-DM-

LE 18.22: You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.

LE 20.13: If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.

RO 1.26-27, 32: Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them.

1CO 6.9: I wrote unto you in my epistle to have no company with fornicators.

CN 3.5: Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

1TI 1.9-10: The law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, immoral persons, sodomites, kidnapers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine,

JU 7: Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

--

It doesn't sound to me as if the Biblical view of homosexuality (included in the more general category of fornication) places it in the "trivial" category or that the prohibitions are confined to one verse.

-Don-

braces_for_impact

I think it's important to note that the punishment/reward for being a thiest, specifically, for being a believer in the predominant religion in your geographic area is a social function as well; the punishment/reward is not only tied to the supernatural realm of the afterlife.

Tercel said:
In regards to this statement, I point out that many people can be kind, help those in need, and be unselfish without having to pray, go to church or to bible study. If this is the case, then perhaps the prayer, bible study and church are unecessary? Perhaps one reason people do these things are from my first paragraph above, which indicate social reasons. This ties into a statement that was made earlier in this thread, where someone said you cannot turn belief on and off like a faucet. I certainly cannot force myself to believe, this is true. I revel in my own honesty to much for that. But in living my life, I too attempt to be kind, unselfish and to help my fellow man. As I pointed out earlier, the rest seems so much "mumbo jumbo". What reason is there to study a book, gather in a building, etc?

It seems to me that some simply have a higher standard for what can be accepted as evidence of a god revealing himself to someone.

Littledrummerboy

Don, no last word is needed, what we have here are two opinions that cannot reach agreement...such is life. Thanks for the debate.

Stephen :notworthy

Wyrdsmyth

AT PASCAL'S HORSETRACK...

Look at them line up at the gate!

I'd like to place a hundred bucks on "I am who I am," 80 bucks on "Immaculate Son," fifty bucks on "Allah's Prophet," and... what the hell, put 10 bucks each on "Aegis of Zeus," "Ishtar's Mare" and "Amon-Ra."

No, I don't want to bet on "Darwin's Child"... I don't think he even has a prayer.

BigBadShrubbery

When it comes to Pascal's Wager, I've always loved this quote:

This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts..."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

Dr. Retard

Certain parts of Christian moral codes look evil to me. That seems to provide me with a good reason not to 'adopt' Christianity on a lark.

Alternatively, I can 'adopt' bare-bones theism, which just says that God's morally perfect, without filling in the details. But then, so far as I can tell, God wouldn't harm me for my disbelief. So why bother?

MollyMac

Thank you for your response, Tercel.
Wow. How do I answer this as simply and succintly as possible without derailing this thread? Perhaps a summary of my deconversion at age 13: Belief (1) God was the creator of the universe and everything in it. Then why is so much in it so bad, ugly and imperfect. Belief (2)God loves us Then why does he allow such horrible stuff to happen to some of us Belief (3) We have to love and worship God. Why? Belief (4) He answers our prayers No he doesn't! Belief (5) God made Heaven and Hell and sends sinners to Hell. He loves the sinner but not the sin.
If he's such a nice God, why did he make Hell? If he loves sinners, why does he send them to Hell. Why did he make sinners - homosexuals for example - in the first place? etc etc. etc. Finally, if God wants me to believe in him - let alone worship him - why doesn't he reveal himself to me?

I have developed some more sophisticated objections since age 13 but generally find they are irrelevant since none of the basic questions I asked above have been satisfactorily answered.

I'm struck by part of your description of living your life as if you believed:
That's exactly how I live my life. So will God - if he exists - let me into Heaven? If not, and if the reason why not, is that I find it impossible to believe in him for all the reasons above and then some, then he's not such nice bloke is he?

Tercel

Hi MollyMac,

Those are some hard questions, which I think everyone faces at one time or another. A major criticism I have with modern churches is that they tend to avoid addressing these questions and so believers are left to struggle with them on their own.

I believe God is certainly the ultimate creator of the universe... but I don't know I agree that he created "everything in it". Did God create my house? My computer? Guns? Wars? I don't think so. I think God created the universe 15 billion or so years ago and set up controlling laws to guide it, perhaps interfering now and then to guide it approximately as he wanted. But most of our current situation seems to me to be a combination of the natural workings of the universe, and humankind's actions over the past 40,000 years. There seems little reason to think that God actively dictates each point in time according to his will, rather I think he leaves it up to us to make the world as we choose. Of course this is not to say that God never interferes: but Christianity also teaches that there are malevolent spritual beings who also interfere. Hence I don't really see any reason to expect the world to be perfect.

We learn from suffering: We can understand what it is to suffer and to be in need, we can grow in love and compassion as we help those who suffer. For some, life is character growth. For others, it's just them being their nasty selves and God's giving them time to repent. One day, the time will run out and God will stop the suffering. It is only temporary and finite remember.

God first loved us. The natural way to respond to his love, if we are truly loving beings, is to love him back. If God is indeed the greatest almightiest being, if he is God then it is only reasonable to acknowledge that and be in awe of him, which is what worship is.

That depends. If I pray for a mountain of money to appear beside me, I think it's just a little unlikely it'll happen. If I pray for God to help me be a more loving person, I'm pretty sure he'd help. God, I think, is far more interested in working on people's characters, than giving out material freebies: People are eternal, material stuff ain't.

Not all Christians would agree. Some would say that Heaven and Hell are not actual places, some would say that you send yourself to them not God. I (taking the Eastern Orthodox) line: would say that God loves everyone and anyone who is a loving person, full of light and goodness, will respond to that love with joy and happiness and will be happy being "one" with each other as a fellowship of likeminded people who totally understand and love each other and who know everything all the others have done; I would say that to those who are full of hatred and fear and evil and darkness, God's love will seem like a burning fire, they will hate his love and not want anyone else to know their hearts or to break through the shell of privacy they have constructed, they will flee from everyone into what darkness they can find to cower in. Maybe, God will have mercy on them an annihilate them (though both the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox teach that this won't happen) or maybe He will not as He loves them. It is God's universal revelation of his love for all that is on of the things I believe begins heaven and hell to answer your question of why can't he reveal himself completely now.

I doubt God is desperately wanting people to believe in Him. You'll find out after you die anyway. What God is more interested in is that people love each other and do good to each other.

Of course. It's you that you need to be worried about, not God. As the Eastern Orthodox theologian Dr Kalomaris put it:
"God is always loving, He is always pardoning, He is always a friend of man. However, that which never pardons, that which never is a friend of man, is sin, and we never think of it as we ought to. Sin destroys our soul independently of the love of God, because sin is precisely the road which leads away from God, because sin erects a wall which separates us from God, because sin destroys our spiritual eyes and makes us unable to see God's light. The demons want to make us always think of our salvation or our eternal spiritual death in juridical terms. They want us to think that either salvation or eternal death is a question of God's decision. No, my brothers, we must awaken in order not to be lost. Our salvation or our eternal death is not a question of God's decision, but it is a question of our decision, it is a question of the decision of our free will which God respects absolutely. Let us not fool ourselves with confidence in God's love. The danger does not come from God; it comes from our own self." -From here

Tercel

That makes 2 verses in parallel chapters of Leviticus, which is what I was referring to earlier.

The way you've appended vs 32 makes this look clearer than it really is. I have also seen it alleged that what Paul was referring to here was not the same as homosexuality as we would understand it today: It is certainly not clear whether the "shameless acts with men" refers to standard homosexuality or some extra perversion. All that it clearly says is that homosexuality is "unnatural" which is probably a statement acceptable by everyone if it is taken to simply mean that it is not the norm. But whether Paul means that "homosexuality is an example of how the world is a fallen world" or that "the people who practice homosexuality are particularly bad, evil, sinners" is not clear.

Frankly, I would like to know whether homosexuality is okay or sinful or extremely sinful. But I don't think this passage tells us, and even if it did I would not necessarily trust Paul's opinion, and I don't trust what Leviticus has to say.

Says you. That's not what fornication means in my dictionary. Care to prove that this is what the writers had in mind?

Neither of these verses are clear as to whether it was the actual homosexuality of the Sodomites, or the way they apparently wanted to have sex with everyone to the point where they would rape them.

Richard Carrier

I mean that Christianity persuades adherence to all the things you say in exchange for salvation. If you got no salvation from being a Christian, would you be one? If the answer is no, then your religion is ultimately opportunistic--you put up with what you must to gain the greatest reward. Note that I do not regard this as necessarily a mark against the religion in all cases, but it can certainly tend to be.

However, it may be that your answer, or at least the answer of some Christians, is yes--that even if they ceased to exist upon dying (and got no worldly benefits, either), they would still obey God. But this seems to eliminate the entire distinction of Christianity as different from, say, Islam or Judaism or something else. For if you would obey God even without a promise of salvation or any other benefit, what is the point of the central Chrisyian kerygma, "Believe and be saved"? This sure looks like opportunism being exploited to me. After all, the Gospel is not "Obey no matter what."

It seems to me that the demand for obedience is everywhere in the Bible inseparable from the promise of salvation and reward (and the converse threat of punishment). If this is not what Christianity is all about, it seems strange that this is what Christianity is said to be about, everywhere, in the Bible and out. At any rate, even if you disagree, you should be able to understand why I said Christianity "seemed" opportunistic. For even if it isn't, it certainly does seem so.