@Dark: I disagree with that wikitionary plural, I have never seen homophobias as a plural, homophobia, sure, but homophobias? That's a strange one....

Anyhow, @226: IMO it's a good thing to be any faith and have questions, such as the ones youj posed or I posed or anyone posed, iwe just accept things for what they are and claim it's what <insert diety here> wants, then those people are as ignorant as the people they criticize.

Like I said on another page, I love the idea of religion, I simply dislike how it is used.

IMHO:

Satan is used as a boogeyman of sorts to some denominations, in essence 'DO THIS OR SATAN WILL DO X Y AND Z AND YOU ARE NOT FAITHFUL ENOUGH TO JESUS' attitudes. Again, that's only some denominations, not all Christians. I know Christians I can joke with and have a good laugh with and discuss things like books, TV shows and games, and they don't start blasting those things for not praising a deity every second like some do. I have to wonder about those types, are they truly happy blasting (say) a movie for not being 100% religious 100%of the time? That'd be a very, VERY niche movie.

I agree, I ran across this quote earlier and it both made me choke laughing on my water, and is very, very apt.

Religions are like penises. You have one, you keep it hidden and don't whip it out whenever you feel like it.

That's probably the best description I've come across in a while. That being said, I feel there's absolutely some individual churches out there who take the idea of Christianity and twist it to fit their ideals and version of what they think Christianity should be, just as Islamic imams do with the Qu'ran, or rabbis do with the Torah. End of the day nobody currently alive knows what the truth of any of the books mean.

For all the media frenzy over Muslim terrorists citing their holy book as justification for war, that is a problem with all religions, not just one or two however,it does seem in the US Christianity gets a free pass and is exempt from comedy, critique, parody, debate or discussion, depending on where you are and what you're trying to do.

Draco

P.S. Sooner this different account bug is fixed, the better. I'm worried I'm making Slender look logical and smart here rofl

Talk about feeling late to a conversation... I'm sure I'd lose my mind if I went back through and tried to read everything because I'd feel the need to respond to so much, so I'll just start where the conversation is now.

Trajectory: where your problem scenario diverges from traditional Christian doctrine is that your problem with a scenario where sin is the only option implies a scenario where sin isn't the only option. Yet in traditional Christian doctrine, all who have not had their lives changed by the power of the Holy Spirit are described as slaves to sin. So in the traditional Christian understanding, sin is the only option for everybody—gay, straight, cis, trans, it doesn't matter. The gospel, then, is about Jesus' mercy to those who are His enemies by nature, and that mercy is not contingent upon our own ability to live lives pleasing to Him prior to His Spirit's work in transforming us.

This is going to be a rambling post, but there is so much in this thread, that I just have to write, and see where it takes me.

Part 1: My Overall View of God
I am Southern, Christian, and politically conservative, a grouping of characteristics that is often looked upon in a negative light by some others in the USA.
But I want to tell you about the God I know.

God is so infinite in his mercy and wisdom, that His love cannot be comprehended by a human mortal. We think of unconditional love, and we still have only a glimmer of an idea, because our minds and souls are not prepared at this point, to fully understand an entity who possesses so much love.
He loved us enough to send His son to die for our sins, and Jesus loved us enough to do it.
He will stand in judgment of every person on this Earth, and we will all be sinners, every single one of us. But because of His grace, we are saved. He will understand our human frailties, and love us all the more, because that's who He is.

So, atheists might ask, why is there war, and cancer, and pain, and suffering?
This is just my opinion, but I believe that God doesn't want Christian zombies. He wants us to follow Him, because we understand in our hearts that it is good to do so. In order to do that, He gives us free will. Man can choose good or evil. Since man chooses a lot of evil, there is an opening for what I call chaotic evil, those random horrible things that happen to innocent people. In my view, God doesn't cast awful things on innocents, but He allows free will for mankind, and because of man's choices, a lot of random bad things happen.
But because God is a loving God, He works it around so that good things can come from the most awful circumstances. Think of Anne Frank, and how her optimism never failed in the midst of Hitler's reign. For some people, suffering only serves to strengthen faith. For others, the observation of someone's strong faith in the face of overwhelming adversity, is what strengthens their own.
God never promises that life on this Earth will be fair. But He does promise an eternity of peace, if we will open our hearts to Him.

As Christians, we are to do our best to be like Jesus, knowing we can never fully realize that potential for perfection, but still trying anyway. And the most important thing about that walk of Christian faith, is to treat others with love.
You don't have to approve of a thing, or like it, but you do have to treat the person you disagree with with respect and love.

For myself, although I was raised Baptist, I came to the conclusion that my relationship with God should be personal, and not dictated by any other human. So as a young adult, I began to read the Bible, and pray, and listen for God's direction. In that silence, the message was loud and clear. LOVE!

I have friends who are gay, straight, bi, agnostic, Christian, all colors of the rainbow, all different perspectives on life and how to live it. Each one is precious to me, and also precious to the God who made us.
And I'll tell you now, the best friend I ever had in this world was gay, and she was a better person than almost anyone else I know. The idea that God would look at her, and judge her on one small dimension, as opposed to the entirety of her person, is a uniquely human (and flawed) construct. God judged her with a compassion so deep, and a wisdom so mighty, that it would probably kill us as mortals to look upon it. We are not capable of that kind of unconditional love, and that's why we need to leave the judgment to Him.

Part 2: On Homosexuality Specifically
Now, jump to the 21st century.
Maybe homosexuality is a big deal to some humans.
But let's think of it in terms of sin for a second.
And let me emphasize, God loves every human on this Earth. He hates the sin, but not the sinner.
So for the sake of my point, let's say that the Bible declares homosexual acts to be sins.
In that case, God dislikes the ACTS, not the people.
He also hates the acts of gossip, pride, envy, greed, lust, and a host of other things.
Every human on this Earth is a sinner, even those of us who are saved. We do our best from day to day, to learn about Jesus and be more like him, but because we are human, we possess frailty, and so we sin.
God loves us anyway.
Nowhere have I ever seen God say, "I hate all sin, but by the way, homosexuality is worse than all the rest."
He doesn't say that, because to Him, all sin is equal.
We sin if we lust after someone who isn't our spouse.
We sin if we gossip.
We sin if we are prideful and arrogant.
We sin if we envy others.
We sin if we judge others without compassion.
We sin if we lie.
So to have this big freakout over homosexuality is ridiculous in my mind, because we are all sinners, none better than the others.
But if each of us strives to be the best person we can be, and we have accepted Jesus as our Saviour, we are bound for Heaven, no matter what other humans may think to the contrary.

Part 3: My Personal View of Sexuality
I can't see how it could be wrong to love someone. Lust maybe, but not love.
If loving a person makes you more selfless, if it compels you to make this world a better place just because they are in it, then how can that be bad?
I can't see how the gender matters at all.
When God judges me, I hope my mistakes in life will err on the side of too much kindness, rather than not enough.

@mirage, thumbs up for an interesting post. Btw, methinks you and my lady would get on very well :d.

I confess personally I have always had a major problem with sin, ---- well conceptually if not literally (I hope) and indeed with a great deal of the punitive model followed in certain forms of christianity.

That we as humans are very good at being horribly nasty to our fellow humans is an undeniable fact, one needs only look around at the world we live in on a micro and macro scale; albeit I am less sure of the idea of literal original sin (I cannot consider a new born baby and imagine it as inherently evil).

However, even allowing for the general potential for scumminess of most humans, myself included, I just do not see this "divine punishment" model.

What after all is the purpose of punishment? Among children and unenlightened people punishment is just something that happens, think of the ignorant parent who says to a child "do that you get a smack"
It is at most a very crude attempt to deter wrong behaviour (and one which pretty much doesn't work), or it is simply that the parent feels that punishment must! for some reason of fairness come after a crime just as some sort of consequence, eg "do that and you'll have to go to prison"

The idea that god must adhere to this model, either trying to frighten everyone into behaving themselves by giving horrific, eternal punishments to some and spreading the word, among others (which also means using the punished as effectively a means)or still worse, that some sort of universal sense of fairness to which God is bound to obey means that god required his son, or himself to suffer horribly and die I just find incomprehensible, not the loving god explained elsewhere.
Indeed the notion of love and punitive punishment seems directly incompatible to me.
I even do wonder if this notion of punishment comes from a rather earlier time in human history whenbelieved intrinsically that social or physical suffering must! be a result of the person's own responsabilitiy, ie, if you have something bad happen to you, include a disease or a disability it must be your! fault since life would not be so random as to allow bad things to happen to good people. (Spong actually argues something like this with respect to the historical position of the testament jews).

I've always thought myself however, that understanding is better than punishment, therefore I've always rather liked some of the eastern views of morality, that essentially life is a training ground or a learning experience.
This perspective isn't unknown in Christianity either, oragon argued as such in the fourth century, though since emperor Constantine (who was a major git by all accounts), disagreed the doctrine never made it into official church cannon, which is actually rather a sghame.

Of course, there are a lot of things about the resurrection, why God might choose to live and die as a man, how the experience of jesus life and death affected those around him which have a lot of importance beyond the literal idea of sin and payment, indeed it is in these aspects that I am these days getting rather more of a respect for the Christian faith as an expression of love rather than one of condemnation.

This idea of learning is again however why I don't really see the argument against homosexuality, heck there are certainly gay people I've met who have given me things to learn.

Btw, this isnt' intended as offensive again, just as a sharing of views.

I will confess nearly becoming a rather synical agnostic my interest in faith general and my respect for Christianity, ---- at least where it expresses love as opposed to hatred is something I'm rediscovering currently, though unlike my lady I'm not sure if I'd describe myself as a Christian or if I'd just say I believe in God and don't mind worshipping in various ways .

lol this thread is still going

BRING OUT YOUR GAYS!

BRING OUT YOUR GAYS!

Moderation!

@Andy, it does not matter whether you hate people or not. Saying "this is wrong!" with no qualifications and using terms like "unnatural" unfortunately sounds pretty hateful to most people.

After all what would you think if someone said "I don't hate dark skinned people, they are just wrong! and against nature"
It is not a matter of changing your beliefs but expressing them in a less offensive manner.

I hope this makes sense.

Okay, moderation hat coming off now, the next bit is all most definitely just Dark's opinion .

@Joseph, I am afraid this question of "value" and "offense" is just one I see from literally the opposite angle..
to me, the more divine, the more holy, the more good and admirable conception of God is not a stern, immaculate figure who is "offended!" by sin and cannot associate with the worst of humanity, but the very opposite, someone who can! love people despite our intrinsic scumminess, with no! sacrifice or universal toll paying required.
After all, who is a better moral person, the fastidious person who remains aloof because they "don't want to associate with criminals", or the person who goes out and associates with outcasts and the worst of humanity and is able to love and try to help them despite that.

This again is one of the positive things I see about the life of jesus, that he spent his time among criminals and tax collectors and such, no universal toll paying or suffering required.

To me, the reason squashing a fly is not as bad as harming a child is simply that a child suffers considerably more than the fly, and indeed the truly good person is the person who could! manage to still value the fly despite it being a very different species despite what is to us a rather inconceivable, brief and fairly disgusting life. Indeed the bible supports the idea that god does! have this sort of universal, rather scary  benevolence, which is again one of the really positive things I see in Christianity, the fact that the love of god is! universal irrespective of how scummy we might happen to be.

thus I confess the idea of some sort of universal penal system is just one which does not resonate with me at all.

Personally as I said, I rather like the idea of learning. orrigan posited that the only "hell!" there might be is our own realization in the afterlife of just what idiots we've been, and rather than being imposed by god, or the universe or anything else, it's just a matter of our own, sudden. painful epiphany, which manifestly is something we just realize and then it's done ( eternal suffering either, either in literal fire and brimstone or the more modern idea of separation from god).

Perhaps this is more a matter of personal morality. my lady and I often have arguments over the necessities of some sort of restitution for immoral actions, for all she isn't in favour of the hole "eternal suffering, crucifiction as payment of debts thing" either, where as to me punishment seems to serve little purpose unless it is to teach the person the value of suffering or to prevent the person punished making others suffer.
I'll say the worst forms of evil I've seen have not been due to an intrinsic sinfulness, but an ignorance so profound that it was almost innocent in it's childishness, to me, trying to adopt some sort of claim of "punishment" or "responsibility" for that form of unthinking savagery would be as pointless as punishing a virus for making you ill.
there are people who simply have the imotional and empathic morality of a child, who will hurt others just because it does not occur to them not to do so, because it simply cannot! or because they exist in a world where others simply do not matter.
"punishing" such people or claiming they have "responsability" just does not seem to make sense to me, though as I said this is something my lady and I regularly have arguements about .

I'll also say on a personal level that for me, the times I have been most separate from god and indeed close to becoming a very, very sinical agnostic were not due to my own "sin!" but to much more human things such as fairly extreme loneliness anda highly acute , bone deep  perception of my own worthlessness.

What changed this and actually gave  back that perception of the presence of god I used to have was the divine grace by which I happened to meet my lady, and yes "grace" pretty much is the only word that fits given a set of extremely! unlikely coincidences which brought us together.

This is btw, also why I fully agree with mirage about homosexuality actually being a divine thing in and of itself where it is the expression of love, since certainly I can think of a gay friend of mine who's world was completely changed when he met his husband, (indeed his vicar apparently blessed both of them and told them he'd be glad to marry them if the church weren't being such idiots just for that reason).

tbh I don't get why we don't just figure out our morals without relying on god, it's really not that hard.

sociology dictates that certain actions such as theft, rape and murder make a society less stable. doesn't it follow that if we follow behaviours that promote social stability, then we will have a more stable society? I mean if we followed the morals of the bible referencing homosexuals, women, ect. we would be a far less stable society since we all know there is screwed up shit in there. Hell, look at the extremists in the middle east, who follow a similar religion, simply interpreted much more strictly.

I mean basing your morals around what is actually helpful for society makes more sense than referencing a book that is hundreds of years old and was written by people who didn't know what germs or psychology were. it's not like they were exactly that knowledgeable about these things. and I highly doubt that the bible is the genuine word of god, at best it is interpreted and therefore subject to the subjective nature of the interpreter.

lets also consider the fact that these guys were living in a time with a lot less people.

I'm not really sure how homosexuality or even transgenderism affects social stability. sure, the regressive left's interpretation of LGBTPOTATO is completely retarded and potentially dangerous for people with gender identity problems but all this dribble over something that I can't even objectively know to exist is kind of silly don't you think? Doesn't it imply that you can't build your own morality? Don't be so feeble.

tbh I'm kind of glad that religion is being replaced by philosophy in this generation. now if the youth wasn't into post modernist bullcrap I would be much happier, but alas, we can't have it all

@andy93: I understand what you're saying, but consider the following: the predominant perception is that homosexuality is a state of being, not a conscious choice. As such, when you say "Being gay is wrong" people don't hear "Choosing to engage sexually with someone of the same sex is wrong", they hear, "Existing as a person with same-sex attraction is wrong." As such, the perception is that you are condemning someone's very existence, and I can see how that would be construed as hateful. Does that help clarify why people are reacting the way they are? For those who would label Andy's speech as hateful, if I'm misrepresenting your position please correct me.

Daigonite: To follow the philosophical rabbit hole you are leading us down—what reason do you have to say that the good of society is an objective good? Without an external moral standard, why is the good of human society a basis for morality? What special claim on flourishing do humans possess? Why would something that is destructive to our society be less good, objectively, than something that leads to our society's flourishing? And even if we can satisfactorily answer these questions, are we prepared to live with the implications of "What's good for society as a whole is the only objective moral standard? That sounds pretty close to utilitarianism, and anyone familiar with utilitarianism knows that it is not a philosophy which is friendly to those with disabilities.

I guess my point is that any attempt to construct an objective morality requires some sort of faith-based claim that X is the greatest good, whether X be God or societal flourishing or personal happiness or anything else.

Nocturnus - surely none of us are capable of changing society in such a way by ourselves, however that wasn't really the issue being addressed.

I kind of feel that the problem regarding morality should be treated as an engineering problem. We can measure things such as the number of people who are murdered, stolen from ect. Instead of simply labeling these issues as morally wrong, does it not make more sense to identify the causes for these actions?

We know that people generally act in predictable ways and have predictable desires - to the point where we are able to model hundreds of human beings in simulations for things like crowd control, which is used to save lives in human crush disasters. These models simply use "agents" representing humans on a computer to predict human behavior in emergency situations. Does it not follow that we should instead base our morality on what actually works towards improving society, especially considering that our knowledge is growing on human behaviour?

I'm reminded of the "leaving children in cars" problem - clearly human irresponsibility is going to inevitably cost the lives of children every year in the summer. However, it is common to expect people to simply pull their own weight in this scenario. If this was an engineering solution, someone would be getting fired. Clearly the amount of human irresponsibility in the population is high enough to cost at least one life with this situation, which means that simply expecting that irresponsibility to dissolve will not form a resolution to the problem "children dying in cars". Simply put, expecting adults to pay their dues does not actually solve the problem of children dying, even if it does make us feel justified in our actions.

Joseph - While an empirical approach cannot resolve a purely objective approach due to the nature of relying on subjective measurements, the ability to compare and contrast measurements on large scales allows us to simulate reality in a predictable manner. This has been shown with many sciences, including social sciences, such as with the aforementioned agent simulations.

Despite having this issue, it is far more valuable than a subjective approach, because the net accumulation of information allows us to build a simulated objective reality based around the interpretations of a large sum of individuals. This is similar to how in quantum mechanics, the individual behaviour of particles cannot be predicted, but the aggregate chance of certain activities happening are. The summation of all these measurements allows us to make generalized predictions which are extremely accurate.

What makes humankind incapable of following this same principle? Are we not made of chemicals, and held together by the laws of nature? There is no evidence for a vital force, soul or anything similar to make us somehow uniquely not affected by this. Instead, as measurements accumulate, the image becomes clear that we are better described as extremely complex chemical machines. So what reason should I believe that we are somehow immune to these principles?

The stability of human society should be a basis of morality because ultimately, the goal of our species is to survive, then to propagate. If we treat this problem as an engineering solution using sociology and psychology, we then can model, at least with a bit of accuracy, our development in specific situations and adopt accordingly to take into considerations those goals of survival and propagation. If we practice behaviours that damage society, we risk our ability to survive and propagate. What benefit does a morality based on religious texts provide that this model does not?

I am strictly utilitarian, and I believe that claiming that such a philosophy is not friendly towards those with disabilities is a misinterpretation. The lack of social utility of the blind is caused by our inability to integrate them - a utilitarian would want to integrate the blind because not integrating them means we lose on their utility. Please explain to me where you got this misconception from because it does not seem to reflect utilitarian values. Indeed, my actions as a developer are intended to focus on increasing social utility of the blind without simply curing them, since curing blindness has many more complications than simply developing interpretive technology to support them, and such technology would be the most utilitarian answer. I mean, is there some utilitarian argument claiming that we should cull those with disabilities, because the cost of culling those individuals costs far more than actually integrating them (technology can be easily replicated, but culling takes a lot more manual work, just as an example), and many people with disabilities have higher utility in specific situations, such as the blind in low-vision environments.

There is no need for any faith based claim for an objective reality, if we simply claim that "objective" means the accumulation of millions of subjective perspectives. The only faith that is required is the faith in the idea that truth cannot be asserted, only falsehood, which backs empiricist philosophy.

Utilitarianism is NOT socialism. Utilitarianism simply means that we should focus as a society in improving social utility. If anything, I think that socialism is anti-utilitarian because it assigns people to sub optimal roles, thus squandering utility. Furthermore, as stated before, utilitarianism isn't inherently anti-disability, although its likely that uneducated utilitarians believe such things. However, I would argue that the social utility cost of culling the disabled would far outweigh the utility cost of simply using technology to integrate the disabled, especially the blind. This is likely because the utilitarians arguing this claim are not aware of the full situation, aka, an argument from ignorance. Furthermore, if we provide technology for the blind, we can utilize the utility they provide, which would be lost in a disability culling.

Why does god care if you believe in him? Isn't that a sign of vanity? Doesn't that conflict with the idea of a perfect god?