Gospel church: How people can be easily influentied...

I didn't want to dig up my Bible and find all of the books with homosexuality and type them up, but I guess I'll have to. XD

Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, 1 Samuel, 2 Kings, Isaiah, Daniel, Joel, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Jude, Revelation. Fifteen of sixty-six, so my estimate of a little less than half was a bit inaccurate. In any case, that's around a quarter of them; however, the amount of times that it condemns homosexuality is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that homophobia and intolerance have become taught on a mass scale and that billions (billions includes people of other religions, mind you) accept those teachings.

As for the bit of apologetics saying "out of context," I'll quote myself P): "Why then do people today still follow it?"

That quote is from Saul of Tarsus' letter to the Romans. Here's something else which he wrote in that letter:

Make sure to keep that written on your heart as well.

No, actually atonement and Hell were not introduced until the New Testament. The Torah taught that death was the end of life altogether and that Adam and Eve were simply banished from Eden and cursed them with pain and suffering, not that their descendents were all vile sinners from birth (so, really, it went from one bad doctrine to a worse one; hurrah!).

You don't think that the contraction of STIs and psychological trauma can occur in committed relationships? You'll be in for a shock or two.

Nope, he quite simply isn't. Anyhow, I was kidding with the paedophilia ... hence the "hahaha."

Excellent.

 

ok I'll admit I don't know everything about the bible adn I didn't know all of those verses but aside from that you make a good point but as I have said before using the bible as a rulebook conflicts with morality and if you follow those rules well you'll wind up a monstor in this society, you're instead missing the whole point of the bible and religion, they just want you do find a relationship with god, he loves you and through Jesus you can be with him forever, they all love you more than words can ever describe, everything good that's happened in your life was an act of god simply because he loves you

 

I totally agree. As I have said, it perplexes me how kind, rational people would do so. There are better ways to express wonder for the Universe than follow a text which is inherently anti-social and maliciously feral.

I understand that some people see their lives as pointless without believing the above (to which the simplest, most honest response is "so what?"). I shall only say (for now, unless you decide to continue this thread of the debate) that the god of Bible is what Christians would call "evil" and that the substitute god lacks practical purpose.

 

It's all about interpretation and context. You take any of those verses in the Bible and there will be a Christian scholar somewhere who will discredit its authority using logic but not undermining their holy text. You'll also find people who reject these arguments.

Unsurprisingly, armchair theology is never going to bring about huge revelations in Biblical interpretation. And I tend to get a bit fed up when people throw sweeping generalizations over religion in particular, because it's not a simple and shallow subject. Our understanding of the world is influenced a lot by our environment and it gives us a sense of superiority over those who subscribe to other beliefs.

Whether we like it or not, this whole influence thing happens to every person here and comes from all sorts of institutions, religion being one of many.

 

sorry what? I don't understand what your asking

 

Well, yes. Sensible Christians (which the scholarly one tend to be) must make excuses for their loving god's very hateful behaviour.

Theology as a whole is a rather useless field.

Yes, that's true. One sees that all of the time; however, if you are implying that I see myself as superior to religious people, you are quite wrong. I certainly dislike the beliefs, but I do not see myself as superior to the people, so long as they are accepting and kind.

Again, yes, although I fail to see the relevance of that statement in terms of whether religion, specifically, is inherently homophobic.

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I wasn't asking anything. XD

The first bit of the post was just that I agree with the quoted text. The second bit was ... well, it explains itself, I suppose.

 

Who's with me on creating a book with tales of morality and great feats and telling you what you should and should not do? :icon_bigg

Maybe in 1,000 years, it'll be held as the be-all, end-all truth.

 

Well, we certainly do need one which is actually well-written, so I'm all game. :lol:

 

I've made my points and I totally stand by everything I've said. Generalizations continue to be made.

I really want to address this:

I really disagree with this ten-thousand times over. I'm not religious, but I am a theology student and I constantly see how insanely important religion is to the modern world. Passive secularists may be very happy to shrug off religion and I am very comfortable with that, but I am not comfortable with people denying how useful and important the understanding of religion is to the the world outside of our little Eurocentric fortress.

 

How should we start?

Long ago, a maiden sung into the hearts of the world, uplifting everyone from their sorrows, inspiring them to love one another and protect this great earth. They called her Lady Gaga. :lol:

 

Our understanding of religion and non-Western cultures does not come from theologists, it comes from cultural anthropologists, archeologists, sociologists, political scientists, psychologists and historians.

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:lol:

Hmm ...

With majesty, she sung to life all folk.
That crowd of joyful servants came around
To give her praise, unravelling a path
Of cirmson cloth; her feet could not touch ground.

 

I understand what Ben's saying.

To our modern, developed, highly advanced world, religion mayn't be as significant. I mean, many would be able to handle ourselves without the strict strings of some religions.

Outside of our little bubble, it's a very different situation. Some groups of people use religion to heavily guide their morals and way of thinking. Without it, things could go to hell real quickly.

To the Lady Gaga tale:

She turned dirt into glitter
Water into whiskey
Tattered pieces of cloth into shimmering sequin gowns
Entertained an entire village with one microphone and one song.

 

Ditto. Brought up and educated Catholic, lost any faith before hitting my teens (only went through with Confirmation because I'd get money from my relatives for it). School was pretty miserable for me because my parents wouldn't let me transfer out of my all-girls convent school.

 

God only hates sin. They're like matter and antimatter, they react violently and so can never be allowed to touch. God on the other hand loves humans, everything about us, our hair down to our personality and from our big mistakes to our triumph. God loves us, Me and whoever reads this, he put the bible there in an attempt to guide us, and while we may have misenterpreted it in lots of ways, it does teach good things.

 

People who use the content of the Bible to exhort hatred and bigotry have not misinterpreted it in doing so. Mostly, they are following it to the letter.

 

I'm not exactly sure what you think theologians do if you don't think they build up understanding about religions and the impact around the world they have had and still have.
Studying religion doesn't mean sitting in a dusty corner of a library memorizing quotes from the Bible. It also doesn't mean liking religion—you wouldn't find one theologian who doesn't think that religion can be an extremely ugly thing.
Which is why understanding religion is increasingly important. There's been an astounding growth in interfaith discussions in the past ten years because of all of the religious leaders and theologians wanting to work together to help improve the religious situations around the world.

 

Umm, didn't he create sin? Being that he created everything, universe and all, he created the rules of life.

 

My point is that theology is redundant and out-dated, given that the other fields which I cited are empirical, critical and I daresay much more less biased toward a Western perspective than theology.

 

but that's not missenterpreting it or following it it's just ignorant
The bible says lots of time to love our neighbour, treat others as you would like to be treated etc etc, and if people were truley following the word they would know what it's like to follow in the footsteps of jesus, he hung out with those that the law sayed to shun, he started riots in the temples, he got kicked out of his hometown, he was a complete rebel and all the while when he id these things he was doing them out of love for us, showing compasion and love. Besides why do we keep putting these impossible demands on holy people, I mean do you like everybody? can you honestly say there is noone in the world who you don't even feel a little bit of resentment towards? people get funny ideas in their heads adn try to rally people aound their flag, keep your wits about you, find a church (as in a group of people) who you like, your friends with and feel the same way towards life adn religion. Don't give a fuck about what anyone else says or thinks, relative to you they're wrong even though relative to the bible they may be right. So long as you believe in jesus and let him show you the way it doesn't matter how or when you sin. You are forgiven

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god didn't creat sin,man did, you know the story of the garden of eden? God puts the tree of good and evil oin the garden for a reason, he loves us so much he gives us the thing most important to us, choice. We chose to create sin and sin is rebellion against god, that's exactly what it means, whe we choose to rebel it buts distance between us and god.