Welcome to Gaia! ::

Of course I am. =) I'd never just quit a discussion without at least saying so first. It's just, my posts are rather, er, long... and I don't have time every day to write one out. Questions about religion are deep and deserve a full explanation rather than a quick answer. And I'm still enjoying talking to you about it too.



The homosexual acceptance movement in America is perfectly valid to compare and contrast with the anti-slavery movement in America. They are/were both political causes that deal with moral issues, and each gives/gave reasons for why a dramatic change should take place in society. I was just showing that the reasons given by the anti-slavery movement are superior to the reasons given by the homosexual acceptance movement, because each anti-slavery reason stands on its own and doesn't lead to any other undesirable activities happening along with it. The reasons vary between the two things, but what makes a reason a good or bad one does not change.

Why I say the reasons justifying homosexuality aren't good reasons, is because each one by itself cannot justify homosexuality without justifying other behaviors that probably don't want to be connected with it. It is not that people just cluster negative things that homosexuality. What it is, is that each reason people use to justify homosexuality contains within itself a justification for those other negative things. Saying love is a good enough to justify gay marriage contains within itself a justification for polygamy and incestuous marriage, because those are also a case of consensual love. It's not that anyone is just clumping homosexuality with polygamy and incest, it's that the reason, "love is enough for marriage," brings us to those other behaviors on its own. The reason a person uses brings them to the results; it has nothing to do with one result being arbitrarily clumped with another one.

Compare it to trying to get some activity to be accepted as an official sport. You know how some people have debates on whether things like cheer leading are really sports? So, say I have a sport called Lion-hopping. Yay! Lion-hopping is fun, and I want people to consider it a real sport. xp So to convince people, I give them reasons. The first, is that it should be considered a sport because you earn points and have a score. This is a bad reason, because in Pac-Man, Scrabble, and Jeopardy you earn points and have a score, and no one wants to consider those sports. The second reason is that you have teams of people, so that's why Lion-hopping should be a sport. That's also a bad reason because debate clubs, and businesses, have teams of people, and again, no one wants to consider those sports.

It's not that Lion-hopping is always just being clumped together with Pac-Man or debate clubs; it's the reasons I gave that necessarily brought those other things up. They're bad reasons, because if we accept Lion-hopping as a sport based on any of them, we will also have to accept a bunch of other things. Sure, if I combine enough reasons together, then I will exclude all those other things. "It should be a sport because it gives points and has a score, AND because it has teams, AND because it is good exercise, etc." Eventually, as you get more and more specific, that prevents anything else from being clumped with it, but it doesn't mean any of those are good reasons. And it would still be the case that if any of those reasons are good enough to accept Lion-hopping, then they would be good enough to accept business teams and Scrabble.

So I need to find a good reason that stands on it's own. For Lion-hopping, I would say that it should be considered a sport because it is an athletic competition. That reason, by itself, doesn't bring up anything that we don't want to be considered a sport, and it actually rules them all out. So for homosexuality, if we can find a reason like that, it will be far better than all the other reasons I've heard before.

The sport analogy may not be a perfect example, but I hope it at least just explains what I mean.



But, that is an emotion. Emotions are more complicated, of course, than just feeling happy or sad. Feeling free, feeling like a burden has been lifted, feeling a weight off your shoulders, are all emotional experiences, are they not? Think how complex and varied all physical feelings can be: soft, hard, smooth, rough, sweet, sour, hot, cold, sharp, dull, painful, wet... All the varying degrees of these and every combination that can be experienced make for a very involved sense of physical feeling. Emotions are just as complicated and include things like feelings of a burden being lifted.

We live in a physical world, not a spiritual one; so we can't feel our spiritual condition in obvious ways like we can with emotions or touching. Feeling like a burden has been lifted is a very obvious feeling, but spirituality is not obvious. It is so abstract and disconnected from what we consciously experience, that it leads many people in our scientifically-oriented Western culture to believe there's no such thing as souls or spirits. If we could sense them so obviously, then no one would doubt that they exist.

So if someone believes that there is no such thing as souls or spirituality, then my reasoning that homosexual behavior is spiritually damaging would make no difference to them. But, that someone would also have a hard time explaining why murder, or anything else, is wrong; because if we have no souls, and we are only evolved animals, then since all other animals kill and steal without any of us saying it's wrong, there's no reason why it'd be wrong for us to do them.

In fact, if there is no God, there is also no such thing as any human rights, because there is no basis for them. They would only be a human invention meant to help keep society together, and there's no reason why you should respect them if you think you can get away with it or if you're willing to do the jail time. Those who believe in human rights understood this when they said in the Declaration of Independence that humans "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." If you take the God out, you take all human rights out, and all morality.



Telling people that something hurts them could be brainwashing or manipulating, but it doesn't have to be. Most of what you know, you have learned because other people you hold to have authority have told you; not because you know it from personal experience. So I guess in that sense, we are all very brainwashed and manipulated. But our hope is that what we've been led to believe is actually true.

We don't always "know if something hurts us when we experience the pain of it," not at all. All of us get sick plenty of times without knowing what it is that made us that way. Anything that can help us make a guess about what got us sick, we don't know from personal experience, but from things people have taught us, or a doctor has told us.

My comparison to smoking is still a good illustration. If someone has never been told that smoking is bad for them, then they have no way of knowing. They feel better when they smoke, and if they don't smoke for a while, many smokers describe it as a burden being lifted when they go back to it. If they develop emphysema or something, that won't be till after they've been smoking for years. They will have no more reason to think that smoking caused their emphysema then they will have reason to think it may be the bananas they've been eating. Or they could just think it's that they're getting old.

You need to be told by someone else that smoking is bad for you, or else you can't know. People smoked for generations before science showed that it was so harmful. You could compare the DARE program to brainwashing and manipulation, certainly; the question is whether it's true or not, and whether or not people really need to know. Science was needed for us to learn that smoking was harmful. And since souls are outside the realm of science, there's no one but God himself who is able to tell us if homosexuality is harmful; and Christians believe he's told us that it is.



That situation could be true, but the opposite could happen as well. What if the person really did have the virus? Then, seeing the TV show saved his life, because it spurred him to go to the doctor and get treatment before it was too late. That could just as well have been the case, and the person would be in big trouble if they just brushed off the TV show and ignored their symptoms.

Christ was compared to a physician or doctor a few times in the Bible. "And as he reclined at a table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”" -Mark 2:15-17

If the virus is Sin, then we know all of us have the symptoms because we all have done wrong things. The Pharisees are like someone who heard about the virus, knew that they had some of the symptoms, and just brushed it off saying they're fine. But the people who admit that they are sick are the ones who go to the doctor, and he heals them. That's why Christ said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick."

God is like a doctor in that he tells us what is healthy and unhealthy for our souls; and because he is the one who heals us when we go to him.



Here I feel rather like you're judging me based on your preconceived notions of what Christians are like. That is stereotyping. I'm not imposing my beliefs on anyone; I'm only offering an explanation of what Christian's believe because, well, you asked. =P I haven't told other people with different beliefs what they have to do or live by, and actually I said Christians should treat homosexuals exactly the same way as they treat any other person: with love and respect. No one is being forced to believe homosexuality is wrong; Christianity teaches it, but people can choose for themselves whether they find it to be true. Of course I do believe my religion is the only right one; every religion believes they're the only right one, and every person who has any opinion about God or spirituality believes their opinion is the right one, including atheists and agnostics. We can't all be right. But I'm not forcing anyone to believe anything, I can only advise that they consider it carefully.


* Lion-hopping is dangerous. It is not, as of yet, considered to be a real sport. There are no official rules or regulation; as such, if you choose to engage in lion-hopping, you do so at your own discretion and risk. Lion-hopping is presented only as a hypothetical example and is not necessarily endorsed by the author of this post.

>.<
Sorry to hear that! It would sure be nice if Gaia saved drafts of posts automatically every few minutes, like some emails and blogs do.

Everyone should have a choice who they want to be with. I don't think God will damn you to hell for all eternity. He, like many fathers, will still love you. He may punish you, but he still loves you.　That is what I believe.

orly???? lol come on, you can do better than that.

To a point, I appreciate you mentioning this so-called thesis of Ananel, as eventually I was able to find it and actually read it. It is a nice, open-minded, respectful discussion, and explains his position on why he doesn't believe the Bible condemns homosexuality. But, as even he acknowledges within that very "thesis," there is plenty of evidence for other positions on the matter as well. And, his arguments are far from being beyond dispute.

How is it you claim that the mere mention of his name somehow ends all discussion on homosexuality? I dare say he would strongly disagree with you. But you're already aware of that, aren't you? I found another, more recent, post of Ananel, expressing his disgust of how his "thesis" has been abused in exactly the manner that you're abusing it now. You are fully aware of this recent post, because you replied to it, less than a month ago.

Come on, man.



And your reply to him...



Really? You don't bother with Ananel's thesis much anymore? Perhaps you are still in withdrawal of its abuse and your post above mine was just a relapse.

Sorry if my tone is rather corrosive; I just find posts like that obnoxious. Apparently Ananel agrees with me.

im to lazy to read all that..

but i like girls&& im christian.

what i believe,

is god accepts us because

he made us to be who we are now. heart

What if some are created NOT to be saved?

Examples: Pharaoh in Moses's days, Judas Iscariot.

What about those that came before Jesus? Like the pagans of old.

ninja

Of course.

wait, what??