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Hope you didn't spend too much time looking for that.
According to most things I've read over the years, Sodom was a small town of roughly 700-1000 people (there is no actual number because there is no solid proof the town even existed). Let's presume that half of them were male. According to the Bible, "the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter" (Genesis 19:4).
That's a lot of horny homosexual/bisexual males. A lot more than the 3-5 in your link.
Rev. Graham is correct. The United States is easily as bad as Sodom and Gomorrah, and I would be the least surprised to see God's judgment fall upon it in a swift one day downfall. I have no idea how it would happen, but a financial meltdown would not be hard to envision at all, especially considering the most popular god in the USA is money. Of course, sexual immorality and lots of other sins are quite prevalent, and our govt. certainly is quite corrupt. But don't expect fire and brimstone.
Daniel 2:44 44 And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.
Yeah I agree, this country is so horrible now that those darn homosexuals are starting to be treated equally under the law.
We should go back to the good-ole days when our country was better off morally: like when we had slavery, when racism ran rampant, when we would lynch people, when women were treated far worse than men, when witches were burned at the stake, when we massacred the indigenous peoples. Those were truly the moral glory days.
Yeah I agree, this country is so horrible now that those darn homosexuals are starting to be treated equally under the law.
We should go back to the good-ole days when our country was better off morally: like when we had slavery, when racism ran rampant, when we would lynch people, when women were treated far worse than men, when witches were burned at the stake, when we massacred the indigenous peoples. Those were truly the moral glory days.
Yes, today or in the past when men do what they want it is bad. Nothing changes. Man's beliefs in what is right/wrong or good/bad keep changing.
I don't know of any psychologically messed up people who were raised in agnostic or atheistic homes. They usually seem to be religious in some way.
if you don't know any that means you don't know. I don't think we should be commenting on things we don't know about. Like children are mentally abused because of religion only. You aint from a city are ya. thousands are abused without religion.
I see anti-religion means having a component of "seeing religion as the cause" and not people. Thanks ozzy that helps to spot the difference between just atheist (nonbelief in a type of god) or anti-religion (hate). They are distinctly different. one of them has "reasonable stances" and the other just doesn't care about such things as "reasonable".
For those who mock my comments about the present moral condition of our country, just imagine something for a minute. Imagine what our cities would look like today if all the laws concerning just sex were gone. Would there be more prostitutes on the streets, more strip bars, brothels etc? Just take what exists on the internet and put it on city streets, and that gives a pretty good picture.
And for those who think there isn't much forced rape of men in this world, just check out the statistics on the number of men raped in prisons every year.
Reverend Billy Graham, arguably the most well-known and respected evangelical preacher of the last 50 years, said in a recently published commentary that America was “founded by men who believed in prayer” and that prayer can turn “the tide of history,” adding that while “America is just as wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah” and deserves “the judgment of God,” this judgment can be lessened through prayer.
Of course Billy Graham would say such things. His whole life has been about making people turn to god out of terror for his wrath, rather than convince them to choose morality in their rational self-interest. Judgment is imminent; flee the wrath to come *yawn*
You can cherry pick however you want with this kind of thing. Violent crime, for instance, has been on the decline in our cities for decades now (interestingly, since a few years after lead-based paint was made illegal, though we can't be sure that's the sole cause -- but low-grade lead poisoning DOES make people violent and crazy). Increasing percentages of the populace have higher education. Some forms of cancer have been cured or at least defanged and rendered treatable. We have a more or less permanent human presence in space. Inequality and injustice based on otherizing people is clearly on the decline. Some of the things on this list are the very things, expressed in more disparaging terms, that many Christians decry as symptoms of decilne; others are things that even they would embrace.
Graham's trope of imminent divine judgment is timeless because every generation is uncomfortable with some of the changes from what they knew as children and young people, and is convinced everything's going to hell in a handbasket. Too bad he's not paying attention to real threats such as corruption in the financial industry. I fear the consequences of that far more than a shaming-blaming deity's hissy fit.
For those who mock my comments about the present moral condition of our country, just imagine something for a minute. Imagine what our cities would look like today if all the laws concerning just sex were gone. Would there be more prostitutes on the streets, more strip bars, brothels etc? Just take what exists on the internet and put it on city streets, and that gives a pretty good picture.
And for those who think there isn't much forced rape of men in this world, just check out the statistics on the number of men raped in prisons every year.
Is Internet porn a symptom of moral decline -- or a symptom of artificial repression of healthier ways of expressing human sexuality? Ironically, your desire to control the bedroom behavior of people and their innermost thoughts and desires is likely creating the very monster you point to as evidence that you should be doing MORE of what you're doing. If you want people to obsess about something, forbid it and make it edgy and mysterious. Go ahead. Keep it up. If I were in the porn industry, I'd be cheering you on.
Edit: coincidentally this came up on one of my internet feeds just now, and illustrates my point:
In concluding the study’s Abstract, the Canadian researchers offer "the paradoxical hypothesis that a greater preponderance of right-leaning ideologies is associated with greater preoccupation with sexual content in private internet activity."
While one can only speculate as to why there is such a strong connection between the consumption of porn and professed conservative Christian values, multiple reports indicate similar findings concerning the Bible Belt’s apparent voracious appetite for pornography.
Last edited by mordant; 10-23-2014 at 08:26 AM..
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that helps to spot the difference between just atheist (nonbelief in a type of god) or anti-religion (hate). They are distinctly different. one of them has "reasonable stances" and the other just doesn't care about such things as "reasonable".
