, and lovingly to plant them and care for them. It is a marvel to me that under this cover they are labouring unseen at such a rate within to give us the sudden awesome beauty of spring flowering bulbs. While winter reigns the earth reposes but these colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
“Fear is an impurity and a residual effect of the disruption (the fall). Now consider the old sage…”
John C, you always claim that your religion is so mystical that is above the ways of science, but you have just made an empirical claim. You have claimed that fear is a residual effect of a “fall”. You feel this is right, but you don’t have the evidence to confirm this. You can’t just make an empirical claim and then believe whatever you want. That’s called delusion.
Furthermore, Macdonald’s idea that love consumes all that is not love is almost the same idea which Robespierre had: almost that is not revolutionary is consumed by the revolution. Macdonald’s idea is almost the same idea as any extremist movement. That is not love. That is not purity — it is a perversion of love. Robespierre killed thousands…if you were correct, hell would affect billions upon billions…you propose a god that is worse than Robespierre…an extremist who is willing to use any amount of blood to achieve his goals.
Or…He is willing to do ANYTHING to redeem His lost and wayward children, to go to ANY LENGTH to restore you unto Sonship, how is that not love?
So, if Robespierre is willing to go to ANY length to preserve the success of the Revolution, to go to ANY length to restore power to the masses, how is that not desirable?
People often complain about atheist morality when they state that it has no grounding. But when people believe that their religion gives them a moral imperative which is more worthy than any other consideration, then their morality has no grounding.
What have I always said about “morality”? Besides, contrasting a physical empire to a personal eternity in a life and death matter? I’m not following you there Tele.
You were on the right track Tele when you said “I dont want to fear any more”. How many times in the NT did Christ say “fear not”?? Something like 62 times in the whole bible!!
When you come to the place that you no longer fear, then you are “seeing” God in His true light and love. Until then, fear remains as a distancer and Christ “destroyed the dividing wall” that was between us and Him.
John C,
“What have I always said about “morality”?”
You have denied the existence of morality…I know. That section of my reply was more in response to those who claim that atheists have no morality, and I felt that it was related to your comments.
“Besides, contrasting a physical empire to a personal eternity in a life and death matter? I’m not following you there Tele.”
You implied that a god who would do anything for love so much so that s(he) obliterates the definition of love itself is still worthy of worship…I used the example of Robespierre to demonstrate what happens when you pursue something so much that you lose your perspective and cause evil instead of good. This is what I propose would happen if your beliefs are correct.
Any god that abuses human beings in the name of love is no better than a dictator who guillotines in the name of the Revolution. Abuse in the name of love is not love, it’s abuse.
This is why people have said that certain variants of religion are like battered wife syndrome, because many believers think that abuse and love are the same thing…that true love banishes fear, but that fear is love…it’s Orwellian and disturbing. Fear becomes love, love becomes fear. The two terms cease to possess any meaning whatsoever. One cannot tell the difference between a vindictive god and a loving god.
“Its just that you and I have such disparate viewpoints, thats all.”
Ah, the ol’ “I have my opinion and you have yours” line. It may be your “opinion” that 2+2=38, but that doesn’t change the facts, the science.
Science is only helpful in the natural, physical realm…but there is a higher, unseen realm.
And yet when you claim that a “higher, unseem realm” directly intervenes in the natural world, then you are making an empirical claim which falls under the domain of science…which is exactly what you did earlier in this thread when you claimed that the human emotion of fear is a result of the “fall”!
You keep making trying to separate your mysticism from your science, but the problem is that you can’t make a clear distinction between the two because of the religious claims which you’ve self-imposed upon your mystical experiences.
You cannot both say that your beliefs are beyond the realm of science AND then continue to make scientific claims. To do so would be dishonest.
If a force or entity cannot be perceived empirically in the dimensions in which we exist, then it logically follows that that force or entity cannot influence or control anything within those dimensions. Thus your argument for God is irrelevent: You say he exists in a higher realm that means he cannot be perceived empirically in this one, QED even if he does exist, he has no power or influence over us whatsoever. Not that there’s any reason to believe that God does exist, of course.
You said…”then it follows logically”. That’s the very issue Custador. What if Spirit is not limited by ANY our “logical” sciences? Is entirely outside and superior to any of said “limitations” of our known world(s)?
Prove it.
Your imagination allows you to believe what you want to believe, John. You don’t have to cram it down everybody’s throat but you do.
Nobody is convinced that you’re not just crazy talk man.
Thanks Kodie…love ya too girl!
What if? Thats it? Wishing or wanting something to be true does not make it true.
Then you have no way whatsoever to affirm it’s truth or even to distinguish whether it is transcendent or rubbish.
Bingo.
If the immaterial affects the material in any way, it is no longer immaterial.
Dingdingding! Ten points to Rodney :-)
True…and so that being said…what or who does that make us? You’re getting closer Rodney…keep going along that same path.
Is it just me or does everyone hear the voice of Hal, the computer from 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY, when they read John C’s posts. LOL.
Jesus crossed the spiritual and entered the physical. God sent His son so that we would have proof of His existence. If you are looking for undeniable, scientific proof that the spiritual world exists, you will find your proof in the life of Jesus. He was both God and man. He performed miracles that only God could perform. He spoke as The One of Authority.
I hear the cries of the skeptics yelling send us proof!!
God replies:
I sent you the best proof possible. And by faith you will see the proof through spiritual eyes. Not the eyes that I gave you at birth but with new eyes. Stop listening to the reasoning of man and man-made religion. Look to my Son. He will show you the way. He is the only way. He is the only truth, He is the only life, He is the only way for you to find your way back to me.
I created you with a free will. I gave you the chance to have one-on-one communion with me in the garden. You rejected me and gave in to the wiles of the evil one. He was also with Me in the beginning and rebelled against me and my plan for you, my greatest creation.
So I cast him, the evil one, to the earth to live a life apart from me. I set his future to live eternally in hell. Because I am a jealous God, I will not allow any one or anything to come between us. I created you to be unique, with emotions, intelligence, and a heart that needs me. I am the potter and you are my greatest creation, like a fine vase with eternal value. Nothing else that I created is as special and important to me. You were made to live forever with me in my home, heaven. I am preparing that place for you right now. If you look around you and see all the beauty that I created, you would be amazed. Even more so will you enjoy the riches and majesty of my Kingdom.
You will always feel like something is missing. No amount of logic or reason will bring you back to me. You must seek me with your whole life. Seek me with your whole being. Then I will show myself to you. Then we will live together eternally. My love for you cannot be described with words, so I sent myself.
Love, Jesus.
The entire proceedings of the Salem Witch Trials were carefully documented with thousands of sworn affidavits, court documents, interviews, related papers, and even confessions. The accusers stood to lose a lot by being right: husbands accused wives, children accused mothers, parents accused children. They were obviously sincere. There is literally a truckload of evidence that the women who were tortured and executed actually practiced witchcraft. Do you believe that the women burned at the stake in Salem were actually witches?
The entire evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is three hearsay sources (Mark, John, and the “Q source” that Matthew and Luke were based on along with Mark) written one or more generations after the events, by non-eyewitnesses, after passing orally through an unknown number of intermediaries. Do you believe that Jesus was actually resurrected?
Rodney,
I cannot comment on the salem witch trials because I was not there. I can attest to Christ crucified and raised again. He showed me this. His Holy Spirit came to me, opened my eyes and I believed.
If it were simply reading words on a page, by the authors of the gospels, I would have needed proof. His Holy Spirit is proof enough for me. I asked Him to come to me and He responded. He knocked on the door and i finally opened it. And now I get to view life through new eyes. Spiritual eyes. I pray that you will experience the same.
Blessings.
!
LOL
But God, why did you give us logic and reason while not giving us spiritual eyes if you want us to believe in you?
Because your sin has created a chasm between us. That sin will separate you from Me for eternity. I am giving you an opportunity to come back to me, My Son is the way. Follow Him.
“Because I am a jealous God, I will not allow any one or anything to come between us. I created you to be unique, with emotions, intelligence, and a heart that needs me.”
What again? Can’t you make up your mind? On second thought, you can believe whatever you want, but the whole god business sounds really screwy to hear about it from people who think they know. For such a perfect god, and an all-knowing god, he certainly made it really hard to listen to people like you for too long. If he wants us to get it, you’ll just shut up. I’m not telling you to shut up, I am supposing that if I were god, I would not have people go around claiming I’m perfect the way you do and other religious people do. Cause you’re baaaaaad for my image, baybay.
So we are to reject your gifts, gifts which have eased the overwhelming suffering in the world, gifts which give us an understanding of your creation?
Joe,
I am offering you the greatest gift, eternal life. I am not forcing this on you. I want you to decide.
There will be suffering in this world. But the suffering won’t be for long. I am coming back and I want you to be ready. That’s why I gave you my word, my Son, so you will be ready.
I gave you minds to think. This was my greatest design. But I don’t expect you to figure everything out on your own. I also sent my Holy Spirit to help you understand.
Still waiting for your decision.
Love,
Jesus
2 Questions,
You want us to accept you, right?
You are all knowing and all powerful, right?
If you have children. You would want your children to accept you correct?
So, yes, I want you to find me for yourself.
I know everything about you. I created you. But I cannot look upon sin. As long as sin separates us, we cannot communicate.
Then why not use your power to reach out to those who have embraced your gifts of logic and reason so deeply that they require more substantial evidence than the writings of bronze age peoples?
Then why’d you let sin happen in the first place if you know everything and are all powerful?
God can’t communicate with sinners?
How’d that happen then?
Joe,
I am attempting to reach you right now.
Joe, sin happened because I chose to create you with a free will. I did not create you to be a robot. You are pretty smart and can do that yourself.
Satan thought he was outsmarting me. But little does he know that he can only do what I allow him to do. I shared this in the book of Job. Ultimately, I want you to discover Me for yourself. Sometimes it needs to get pretty bad and you will need to come to the end of yourself before there is room in your life for Me.
JOEB,
I am glad you asked. God sends others to reach you. His saints. I can look back now and see several instances where God was trying to communicate with me through other believers. Finally, I was reading in my home one night and His spirit nudged me. I was ready to accept him after all those years of His persevering saints communicating His love to me….
That was the day I was reborn.
You, God and his messengers are doing a pretty shitty job of reaching to me so far.
So you chose to allow your favorite creation to be separated from you, to suffer and many to never find you again and suffer eternally, because you want them to hit rock bottom and abandon the gift of logic and reason to find you?
You seem like kind of an ass God.
I don’t believe you are benevolent in the least.
JOEB,
there are also many false prophets and fakes in the world, they have hindered the work and true message of the Gospel. You seem to be a victim of this.
Until you discover the truth for yourself, you will always wonder if Jesus was who He claimed to be. God himself.
dwade,
But *it is* what’s in the Gospel which makes some of us question the character of the Biblical god.
I don’t wonder if Jesus was god anymore than I wonder if you were when you made your posts written from god’s perspective. You are totally incapable of making an argument that doesn’t depend on the target already believing in the christian god.
God is either weak, cruel or non-existent. That is the only way a god fits into the world as it is.
Joe,
I searched for truth for 25 years. I came to my conclusion. I am convinced, There is no other answer.
You on the other hand, You are still searching, still contemplating, still live with unrest until you find the answer to life.
Am I correct? If you deny this then you are hiding behind something and maybe self gratification is your God and you are happy with that..for now.
“I searched for truth for 25 years. I came to my conclusion. I am convinced, There is no other answer.
You on the other hand, You are still searching, still contemplating, still live with unrest until you find the answer to life.
Am I correct? If you deny this then you are hiding behind something and maybe self gratification is your God and you are happy with that..for now.”
You came to your conclusion. I respect that. However, I still reject what I perceive as the false comfort of unexamined certainty.
Unrest is why I am alive. I am driven to learn new things, to share new experiences, and to interact in new ways. Searching and contemplating is my pleasure. I would much rather open my mind and allow it to remain active and vigorous than let it wither in torpor.
I don’t need an “answer” for everything. I believe that the question is better than the answer, and there you will find your life.
I am not hiding behind anything — I am out in front, examining and searching this vast universe. I am not hiding behind the false certainty or comfort of unexamined beliefs.
Such arrogance. Are you speaking for Jesus now? Or are you quoting a book by someone else? Does your religion allow believers to put words in the mouth of their god?
Kodie,
I never claimed to be perfect apart from Christ, sorry if I lead you to believe this.
What I said: “I am supposing that if I were god, I would not have people go around claiming I’m perfect the way you do.”
I don’t think you even think you’re perfect, but you’re sure no evidence of a perfect creator.
Because of sin, there will be death. Death is an eternity apart from me. Death scares you because you do not know where you are going. But I have been there, I have sweated blood considering what death would feel like. To be apart from my Father in heaven. And then it happened, I died.
But the story is not over…
Because I love you so much, I took hell and death and overcame it. I suffered, so that you would not have to. I took all of your Sin on my shoulders and carried those sins to hell. Now I am sitting next to my Father and praying for you. Right now, as you are reading this.
Will you accept me? Or reject me?
I will wait for you.
Love,
Jesus
Stop talking like you are actually Jesus. It’s not helping your argument.
That’s pretty arrogant of you, Dude.
Why do we want him to help his argument?
He’s either off his rocker or the most patient and backstory heavy Poe I’ve ever seen.
Rodney,
I speak in parody. Not claiming to be Jesus. Point is being made though.
You make no points at all. Witnessing is not a point, it is merely a cowardly form of proselytizing.
It’s not like we’re not used to sermons about how Jesus loves you, Jesus saves you, blah blah, but using a first person perspective certainly adds an interesting edge of insanity.
“Because of sin, there will be death. Death is an eternity apart from me.”
Who decided that arrangement? Did it have to be that way?
Because I gave you the ability to be on your own, there will be death. Death is an eternity apart from me. Even though I know you’re not ready for it, I did it anyway, because I thought it was the best thing to do — even if it causes unbearable suffering for eternity for the majority of my creation. What’s really important is how *I* feel…does it bring *me* glory? Your agony can be my ecstacy. What right does the pot have to question the potter? What right does a child have to question an abusive parent? If this system were true, it would constitute emotional abuse.
“Death scares you because you do not know where you are going.”
Religions have manipulated this circumstance for thousands of years…and apologists and preachers have used this as an opening for hundreds of years.
Tele,
I do not see any hatefulness in God’s claims to man, it is certainly the greatest love story ever told.
God does not elate in seeing His children suffer. Just as you would not with your own kids. Should we coddle, shelter them, continue to bail them out, will they learn and grow if we raise our children this way? I hope you do not or will not raise your kids this way….
Sorry you see it different.
I plan to be around when I raise my kids, dwade. Not absent.
Where is your God?
I’m done with dwade.
dwade is proud of his rejection of reason and has said as much.
Tele,
He never left you. You left Him. Now He is waiting for you to return.
So if one of your kids was lost, or ran away you would just sit at home chillin’ waiting for them to come back?
No but I might send others to find him
No, you wouldn’t look for them personally?
dwade,
I respect that we have a difference of opinion, but that statement is absolutely meaningless to me.
When I was a Christian, I prayed every day, I went to church every week, and I sincerely put forth my best effort to love other people as myself.
Upon retrospect, there was not one time when I felt that there obviously was a divine presence in my life. I was religious because it was what I was accustomed to, I had never thought about the universe any other way, and it felt right to me. I felt like I was doing right by practicing my religion — but it wasn’t because I felt anything divine.
I feel like I never had a God there with me, but that I thought I did at one time. Now I say almost all the things I said before, but I don’t think anyone’s listening to me.
If I could not reach God through my most sincere efforts, then maybe it just isn’t worth my time.
There just isn’t anything in this world which screams to me “There’s a God!” but there are a lot of things which seem quite unremarkable if there is no divine presence, especially not the one mentioned in the Bible, and I never felt anything which could have only meant that there was a God, even when I told myself that there was one.
No I would seek them out, if you are trying to build a comparison lets try this.
My son decides He doesn’t want anything to do with me. His friends tell Him, your dad is a freak. He turns away from me and his family. He enjoys the world, parties his life away. I know where he is, I know who he’s with. I send people to check in on him. I send friends that I know understand what I am going through. They speak with him. He still decides to rebel against me. It takes years, his life is falling apart. he doesn’t have the closeness of family, the support of his dad. He finally realizes that his way did not work. He asks to come home, I am elated that he is finally seeing the truth. I welcome him home and we are able to communicate gain. Even better than before.
Tele,
you have a sincere heart, I appreciate that about you. I can understand that you experienced religion in your life and it was a let down. Man made religion is a big let down. No amount of works or efforts will get you close to God. The absence of the Holy Spirit in a persons life is simply bad religion or a social club.
You need to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal Himself to you, and do this with a sincere heart, then it will make sense.
Sola gratia
That’s not an argument, that’s just a made up story (though at least you didn’t pretend it actually happened like most of your stories).
What if your son never returns, I doubt even you would make the claim that everyone, everywhere, in every time has found your god and remained a convert to death. Then you willingly sat there and allowed your son to be apart from you forever, that’s lazy at best. It’s even more complicated in the case where you are all powerful and all knowing. You would know whether your son would return on his own, and what it would take to convince him to come back. If you weren’t to do so it could only be from a choice on your part to damn your son to a existence without you.
Joe,
there you go again, thinking that God made robots.
And JOEB,
you are the son.
“My son decides He doesn’t want anything to do with me. His friends tell Him, your dad is a freak. He turns away from me and his family. He enjoys the world, parties his life away. I know where he is, I know who he’s with. I send people to check in on him. I send friends that I know understand what I am going through. They speak with him. He still decides to rebel against me. It takes years, his life is falling apart. he doesn’t have the closeness of family, the support of his dad. He finally realizes that his way did not work. He asks to come home, I am elated that he is finally seeing the truth. I welcome him home and we are able to communicate gain. Even better than before.”
I have a son. I let him be adopted after he was born. I have never been around him. He doesn’t know of me. I sent someone in India to tell him about me. Then I sent someone in Australia. Then I sent someone in North America. Then I sent someone in Mesopotamia. Then I sent someone in China. They all said different things about me.
He is confused. He doesn’t know what to believe. He doesn’t listen to any of the messengers, concluding that they must be incoherent. He tries to live a good life, tries to love other people. I know where he’s with. I know who he’s with. But how do I let him know that I am there?
In this example, I am the son. And I have plenty of siblings — billions of them. Most of us don’t listen to your messengers. Most of our lives are not falling apart. Many of us are fortunate enough to have the support of human communities and human families to guide and support us.
All of these messengers are trying to tell us something “special” — does that say something about the message or the messengers?
If you are all knowing and all powerful, you have no excuse for not being able to get something that you want done.
Is god unable or uncaring? Because if he is all powerful, all knowing those are the two options for how people die without accepting him.
Tele,
Everyone needs their own time to figure it out. Good analogy.
Congratulations Dwade,
You have offended me. That’s not an easy task.
You don’t know a thing about me, but you assume on everyone, because of your twisted understanding of a compilation of bronze age stories which you believe is true because it tells you it is. You are closed minded, diluted and push your own personal opinions wrapped in scripture on people without any regard for that person.
JOE,
I am sorry that I offended you.
I do not know anything about you other than what you have shared. I am not close minded except to the things of this world. I care for people, I wouldn’t spend hours away from my family if this were not so. I care for your soul Joe.
Remember though, God is not a dictator, nobody wants to serve a dictator. He loves you. he sent His son to prove it.
Sola Gratia
At least you are honest about being irrational and not having a basis in reality for your beliefs.
I am not close minded except to the things of this world.
Isn’t this, like, insanely disrespectful to God’s creation?
< blockquote <…there you go again, thinking that God made robots….
There you go again assuming the homunculus is the person.
Soeth sayeth the Dwade.
pretty big turnaround from saying that god is unknowable so he can’t know everything about god and his will/intentions/nature, huh?
When you die, you are dead. It’s not good, it’s not bad, you’re not happy, you’re not sad. Just dead.No longer existing. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just like the billions of years before you were born were like. Can you remember what that was like? I don’t think so. That’s because you were dead.
prove that to me
Well I guess that if you just died right now then you could have all the proof you want. But wait, since you think that you are actually Jesus you’ll just come back in a few days. So nevermind that.
Oh wait, that was also pretty arrogant of me.
Do you need proof that when bacteria dies, it just is dead and doesn’t go to heaven, too?
Or do you think that bacteria and ticks and rabbits and everything else go to some kind of animal heaven, and you need proof in order to not believe that?
We’re just saying when someone dies, they stop functioning, and it seems they are actually dead. You’re the one claiming they go to some mystical realm in the sky or somewhere.
Daniel,
This is where you have trouble distinguishing people from animals. God created you to rule over the animals. They are for your enjoyment. You are uniquely and specially designed apart from the animal kingdom. God is preparing a special place for you in His home. The Bible doesn’t speak of animals dying and reaching heaven. It does say that animals will be there.
“God created you to rule over the animals. They are for your enjoyment.”
So in your opinion clubbing baby seals should be an olympic sport?
questions for you dwade.
What exactly is it about homo sapiens that make them special to the almighty jah?
The ego and the ability to invent a god.
Doug you’re getting as bad as John with these outrageous claims. Do you expect anyone to change based on these assertions you make? We don’t believe in your holy book or your god.
I feel honored,
John, we are in this together my friend.
“…getting as bad”? Daniel, that ship departed Spacedock months ago. ;-)
hehe, love your sense of humor Roger!!
Wish I could say the same about your attempts at evangelism.
Maybe He’s an outrageous God? :) Outrageously more wonderful than we can imagine? Maybe fairy tales do come true.
Maybe there’s a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow.
And your point is?
maybe he’s a cruel and uncaring god, who through his actions and inaction creates and furthers human suffering while condemning masses to eternal torment for shits and giggles.
or he’s a weak god, unable to influence us or make his presence known
or he’s an imaginary god, like all others that have been conceived of.
All 3 of those seem to fit more logically (one of his great gifts to us) with the world as it is.
Cynic,
I don’t condone clubbing baby seals but if it makes you happy, have at it.
God gave you intellect, a spiritual make up, a heart that has the ability to care and be compassionate, he gave animals similar traits, but you are uniquely designed in His image.
No. Your heart is a muscle. This kind of categorical absurdity does not speak well of your intellect.
spiritual heart was mentioned not the organ. something that animals do not have, the question was what differentiates humans from anilmals
Where is my spiritual heart, dwade? I’m curious.
Could you point it out on a diagram or something?
JoeB,
Take your finger and place it on your head, then move your finger about 18″ down to the front of your chest, from your mind to your heart, this is referred to as the 18″ journey. Where are you right now?
When your mind and heart connect, then you will have completed your journey.
This is dumbfounding absurdity. You only get away with this to other believers because it’s found in your ancient book which speaks volumes about the book and those who hold it special.
Do you understand that you are making a smarmy non-answer to a serious question/challenge?
Stomach.
“you are uniquely designed in His image.”
so god is homo sapien with skin,hair and a penis?
“spiritual heart…something that animals do not have”
cite your sources
“You are uniquely and specially designed apart from the animal kingdom.”
If you’re right, then we shouldn’t be genetically related to animals, we shouldn’t have the same kinds of mating rituals as animals, we shouldn’t be motivated by the same fears and lusts as animals, and we shouldn’t mark our territory like animals. But none of that is true.
The evidence available to us demonstrates that humans are not specially apart from the animal kingdom — it demonstrates that we are members of the animal kingdom.
Tele,
all this shows is that we originated from the same designer.
No, it does show that we are not unique from other animals.
Even if animals and humans could be said to originate from the same designer, just for the sake of argument, your contention that humans were specially designed apart from other animals *still* fails, because all the evidence shows that humans and other animals come from the same lineage. Your claims of human uniqueness are still invalid, regardless of whether you can show that there was a designer.
Tele,
you can choose to believe that you are of Ape lineage. I am not.
dwade,
So I can choose to follow the carefully replicated scientific evidence or I can give myself over to blind intuition and raw emotion? What a choice.
Tele…
No, you can follow your heart (spirit, deep feelings of and for love which God is) which will lead you home to Father’s great heart, for He would be joined with you there, in your deepest, innermost…you. (1Cor 6:17).
Don’t overlook Love, don’t ignore that aspect, that leading within.
Oops, sorry forgot to change my screen name back…maybe its just as well, more appropriate, lol. :)
Tele,
I cannot deny that science explains a lot of things, but something science cannot explain is where did it all begin. Many theories out there, none of them make any sense, (ie crystals on backs, aliens, big bang which as a million, million, million, milllon, million, million, million, million chance to form a cell)…
So if this isnt blind, I don’t know what is….Intelligent design, which many on this post will claim that it is a sneaky way of getting Creation science into the classroom is simply opening up discussion to allow scientists to begin their discovery. Not Christian scinetists, scientists…
So when they take a creationism textbook just and replace god with designer and creationism with intelligent design, it’s not a sneaky way of getting creationism into schools?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9601689/
Intelligent design isn’t science, it makes no testable predictions. It explians everything, so it illuminates nothing. Intelligent design answers all questions with goddidit. That’s not an opening of discovery that’s a discussion ender.
When the Greeks saw lightning they explained it with zeusdidit. That’s an answer, but it doesn’t give an understanding of how lightning works or how it can be tested, predicted or controlled.
welcome Back John,
it been a lively discussion!!
dwade,
First, you are confusing evolution and abiogenesis.
Abiogenesis tries to account for how life first arose on Earth. Evolution accounts for the diversity of life on Earth after life first arose.
The current gaps in understanding of abiogenesis do absolutely nothing to remove the evidence for evolution, which stands on its own regardless of where life originated.
Try this website: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
Maybe that webpage will help clear a few things up.
Also, if intelligent design allows for more discussion of broader areas of scientific research, let all the ID scientists conduct actual research, and then have it published in legitimate scientific journals. ID has shown itself so far to be incapable of making any significant contributions to scientific progress. ID has had a chance to make a serious impact in science, and so far, it has failed spectacularly.
Tele, thanks for the link, LRM has sent me there many times, quite stimulating data.
I don’t beleve the ID scientists are welcomed amongst the darwin Gospel elites….
If they were, we may come to some healthy conclusions, but anyone that even mentions ID in the scientific community is outright banned…THE GREAT DIVIDE!!
dwade,
Banned?
Let me ask you this: aren’t scientists supposed to practice…science? Let the ID proponents try some actual science instead of bad philosophy and theology, and then we can have a normal academic debate.
The Templeton Foundation, which actively tries to reconcile science and religion, offered grants to the ID community in exchange for research proposals…but no proposals were offered. Where is your evidence that anyone who supports ID is serious about actual science?
Someone has been watching too much Ben Stein.
Science is about evidence regardless of where it points and who it’s from. If the ID people had evidence, beyond perpetuating misinformation and pointing to areas of imperfect understanding and proclaiming them proof of god (in the same way that lightning is proof of Zeus) then they would be more than able to publish their results.
Tele,
thats good info, first hand experience?
dwade,
It’s from a New York Times article by Laurie Goodstein on December 4, 2005, excerpt, found through Google by typing “Templeton Foundation” and “intelligent design” from the list on the first page, at the web address:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/weekinreview/04good.html
And the excerpt of the article which supports my claim:
“The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research.
“They never came in,” said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.
“From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don’t come out very well in our world of scientific review,” he said.”
Wade, that’s stoopid. First of all those people at DI aren’t scientists, they’re polititians. Secondly, you act like science is some organized force that oppresses these “poor *honest* ol’ IDers who only want academic freedom” awww boooo hoooo hoooo hooo!!!!
Bullsh*t!!! These people are lying liars and the lies they tell are desinged to put votes in the ballot box as they snooker people like you. Sad really. But you keep on believing in your opinion. You just go ahead, you fool.
I’ll take my facts, thank you very much.
http://www.OneFather.com
There is one God and Father of ALL, who is over ALL and in ALL and through ALL. Eph 4:6
We are in this ALL together, we need to love one another, be kind and compassionate toward one another. I appreciate you guys, ALL of you.
I get emotional about this because Rob Koons (on the DI’s board of directors) is a graduate advisor at my school and he is ruining the philosophy department there…
Sorry, I stand corrected… Koons is a “fellow”:
http://www.discovery.org/csc/fellows.php
It’s still bad news for me. I can’t afford to be affiliated with this man…
Dwade, perhaps you can drum up funding for DI research showing that compassion and care come from the spiritual heart, the one that you claim that we but not animals have. Perhaps it could have a nice diagram of someone drawing their finger 18″ down from their head to their chest.
“Discovery Institute is a nonpartisan (ha!) public policy think tank conducting research (ha! ha!) on technology, science and culture, economics and foreign affairs.”
http://www.discovery.org/about.php
Wow.
Nevermind, this is more appaling than JC’s from above.
If this is freedom, I am happy to be a slave. Glad to be out of your God’s friendlist, right now. At least, it doesn’t paint my world with the utter arrogance that religionists like you possess.
What a barren, inhumane thought.
Dude,
I have the Holy Spirit to confirm what happens after death. Eternal life is a promise from God. Apart from God you will fear death. Maybe not now, or tomorrow, but when you face death, you will fear it apart from Him.
There are no atheists in the fox holes, just ask a soldier, This goes out to all the men and women that fight for our freedom!! Thank you!!
Another baseless claim, but this one is refuted with a simple google search:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97992274
Why golly, there ARE atheists in the miliatary! Imagine that. And if you think Russia was a godless communist state, dont’cha think there were some atheists in those foxholes?
Looking forward to seeing how you explain this away in some godbottery.
“I have the Holy Spirit to confirm what happens after death. Eternal life is a promise from God. Apart from God you will fear death. Maybe not now, or tomorrow, but when you face death, you will fear it apart from Him.
There are no atheists in the fox holes, just ask a soldier, This goes out to all the men and women that fight for our freedom!! Thank you!!”
Does anyone remember when I said that much of religious thinking is predicated upon fear? This comment is now my Exhibit A.
Watch dwade invoke our fear of death to try and scare us into religious belief. Watch him denigrate the military service of the non-religious. This is why I oppose so much of religion: why should you fear a vengeful and petty tribal god dressed underneath a veneer of love?
This is not a loving god. This character is not loving, but vengeful. As I have stated repeatedly, this is the Robespierre god — willing to defend the Revolution at any cost, no matter how high the human toll, for the sake of his own glory.
you are entitled to your opinion
If the Christian god exists he is petty and cruel, and we were created in his image far more than Christians want to believe.
“There are no atheists in foxholes” isn’t an argument against atheism, it’s an argument against foxholes.
~James Morrow
hahah, thats rich
Even if I were to concede the false claim there are no atheists in foxholes, all it shows is that when people get desperate enough they’re willing to make up any kind of explanation to make sense of things. People’s beliefs say nothing about the truth of what they believe in.
You refuse to prove the crazy things you say. That means you no longer have the right to demand proof of anyone else. I hear this is called the golden rule.
We where made in his image? SO GOD HAS DNA TOO? he has our phisicality? he has our mind set? so when adam ate the apple, hes ignorance is the same ignorance of god? oh,yea that was the tree of knowlage, god wants to keep you stupid, eh? AND SATAN IS THE INQUISITOR….
so, knowlage, free-mindedness, ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE WORLD.—the bible STATES that intellect is satans work people!, ignorance is gods….. so… to be good in gods eyes is to be BLIND. follow all ye sheep….
“We where made in his image? SO GOD HAS DNA TOO? he has our phisicality? he has our mind set?”
God also hapens to look alot like a chimp.
not really
BEHOLD, THE IMAGE OF GOD
lmao. a hippo-vishnu! nothing more to say!!
Gods ways are not our ways, and who can know the mind of God, He gives us just a glimpse of His plan for eternity.
Just a glimpse. That’s all I can share.
but christians state that you can know god thro the book of bull? just as usual,, no path left to argue, they revert and confict to what they said b4….. but no they wont acnowlage the twist.. ever, ALL CHRISTIANS CLAIM TO KNOW GOD….. wow, BEST FREINDS ARE WE? or just another schitzophrenic with a fear of death…
And practically all Christians have a different glimpse, and practically all Christians have a different plan. Wonderful.
God’s ways are not our ways, especially if it’s the Orthodox God and I’m Catholic…especially if it’s the Catholic God and I’m Methodist…especially if it’s the Methodist God and I’m Southern Baptist. God’s ways are not our ways, and neither are they God’s ways, because not all Gods are created equally.
Tele,
I have met thousands of Christians in my lifetime, all from different denominational backgrounds, and we all agree that God is the same God that we worship and adore. Not sure where you hang out.
but through history and even in places today (N. Ireland) Christians see enough of a difference in their god to divide, fight and kill each other over the differences.
so what are their differences?
Why don’t you look up what they say about it. They are the ones killing over it.
Style of worship, status of saints, lifestyle of the worship leaders, number and type of sacraments, ideas about original sin, ideas about how to interpret Genesis, ideas about how compatiable evolution and Christianity are, ideas about how to treat homosexuals, ideas about how to treat women, ideas about heaven and hell, ideas about salvation, ideas about the nature of the Trinity, which books should be in the Bible, which version of the Bible should be used, how relevant is the Old Testament….
Nice list.
Notice most of those dividing issues are “church” related, denominational and are not spirit directed concerns. By learning to walk in the spirit we rise above the many, petty and fleshly disputes of the lower nature.
When they really love God and no longer see Him as “up there and us down here”, ie the truthful way Jesus taught us to live from the Father (who He was One with, and indwelled by, Jn 17) within then all that other mess will be no more.
You all agree that some vague common denominator God is the same God…but that means nothing to me except in a superficial sense. What about God is the same between all of these different denominations? Disputes about the very nature of God Himself are entirely irrelevant?
Tele…
That’s a great question. I believe the variety of thoughts on the true nature of God are due to the following: Mankind is all (whether they know it or not) in the process of returning home to the Father after having gone “out” in Adam (the disobediant son) coming home in Christ, the second (and true) Son, but we are at different stages in the journey. As we see Him more and more, the fear and separation recedes and we see more of the true and beautiful attributes and nature of God, and in turn come to know (or remember) our true selves better as well.
We go from “glory to glory” and strength to strength as we are conformed more and more to the (true) image of Christ, love being the dominant virtue. When we all love like Him then we will all know and see…again.
agreed
So all of these loving, sincere, well-intentioned people devised entirely contrasting viewpoints on key tenets of God’s nature?
Jesus said “nobody know the Father but the Son”. When we all come into that full Sonship then all the differences will fade away, for we will see Him as He (really) is. For now, we “see as through a glass darkly”.
We have spiritual cataracts in a way…only by knowing Him more intimately can the lens (of our hearts and understanding) be made clear again.
John C,
“Jesus said “nobody know the Father but the Son”. When we all come into that full Sonship then all the differences will fade away, for we will see Him as He (really) is. For now, we “see as through a glass darkly”.
We have spiritual cataracts in a way…only by knowing Him more intimately can the lens (of our hearts and understanding) be made clear again.”
You’re missing my point. *Nearly all* of these people claim to know Jesus intimately already, and the odds are staggering that none of the people who have conflicting views are actually sincere believers.
I am pointing out to you that there are sincere people who claim to know Jesus intimately who have differences in critical areas of Christianity. It is my contention that even your standard of belief is not enough to decipher whatever the true will of your god is supposed to be.
Tele…
Point well taken, thx. Perhaps no one person can fully express the totality of His nature, hence the “body” of Christ. For example, I have “Christian” friends who have different passions, skills, talents, desires but they still love God intensely. We are unique for sure.
Naturally, anyone who didn’t believe in that same god wouldn’t be someone you call a christian. Such an easy out.
another comment here regarding the differences in churches,
They agree on more than they disagree with. I can fill you in later, time for sleep.
Sola Gratia
You probably should think about the full quote from Isaiah, the part about his ways being as far above ours as are the heavens. You claim to only be able to share a glimpse but you sure do it in ugly detail. “Pride goeth before a fall.”
Q,
I am simply sharing from His word. Thats the only way to truly know God.
So what of those who lived and died before Christ? Who did not have the benefit of His Word? Did they know God?
Elemeno…
Christ went and “preached”, shared the truth to them during the three days in the tomb before the resurrection.
And before that point they had, what, been sitting on their thumbs in the underworld?
Well, at least some of them got to get out and walk around Jerusalem for a bit. :)
Soooo…Jesus went back in time and preached to the people who died before Christ? Yeah, this is getting even more logical.
to comment on the original post,
even if you are discriminatory enough to hate someone for a minor diffrential in respect to you,
LOGIC states that if they where never discriminated against as children and where allowed to be who they are, they would NOT have opposite sex partners early in life and not have children either.
im all for gays adopting, but it is like haveing albenoisim VERY genetic. no babys, less albeno’s, the switch in the genes is a common one to switch on just like thousands including hormonal switches that can be passed thro family lines.
SO have respect, they try to have respect for people in religions.
you still hate them? SHUT THE FUNK UP AND HAVE SOME POISON.. discrimination is a LOT worse than love……..
much love Atheistlove!
“He performed miracles that only God could perform.”
Yet people weren’t tripping over themselves to document these alleged events while Jesus was alive.
Garrett, don’t you know that there were lots of records, but SATAN destroyed them all, because he’s the DESTROYER! So you should believe, because there was lots of evidence, it’s just that pesky Satan trying to make us join him in his tropical kingdom…
Those miracles were real because there is no evidence of those miracles being real
I thought Shiva and Remo Williams was the DESTROYER.
I thought Conan was the Destroyer. Damn!
Conan = Satan = Destroyer.
So Conan travelled back into time, destroyed the evidence for Jesus’ miracles, because HE is the DESTROYER!
He also destroyed any evidence that he did it, which of course is EXACTLY what we’d expect if he did it! Irrefutable proof!
Aw, great. And I was getting all psyched up to see him on the Tonight Show, too. Now that I know he’s Satan,…
Or are we talking about different Conans?