| Author |
|
William McCormick
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 February 2006
Posts: 3297
|
| Posted: 16 July 2010 at 4:42am | IP Logged | 1
|
|
|
I expect JB to chastise your inaccurate use of the word "actually". Jesus didn't say anything about homosexuality, as far as I remember**************** Oh! Forgive me! Only the Bible says you should kill gays. Really guys? Someone uses Jesus to say that we should love and respect gays. I point out that it goes against the Bible, and all you can do is nitpick because I said that it was the word of Jesus. So answer me this, did Jesus ever say we should ignore the word of God? And didn't God, according to the Bible, say that gays are an abomination and should be put to death? Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me if God said it, then by extension Jesus agreed with it.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
William McCormick
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 February 2006
Posts: 3297
|
| Posted: 16 July 2010 at 4:45am | IP Logged | 2
|
|
|
And mind you, homosexuality isn't the only thing that is Outlawed in the Bible, but for some reason it does seem to be the one thing that many people seem to remember.************* Never said it was the only thing that Bible outlawed. But since we are specifically talking about homosexuality here, why would I bring up anything else?
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134104
|
| Posted: 16 July 2010 at 4:49am | IP Logged | 3
|
|
|
Black, White, and Asian refers to race, and there is clearly a difference between race and sexual orientation, so the comparison may be idiot-proof, but still slightly flawed…•• Not if we assume, as I do here, that sexual orientation is genetic. People are Black because of their genes. White because of their genes. Asian because of their genes. And Gay because of their genes.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12856
|
| Posted: 16 July 2010 at 4:53am | IP Logged | 4
|
|
|
The Greek Orthodox Church is one such example. Sometimes, the teachings of the Church come to contradict what Jesus tells us through the gospels. But, since many of those attending the church are of older age, lower social status and in many cases lack education, they can't form their own opinion, they just take for granted what is being told by the Church. In the vast majority of cases, the Church's teachings if followed will lead them into being better people.
****
Of course, Thanos knows firsthand very well what he's talking about. But my own experience, being from a Greek Jewish family who has known Greek Christians all his life and who has visited Greece months at a time for almost a dozen extended visits and who has studied Greek Christianity and read both its most important religious sources and the NT as well in the original language, witnesses that Greeks indeed have an incredibly small level of practical bibliolatry.
The NT and even many prominent Church Fathers expressed some dramatically anti-Jewish ideas and sentiments -- and yet the overall teaching and practice of the Greek Church and its adherents has been to reject anti-Semitic beliefs and actions by contextualizing what could be their religious sources, even if the NT itself, in historical, cultural, social, political, and even economic terms.
Now, contrary to both (part of) the ancient history and certainly the popular image of antiquity, cultural homosexual practices in certain Greek areas began to diminish and even cease before the Greeks were Christianized and since then and certainly now you'd be hard-pressed to find an ethnicity that more prizes heterosexual machismo. Yet, certain Greek areas, like Mykonos, remain famous all over the world as a place where gays are welcome. This is not to say that Greece in general is the most open nation to homosexuals, either politically or socially, but it also does not foment a culture of rank hatred of and countenancing violence against gays either.
Recently the issue of homosexual civil unions has come up in Greece and the Ministry of Justice has decided to press for same-sex unions. The formal Christian reaction has been mixed. Bishop Anthimos of Thessaloniki said that such a decision would degrade the human species and "make them equal to animals." However, Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens has come out [no pun intended!] firmly that the Church "should be more open-minded and less moralistic." Guess which man reads the bible more literally!
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Ted Pugliese
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 05 December 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 7985
|
| Posted: 16 July 2010 at 4:55am | IP Logged | 5
|
|
|
William, my point is that I believe the new Testament supercedes the Old Testament. All those rules, including the one(s) against homosexulatity, are replaced by two: Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. That is Christianity for me. Therefore I would not have any reason as a Christian to hate gays, because I do not want them hating me. However, I have no toehr reason to hate guys or any other protected category of people because we are all the same anyway and we are allpeople. I was trying to do what Brad said. Tell other Christians that Jesus gives you no reason to hate homosexuals, and that 'actually' he tells you to love them.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134104
|
| Posted: 16 July 2010 at 4:59am | IP Logged | 6
|
|
|
So answer me this, did Jesus ever say we should ignore the word of God? And didn't God, according to the Bible, say that gays are an abomination and should be put to death? Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me if God said it, then by extension Jesus agreed with it.•• When asked directly if he had come to overturn the Law (ie, the OT), Jesus said no, and that not one word of it would be undone until all was "fulfilled". (Matthew 5:18). Of course, this only launches the inevitable debate as to which parts of the Bible, OT and NT, are to be taken literally, which are mistranslations, which are truly the "word of God", etc. Currently reading Bard Ehrman's latest, "Lost Christianities", which describes how much STUFF was floating around, fully believed to be Christian teachings, before everything was arbitrarily codified around 400CE. Underscores, really, how absurd it is to embrace ANY of it as "canon".
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
William McCormick
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 February 2006
Posts: 3297
|
| Posted: 16 July 2010 at 5:00am | IP Logged | 7
|
|
|
William, my point is that I believe the new Testament supercedes the Old Testament. All those rules, including the one(s) against homosexulatity, are replaced by two: Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.***************** I get where your coming from Ted, I just disagree with you. In my eyes the only Bible that matters is the Old Testament. The New Testament just seems to me like it was cooked up by religion to soften the blow of how hateful Christianity really was. I don't claim to be a Bible scholar, but how can you just act like the Old Testament doesn't exist? If it truly is the word of God, doesn't that mean that you're ignoring his teachings, no matter how vile they may be.
Edited by William McCormick on 16 July 2010 at 5:01am
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Ted Pugliese
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 05 December 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 7985
|
| Posted: 16 July 2010 at 5:03am | IP Logged | 8
|
|
|
Black, White, and Asian refers to race, and there is clearly a difference between race and sexual orientation, so the comparison may be idiot-proof, but still slightly flawed… •• Not if we assume, as I do here, that sexual orientation is genetic. People are Black because of their genes. White because of their genes. Asian because of their genes. And Gay because of their genes. ** But if they are pedophiles because of their genes too, then 'it's genetic' doesn't make it right. Of course there is nothing wrong with being Gay, White, Black, Asian, etc. Simply being a person makes it right. It was the comment about the disability with the genetic defect tone connected to your comparison (by someone else) that prompted my response, suggesting that the same idiots you were trying to proof your comparison against could still look to other genetic behaviors as an excuse to still view homosexuality as a birth defect or genetic abnormality. I hope those idiots that do, at least view race differently. But I'm sure I'm worng. Hate is ugly.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
|
| |
Ted Pugliese
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 05 December 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 7985
|
| Posted: 16 July 2010 at 5:13am | IP Logged | 9
|
|
|
JB and William are touching on, in my opinion, one of the bigger reasons to not believe. It simply all doesn't fit together. It's a bunch od bad ret-cons and such. But I'm ok with that. And I am free to believe that and you are free not to believe that,and we shoudl all respect each others beliefs and thr fredom to have them. Doesn't mean we can't diagree though and discuss those disagreements. IMO, churches like Jehovah's Witnesses work to hard to make the two books match up. They keep looking to use OT clues to figure out when Jesus was coming, even though Jesus himself said it's not for us to know. This, like the homosexuallity contradiction, means you have to believe one view or the other or neither. I chose the NT. I tend to look at it like if the Old Testament were good as it was, then God would not have sent his Son to make corrections. Regardless of divinity and faith, HIs two rules make sense to me. It doesn't matter who you are or what you believe, the wisdom in Love your neighbor as yourself is huge. It's why I always say, "Be good to each other."
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
|
| |
Brad Krawchuk
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 June 2006
Location: Canada
Posts: 5814
|
| Posted: 16 July 2010 at 5:49am | IP Logged | 10
|
|
|
I get where your coming from Ted, I just disagree with you. In my eyes the only Bible that matters is the Old Testament. The New Testament just seems to me like it was cooked up by religion to soften the blow of how hateful Christianity really was. --- It wasn't "Christianity" before the New Testament. It was Judaism. Without the New Testament, there is literally no Christ. He's only in the New Testament. In fact, he's quite literally only in the New Testament, since other historical documents and records of the time don't mention him at all. You can't have followers of Christ - Christians - unless they get Christ from the New Testament. If in your eyes the only Bible that matters is the Old Testament, you are not a Christian. You CAN'T be. There's no Christ to follow there!
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134104
|
| Posted: 16 July 2010 at 6:02am | IP Logged | 11
|
|
|
But if they are pedophiles because of their genes too, then 'it's genetic' doesn't make it right. Of course there is nothing wrong with being Gay, White, Black, Asian, etc. Simply being a person makes it right.•• Nobody is arguing that a genetic predisposition makes something "right". People can have genetic predispositions to all kinds of things. Society determines if they are "right" or "wrong".
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12856
|
| Posted: 16 July 2010 at 6:19am | IP Logged | 12
|
|
|
You can't have followers of Christ - Christians - unless they get Christ from the New Testament. If in your eyes the only Bible that matters is the Old Testament, you are not a Christian. You CAN'T be. There's no Christ to follow there!
****
Except that Christians have maintained from their beginning that Christ is in the OT. You'd have to be blind not to see!
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
|
|
Topic Closed)
