Way to avoid writing an intelligent reply there....

Hey, just so you know, you just made baby Jesus facepalm.

Wow, Emon. Wow.

K, I'm done.

Wow, I can't believe how stupid you are! I win.

Really though, what is there to say? He makes a moral judgment. I tell him that his view of morals is arbitrary, and he agrees, so either he concedes the argument or doesn't understand what arbitrary means. If he still thinks that the moral judgments he made are rational just because his morals make society advance, I don't even know what to say except that that's not an arbitrary understanding of morals.

I probably won't read every page of posts, but yes. I'm happy to allow homosexuals into the clergy.

At the same time, though, that person should been connected with a close group of friends to help keep him accountable, to keep him from falling to the temptations that come along with homosexuality.

Also, having a group of people to keep him accountable should be for everyone in the church, not just homosexuals. It's shocking how many pastors isolate themselves from close relationships, spend their time looking at porn in their offices, and have sex with women in the congregation. And if they're found out they can just move to another church and start over.

Precautions should be in place to protect against sexual misconduct for homosexuals and heterosexuals.

What are you? Asexual?

[EDIT] Ok asexual isn't the best word to use here..

Divide! Divide!

This thread's mighty gay now.

i find it interesting that the religious people on here never argue the biblical points the non-religious people make. i.e. - taking some of leviticus as law, and ignoring the rest.

i've never seen an argument against that. they usually either ignore it and start raving about something else, or start in with name-calling and saying things like "arbitrary morals." (this is an indirect reference here, i've seen the same tactic before.)

Well, I usually don't because they are lazy, poorly formulated objections and can easily be answered by Google. If someone wants to form an objection the least he take a cursory look at what he's objecting to.

name calling.

Really Obi? I certainly haven't found a single cogent argument as to why Christians cherry-pick from Leviticus. If it's so simple please enlighten us.

Yeah, if you'd like to say that Christians DON'T pick and choose their beliefs depending on the current social season, take a look at history.

Yeah, that's a good way to rationalize self-righteousness with a philosophical position in which "righteous" has no meaning. It must be name calling.

This is stupid. There's no point in making the effort to put forth detailed arguments, because they've all been done before. Nothing changes. It doesn't matter that objections were answered and points were made; after the thread goes away we're all back to zero. I admit when I first joined, my arguments were nothing short of retarded, but my latest takes on this position just go unanswered and it's like they never happened. It would be different if someone had even once put forth a reasonable answer to my objections but it just hasn't happened. Ever. It all comes down to telling me exactly how moral behavior patterns come about, which has nothing to do with weather they have any sort of rational imperative. Obviously they do exist, that's not the issue. The issue is weather they have any rational basis out side of some kind of transcendental imperative.

People think "arbitrary morality" means "situationaly/sociality relevant morality". The simply describes an irrational basis for social interaction. The second invokes some sort of transcendental imperative.

Let me elaborate on what I mean by arbitrary morality. For the sake of argument I am assuming a universe with out the supernatural. For our purposes we have two different categories for actions. One benefits society, one destroys it, and everything we do falls somewhere between the two. The first is generally considered "good" and the other "bad". Or to put in another way, one propagates the curiously low amount of entropy on our speck in space, and the other acts to raise it. "Good" people put the good of society above their own personal compulsions, and people who only act only to directly benefit themselves are considered deranged psychopaths.

Religions rise up as a side effect of our evolving societal nature. They cause members of a society to act in unison toward a common goal, but that goal is not based on a rational mechanical understanding of the universe and is vastly inferior a society of individuals informed by such an understanding. People who cling to a fundamentalist moral system are simply obsolete.

The point I'm getting at is that we're simply stating facts. Different people display different behavior patterns for what ever reason. So what? Entropy rises, entropy falls. The ocean is blue, the grass is green. Some people rape little girls, some people hate gays, some people find cures for cancer. Ideas like unjust, cruel or immoral loose any real meaning. You can arbitrarily attach any label you like to any given behavior pattern. Good and bad fit just as well as yellow and green.



Some probably do. The biblical basis for homosexuality being wrong is more generally found in Romans, but that's beside the point. Old Testament law was comprised of the Civil, Ceremonial and Moral law. The Civil and Ceremonial law was fulfilled with the coming of Christ, Israel no longer being the chosen nation of God. What constitutes Civil, Ceremonial and Moral law is a not so simple however, though most of it is pretty clear if you take the time to study it. The point is, what you call cherry picking, is in fact much more complected.

Dude, thats basically the bible in a nutshell.

Quit listening to your mom.

You're still not answering the cherry picking (or popping, hahaahahaha) question.

His mom hasn't given him an answer yet. LAWL.

Gay thread is still gaaaaaaaay.

haha, guidos

WTF is that and how is it connected to my post?

Rob stop being an ***. You have contributed absolutely nothing to this thread. In fact, you rarely contribute anything on any thread. If you have nothing relevant to say, shut the hell up.

I really don't understand why you guys can't comprehend the Christian viewpoint. Everyone is born into sin, and for some people that means homosexual attraction. Just because they are born with that desire doesn't mean it's right. And like any sinful activity it should be avoided.

Some of us CAN comprehend it, but we disagree with it. I don't believe for a moment that anyone is 'born into sin', but I also don't go around calling you an idiot for thinking that.

We all understand the christian viewpoint.

What many fail to understand is why that gives a christian the right to force their views on other people who are doing them absolutely no harm.

Well Rob, the argument there is quite simply that if you honestly believe you are right then surely you must also believe that you're doing wrong by people if you're not trying to make them see you're right too.

The problems occur when this is done through means that are less than peaceful.

The people who are quite happy to just see the world how they want and not care about how anybody else sees it are probably the worst. Religion may be a load of rubbish but spreading the word about what you believe is a good thing in principle.

I'm sorry, but this is particularly the thing we're talking about. How ignorant and evasive are you? "I don't need to defend my prejudice, Emon said slightly mean things about what I believe."

Yeah, way to dodge the bullet, Sarn.

Don't get the wrong impression. I don't hate you. I rather like you actually. I just think you're terribly misguided and kind of a bigot. What bothers me most isn't even your ridiculous views but the very clear fact that you are unwilling to challenge them. This is evidenced by not only this thread but many others.

You know I'd really enjoy these discussions if they were actual conversations. I don't really want to reread my posts from last night. I think I may have been hallucinating or something, so I'm not sure all the logic will add up right or not. I need to start getting more sleep.\



Except I did, at least for my views anyway. There are people who will pick verses from the old testament with out any regard for the book as a whole, but I'm not going to answer for them. I already told you how it works. If you want to do your best not to understand what I said, and call that avoidance tactics, go ahead. You wanted objective criteria for distinguishing what OT law is kept and not kept and I gave it to you.

Bigot losing debate excuse no. #243

Yeah, that would be the one where I use logic to create a valid defense against your bad argument. What a lame tactic. You must be right- you called me a bigot.

What? Do you even read the words you type? Valid defense against what argument? You haven't even responded to anything I've said, you've been arguing with Mort-Hog. I've made no comments on the origins of morality.

Oh, maybe you missed it. I thought you were talking me, my bad. This is what I was referring to.

I roughly know the line you're talking about. Isn't that the story where God punishes some people by turning them gay? It doesn't seem to say it's wrong, just that it's one of God's toolkit of punishments along with boils, plagues and general smiting. In Leviticus it lists the rules against homosexuality along with an exhaustive list of family members you must never see naked. It then moves on to a mad variety; don't mix your cattle or threads, don't eat from fruiting trees for the first three years, no tattoos, if an engaged slave woman has sex with another man then scourge her and pardon the guy, rules about eating sacrifices etc. And all interspersed with decent rules like love thy neighbour as thyself! Then it moves onto punishments and is the second time that homosexuality comes up and it specifically says gays should be put to death right next to rules about menstruation (which, along with foreskins, the bible seems strangely obsessed with). It's an amazing hodge-podge and plenty of the crazy rules everyone rejects now seem to have nothing to do with civil law or ceremonies.

PS, look at Spook's post time and your edit time, you're complaining that he didn't see your response before you posted it

That's seriously in the Bible?

It sounds like the plot for a bad sitcom.

That's pretty much how I read it. He gives people over to "shameful lusts" for not worshipping him properly.
From Romans 1:18 onwards (the part titled "God's wrath against mankind")
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=52&chapter=1&version=31

You seriously got "God punishes people by turning them gay" out of Romans 1:18-32?

Yes?

That's because it was written by Israelites, and the Israelites identified themselves through circumcision. No other nation in the region practiced it so thoroughly at the time.

Yeah, that's pretty damn clear.

It is! D: