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The only group I hate that you listed are the criminals on death row. I hate them for the pain, suffering, misery. and ultimate violation they caused their victims and the victims loved ones. The murderers deserve to be executed and there is plenty in the bible to support that position.
I don't hate gays at all, I just don't think they should be married. I don't hate illegal immigrants, they are generally good people. it's the law that needs to be enforced. I don't hate blacks. There are lot's of good black folks. I reserve my hatred towards bad individuals, regardless of race.
There are Christians who subscribe to your love everyone, never judge anyone belief system. They are called the Christian left. They are really no different than the secular humanists except for the fact that they believe in God. Both the secularists and the Christian left have led us down the road of moral relativism which is destroying our civility and will eventually be the downfall of western civilization itself.
Because the majority of christians are hypocrites, they go to church on Sunday and backbite their neighbors after the service...
you guys really have to give up these 'views' on not just Christians, everything else you believe about the right. Everything you disagree with is not hate.
Lets try it this way. Your cousin kills 6 people. You feel he should be punished for his crime, but, you still love him, you just feel that he has done is wrong. you hate what he has done, but you love him. that is the way christians are when it comes to gays, they believe the gay person will and should be punished for what he is doing, but, still love him as a person.
Its the old cliche, hate the game, not the player
The problem I find with this, is that if someone professes to love gay people, you'd think they'd take the time to find out what homosexuality actually is.
However, as soon as I hear the words "gay lifestyle" it's obvious the person does not understand sexual orientation, so their opinion to me is worthless because it is based in ignorance. They have bought in to the (usually religious) propaganda that tries it's best to dehumanise gay people by reducing them to just sex acts. Then to compare homosexuals with criminals who have committed some crime...??? How is that "love"? To me, that's just ignorance and prejudice.
Homosexuality is not something that someone "does", it is something that someone "is". When people choose to think of homosexuality "just" as the act of homosexual sex, they are reducing a person's whole life down to just sex. Gay people have families, friends, loving partners, children, careers, hobbies, worries, moments of joy, go shopping, pay mortgages, go to college, work in the community etc... A whole range of different "lifestyles" just as heterosexuals live a whole range of different lifestyles.
How often do heterosexual people look at each other and ONLY think about who they are having sex with and how? Well okay, maybe some heterosexuals who are obsessed with sex, only think of sex when they look at other people, but the majority don't.
When someone says that people "choose" to be homosexual, I think...well okay, I know a lot of pretty smart gay people, but none of them were smart enough to able to "choose", as a fetus, the hormone levels in their mother's uterus that affect their neuro-anatomical structure.
Quote:
Swaab DF (2007) Sexual differentiation of the brain and behavior. Best Pract Res Clin Endocrinol Metab 21:431–444.
Current evidence indicates that sexual differentiation of the human brain occurs during fetal and neonatal development and programs our gender identity— our feeling of being male or female and our sexual orientation as hetero-, homo-, or bisexual. This sexual differentiation process is accompanied by many structural and functional brain differences among these groups. http://www.pnas.org/content/105/30/10273.full.pdf
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(2008) Brain scans have provided the most compelling evidence yet that being gay or straight is a biologically fixed trait.
The scans reveal that in gay people, key structures of the brain governing emotion, mood, anxiety and aggressiveness resemble those in straight people of the opposite sex.
I do find it hypocritical for a religion that has a golden rule of treat others as you wish to be treated to say a person who does just that will not enter heaven because they did not accept jesus as the son of god.
I would wish that someone told me the truth rather than comfort me with a lie. As you know, having been exposed as you say to Christianity for 20 years, it's not the religion that says a person will not enter heaven because they did not accept Jesus - it's Jesus himself who said He is the only way. It's accepting his sacrifice, the laying down of his life, so that our debt of sin is paid. Flashback to the Passover and the blood on the doorpost. That is why he is sometimes referred to as the perfect Lamb of God, and the Passover Lamb. God loves us so much that He came to earth in human form (Immanuel means "God with us"), then died for us so we wouldn't have to.
But you said good people won't go to heaven. So it is more important to accept one blind idea of jesus being born to a virgin and dying for our sins as the son of god than it is to live a good life in which you do the very best you can to treat others properly?
For the spiritual part of you and eternal significance, yes it is more important. The rest of it won't amount to a hill of beans. I know to some that doesn't make any sense. It didn't to me, when I was of a persuasion similar to yours. Nice as it is here in this life for us to be "good" to each other and do good, eternally it has no reward unless you hold the Key to the gates of Heaven = Christ. Therefore, SOME good people will go to heaven, but not all good people (and not all who call themselves Chrisitian will go to heaven either.)
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Originally Posted by domergurl
Fear
You must have missed the earlier post #231. Go on now, catch up.
This comment by Fleet is in regards to the death penalty; I myself am a left-wing liberal who has very mixed feelings about the death penalty. I don't agree that the government is never justified in putting someone to death so, in principle, I don't have a problem with the death penalty in the abstract. However, I do have a huge problem with the way the death penalty is implemented here in the US and if given the choice between maintaining the death penalty as is and banning the death penalty completely I'd support the ban. Now, if the death penalty were reformed I would be more apt to support it. The problem is that it is not applied uniformly; in some states it's relatively easy to get put to death, in others you can't be put to death at all. Furthermore, it's pretty much been proven that the death penalty is much more likely to be used against minorities and the poor; this is egregiously unjust (so your notion that the death penalty is justice is definitely problematic, at least in light of the way the death penalty is handled here). Furthermore, the death penalty is often used when the evidence against the person to be executed is less than conclusive; this should not be the case.
Finally, I think the death penalty should only be used for 'extreme' crimes; it's use should be more restricted than it currently is. In my opinion, the death penalty is only just when used against those who have either committed crimes against humanity (genocide; I believe that it was just to execute Saddam Hussein, I think it would be just to execute Mugabe and Kim Jong-il) or for those who commit pre-meditated murder without any sense of guilt (mostly serial killers or those who murder and torture). In no other case would I support the death penalty.
My biggest problem with your position is that you equate the death penalty to justice without any justification or reservation; you don't mention the problems that I mentioned above and don't offer a reason why you consider it justice. I see it as just because I believe that in committing crimes against humanity you forfeit your own humanity. However, I'm an atheist; it seems to me that the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" seems to indicate that taking a Christian approach to the death penalty necessitates taking an anti-death penalty position. The way you put it also seems so absolute, as if you really honestly believe that you have been so honored as to be endowed with a perfect understanding of what justice entails and that anyone who disagrees just can't see the light, can't see the truth you've been blessed with. I, for one, am not so sure of the legitimacy of my position, I know I believe it but I have doubts regarding my ability to fully perceive the nature of justice. Such doubt allows my thoughts to evolve over the time; absolute faith in your opinion precludes such a possibility and I find that rather... well, arrogant and perhaps even dangerous.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fleet
I don't hate homosexuals. I hate the sin, not the sinner.
As a gay man I clearly take offense to this. I really believe that Christians who take this position are rather hypocritical and have failed to critically think over the issue with an objective mind. For one, the famed passage that seemingly refers to homosexual acts as a sin is in the same book of the Bible (Leviticus) that says eating shell-fish is an abomination against God, that says that lying in the same bed as a woman who is menstruating is an abomination, that says wearing polyblended clothing is a terrible sin. Now, it is extremely hypocritical to pick and choose which passages one will follow; if you are going to call homosexuality a sin based on the Bible then you damn well better feel just as strongly about those who eat oysters, those who wear clothing made out of a mixture of wool and cotton, about being in the same be as your wife when it's that special time of the month. I have yet to hear a Christian give a satisfactory response to this problem; they'd rather pick and choose which verses to follow based on their own deeply held cultural prejudices. They fail to recognize that evangelical fundamentalist Christianity today doesn't even remotely resemble Christianity circa the centuries immediately following the life and death of Jesus Christ. They fail to recognize that their views don't always reflect what the Bible actually says and that much of the far-right views they espouse come from the Old, rather than the somewhat more 'liberal' New, Testament (assuming, of course, that terms like conservative and liberal aren't too anachronistic for this discussion).
Additionally, I've yet to hear a good reason given by a Christian for why homosexuality is bad and immoral other than because the Bible says so. My problem is that relying on a book for moral advice shows a lack of critical thought or real morality. If you don't do something for no other reason than because a book told you are you really moral? If you act 'morally' only out of fear of eternal damnation, are you really moral or are you just scared and self-interested? Why is homosexuality bad? What are the criteria by which something becomes immoral? Simply saying that its because God says so isn't a good response, shouldn't morality be based on some sort of reasoning?
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Originally Posted by Fleet
I don't hate them but I don't like those who break our immigration laws.
What would you do in their situation? You speak of justice but is it just that so many people in this world suffer terribly simply because they were unfortunate enough to be born in the wrong country? You know, 1 billion people live on less than a dollar a day and another billion live on less than 2 dollars a day. Approximately 900 million people, most of whom are women and children, are chronically malnourished. It's no wonder that these people are willing to go to extremes to secure better lives for themselves and their families. If you want to talk about justice then where is the concern for these individuals; isn't it unjust to prohibit these people from having an easier time coming to places like the US to improve their lives? Also, I'm guessing you find many of our laws 'unjust' due to them being in contradiction to your own religious beliefs so you probably don't mind people breaking some of those laws. I may be wrong, but if that's the case then again you are picking and choosing which laws you want to follow. If this is the case then you are either being hypocritical or your problem really isn't that they are breaking the law, it must be something else.
Why do so many c-d posters "bait" with why does group "x" always, never, hate, etc...... and why do people respond to drivel based on a false assumption?
1) People are imperfect including those of any religious faiths.
2) As works in progress the best we can do is to strive to do better by the precepts of our faith or that which guides us.
3)Those without faith will with boring predicatbility attact those with faith for being less than perfect.
4) Those with faith will continue to bring the word of God or the god their faith worships to those without faith because it is the responsibility they are charged with as followers.
So, why the attacks? Are those who attack the faith of peaceful followers of any faith really that threatened or unconfident in their own positions?
Why do so many c-d posters "bait" with why does group "x" always, never, hate, etc...... and why do people respond to drivel based on a false assumption?
So very true; I have noticed a major tendency for people to generalize far more than they should on these boards. Too many individuals speak of large groups of people (ie. liberals, conservatives, gays, blacks, etc) as if they were homogenous, unitary actors. Such thinking is not only incredibly simplistic and reductionist, it also completely fails to recognize the extraordinary amount of diversity of thought, motives and the like within these groups. For example, there are plenty of people who may actually agree on various issues but disagree strongly as to why they feel that way. I, for one, am a liberal who supports the war in Afghanistan meaning that I'm in agreement with a lot of conservatives. However, I support Afghanistan for very different reasons than many Republicans. People really need to be careful in their generalizations.
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