ginvid;3343337 said:
You guys stop it, now. This is a non debate thread. If you don't like what is being said here, then don't post here. This is not a thread for people to try and prove what they believe to anyone. If that is something you want to discuss, create another thread and discuss it there. I have a lot I can say here about people's comments, but this is not the place to start that kind of debate. We are not to be judgers of one another. But by means of the Bible we can tell right from wrong. The Bible clearly condemns homosexuality. In a religious thread where people say they follow the Bible, you should not be surprised to see that notion. If you have a problem with that kind of thinking, then may I suggest you leave this thread alone?
Again, if you want to debate, don't come in here posting. Thank you.
I agree that we shouldn't be debating the existence of God in a believers topic, but I really don't think that's what is happening. In fact, that's not what is happening. No one said they don't believe, but that they don't entirely believe in man's interpretation. It's perfectly acceptable to discuss our beliefs (and especially important in cases of bias, misinformation, and condemnation). And really, you can't have religious discussions without some form of debate (whether you believe or not). That's silly. And actually, the Bible doesn't clearly condemn homosexuality. It doesn't clearly condemn any group of people. It flips and flops all over the place. It only matters what is in the heart of the person who reads it as to how it's interpreted. I realize you're a mod and trying to instill peace, but you're also asking the impossible and trying to act as if condemning homosexuals is perfectly okay because the bible says so. Well, it doesn't say so. That's the problem in itself. Christians often pick and choose Bible verses in order to validate how they were raised and taught, but that simply is not being Christian-like.
People worship only their misinterpretations of the Bible while ignoring the rest. Take the issue of homosexuality (the issue your addressing). There are six verses in the Bible (out of 31,174) that can be misinterpreted as being against homosexuality; in
fact, three of these verses are against homosexual rape, two of them forbid a physical impossibility (men not having vaginas), and one of them is a scare-tactics announcement of what happens to
heterosexual men and women who engage in idolatry. The Bible contains 321 verses that condone slavery; instead of their rants against homosexuality, why do we never hear fundamentalists crying out to bring back slavery?
There are exactly SIX verses in the entire Bible that appear to condemn homosexuality. Here they are:
- Genesis 19:1-3. In this passage, two angels arrive in Sodom in the evening. Our hero Lot, knowing that life is dangerous in Sodom, insists on sheltering them for the evening. But every man in Sodom, both heterosexual and homosexual, surrounds Lot's house. The gang demands that the angels come out for a little homosexual gang rape. Lot offers his virgin daughters for the gang-rape, but the men insist on the angels, so the men closest to the door are stricken blind. The angels announce that they, the angels, are about to destroy Sodom, empowered by Yahweh.
The sins that are condemned are inhospitality and gang-rape, and the gang-rape is planned by a gang that is composed of primarily heterosexual men — husbands and fathers. (Heterosexuals, like right-handed people, comprise approximately 90 percent of humanity, both now and then.)
- Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. Both of these verses prohibit a physical impossibility, a man lying with a male as if with a woman. The priestly writers, writing down in about 530 BCE oral tradition dating from perhaps a thousand years earlier, make no mention of love between men or women of the same gender, much less fellatio, cunnilingus, or other ways of exchanging pleasure.
Remember, now, these verses date from at least 2,500 years ago, and the original oral tradition may be up to a thousand years older. There were only a few million human beings on the face of the planet; life was “nasty, brutish, and short.” People took seriously God's command to be fruitful and multiply. Indeed, if Jesus had been a bachelor, no one would have listened to a word he had to say, commandment-breaker that he would have been seen as. Remember also that these are not the only two verses in Leviticus. If you're going to claim that homosexuals are sinners based on these two verses, you must also:
- keep kosher (ch. 11) — as part of keeping kosher, you may eat no fat and no blood (3:16-17, 7:22, 17:10-16), meaning no potato chips, no French fries, no rare steak, etc.; you may eat no lobsters, clams, oysters, octopus, shrimp, or crawfish (11:12), no tuna casserole (mixes “meat” and milk), and no ostrich (11:16) or crocodile meat (11:30).
- You may wear no cotton-polyester blends, or any other kind of blend of fabrics (19:19).
- You shall not “defer to the great,” making ex President Bush's pandering to the wealthy explicitly sinful (19:15).
- You must observe Rosh Hoshanah, Yom Kippur, and the festival of Booths (23:23-43).
- If an insect or lizard crawls across your cookpot, you must break your cookpot into pieces and throw it away. (11:30) When this rule was written, cookpots were molded out of clay by the lady of the house. Today most cookpots are stainless steel or aluminum — but if you're going to insist on 18:22 and 20:13, you must also insist on 11:30.
- You may not cross-breed animals (19:19). There's nothing in the Bible against cloning, however.
- You must stone Lance Burton and all other “wizards” to death; ditto for all astrologers and all mediums (19:26-27, 19:31, 20:6, 20:27).
- You may not have a tattoo (19:28).
- You must put Bristol Palin to death for the sin of sex outside of wedlock (20:10-16). Also most other citizens of the U.S. over the age of about 16 — there's no statute of limitations in the Bible.
- A God-fearing man may not marry a divorcée or a rape victim (21:7). (Most of the rules in Leviticus pertain only to men, since women are considered subhuman by many of the authors the Bible.)
- If the daughter of a priest becomes a prostitute, she must be burned to death (21:9). How compassionate the priestly authors of Leviticus were!
- You will be exiled if you see a close relative naked, even accidentally (20:17-22).
- No priest may have acne or any other kind of blemish or physical imperfection (21:16-23).
- Anyone who blasphemes — Marilyn Manson for example — must be stoned to death (24:13-23).
- When a prisoner is executed in a capital punishment case, the executioner must also be put to death. Ditto for whoever puts the executioner to death. And so on, ad infinitum. (24:17, 21)
- It's perfectly all right with “the gods” (elohim) if you want to own slaves, but they may not be of the same nationality as yourself. Leviticus recommends that the U.S. obtain its slaves from Mexico, Russia, Cuba, and Greenland. (25:44-46; not Canada, because Canada is a dominion rather than a nation.)
- If you do not follow these rules, and many others, as scrupulously as you insist on applying these two verses of Leviticus, you are a hypocrite, and may safely be ignored.
- Romans 1:18-22. According to this passage, hardened idolaters are given up to lust and impurity. Heterosexual women commit “unnatural” acts, as do heterosexual men. Moreover, these idolaters are filled with every kind of wickedness and evil, from murder to gossip. The crime is idolatry, not homosexuality.
- 1 Cor. 6:9-10 and 1 Tim. 1:8-11. The first passage says, and this is an exact translation into modern colloquial English, “Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit God's Perfect World? Do not be deceived! Fornicaters, idolaters, adulterers, softies, manf—kers, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers — none of these will inherit God's Perfect World.” The second passage says, in modern English, The law is not for the innocent, but rather for the lawless, the ungodly, and unholy, for “those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, fornicaters, manf—kers, slave traders, liars, perjurers,” etc.
St. Paul probably coined the word “manf—kers.” The fact that these people are lumped in with serious criminals — murderers, slave traders, perjurers, etc. — shows that St. Paul did NOT mean to include all heterosexual women among the "manf—kers." Nor did St. Paul include as serious criminals people who ingest a little marijuana (a common weed in his part of the world and era), sass their parents, or read other people's mail. “Softies” was probably meant to refer to the receiving partner in anal sex, but once again, no one brings up fellatio, cunnilingus, or other ways to exchange pleasure. I believe that with the word “manf—kers,” St. Paul was once again invoking rape — the first-century equivalent of the abuses that go on in men's prisons, NOT the first-century equivalent of mutual love and commitment.
So there we have it — a condemnation of homosexual gang rape; two prohibitions of a physical impossibility (and by the way, Lev. 11:6 says very clearly that hares chew their cud!); a scare-tactics announcement of what happens to
heterosexual men and women who engage in idolatry; and two condemnations of homosexual rape. Six verses out of 31,174, which in case you're interested is 0.000192468 percent. The Bible also contains 321 verses that condone slavery (1.0297 percent). The verse in Genesis dates from approximately 920 B.C.E., although it is probably older. The verses in Leviticus were probably inscribed onto parchment around 500 B.C.E., when the highest level of technology available was the war chariot. The verses in Romans and 1 Corinthians date from approximately 60 C.E. The verses in 1 Timothy probably date from approximately 90-120 C.E. Anyone who claims to be a Christian, however, is compelled to ignore these verses altogether, since they are superseded by the two Great Commandments: to love God with all one's heart and mind and soul and strength, and to love other human beings as much as you love yourself. Period. No exceptions. Jesus did NOT say, “except black people, except women, except homosexuals, except left-handed people, except children, except Romans (or Roman Catholics), except feminists, except liberals.” Jesus said EVERYONE. If you just said, “Yes, but—”, stop right there. “Yes, but” is NOT Christian.
This message was posted in various Christian websites around mid-late 2009.
