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That is only your opinion since you can not prove to me that the Bible was not divined inspired and directed by God.
I don't have to. It is your assertion so it's up to you to prove it true. Until you do, I have every reason to believe it is false -- especially considering how crazy the assertion actually is.
So I'll go with Occam's Razor on this one. It is MUCH more likely that a group of mostly anonymous authors wrote the Bible and used "God" as their mouthpiece to legitimize their authority than it is that an all-powerful yet invisible supreme being with magical powers "inspired" a group of mostly anonymous authors to write down kinda-sorta in quasi form what God wants and expects. (God could have simply poofed the book into existence saying EXACTLY what he wanted to say instead of all of this "interpretation" garbage).
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
The death and sacrifice of Christ did away with much of the legalism found in the OT which is the bulk of your examples here.
Fundamentalists don't really worship Christ. They worship Yahweh of the Old Testament. When North Carolina was getting ready to pass it's anti-gay amendment, called Amendment One, I was knee-deep in that fight. I went to rallies in Raleigh, Greensboro, and Asheville. Guess what: The politicians there, who had absolutely NO business quoting the Bible to justify a secular law, read from Deuteronomy and Leviticus. And they did so consistently including the televised debates I watched in a few other states.
In fact, if not for the whole "homosexuals are an abomination" crap, the fundamentalists wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on if all they had was the New Testament. They would have a difficult time singling out gays without also coming down on all the other "sexual immorality" that is considered both legal AND "normal."
But thanks to the Old Testament, fundamentalists revealed themselves to be disgustingly immoral given that wife beaters, pedophiles, spouse murderers, and even prisoners in jail for felonies (including sexual predators) are allowed to marry. Just not gays. It just goes to show all of us what's important to you and wow did the fundamentalists ever slither out from beneath their rocks to show how cold blooded they are.
If Christ mattered a whit to them, homosexuality wouldn't be such a hot-button, agenda-topping, conniption-causing, foam-at-the-mouth issue. But it is. As I said, that says a lot of unpleasant things about the fundamentalist mentality. Apparently, with all of their Deuteronomy and Leviticus quoting, the fact that Christ's crucifixion absolved us of those Old Testament "legalities" doesn't seem to matter to them.
Finally, as one last proof-positive that fundamentalists are NOT Christ worshipers is the status of the South, the so-called Bible Belt. I'm stuck here in Pennsylvania. I don't want to be here. But I have to be because I could get Medicaid here, and it's the only way I can even see specialists who can help me get on disability. In North Carolina, of course, they opted not to expand Medicaid to help those of us who are extremely vulnerable -- like myself -- because we cannot generate our own incomes. In other words, despite Christ's implicit instructions on being kind to the poor, the Bible Belt threw us all under the bus.
If the fundamentalists and the Baptist fanatics gave a damn about what Christ said, the southern states would be a shining beacon of tolerance, compassion, and kindness for those in need. Except it's just the opposite. The south is a snake pit of bigotry, racism, selfishness, and hatred of the poor. The southern states have consistently voted against every single bill or constitutional amendment that promoted any kind of equality for anyone but conservative Christian white males and has consistently voted to slash spending on, or eliminate entirely, programs that help the poor.
So much for Christ, I guess.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
As for man's idea of morality, we've got it wrong a lot more times than right.
Yeah, and every time we've gotten it wrong, it's because we were trying too hard to follow the Bible.
And another thing -- I certainly can't take YOUR word for it considering we don't see eye-to-eye on any but the most basic of moral issues. I want people to have the freedom to choose the path of their own lives while you want to keep passing fascistic laws that will eliminate choices and railroad everyone into a fundamentalist straitjacket. Therefore, if you believe we've gotten it "wrong" more often than we've gotten it right, it means we're doing well and our morality is in ascendance.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
You look at past generations and most likely generalize them as all backwards and awful people. Oh but we are now the epitome of morality! No most likely, the future generation a century for now will look back at our civil rights laws as archaic and backwards.
Most likely, future generations will look back at our time and see YOU as being backwards. You and your fundamentalist religion. The only criticism they'll have is that we didn't do enough; we didn't take it far enough. They'll see YOU as the obstacle and they'll sigh and shake their heads thinking, "How could anyone believe such nonsense when so much knowledge was freely available right at their desks?"
The reason why I know you're wrong is that history has never looked back on laws that promoted equality and which granted rights and later considered them mistakes -- much less "archaic and backwards." In fact, the ONLY time we've looked back on past laws and saw them as being mistakes is when religion got involved. For instance, one of the biggest legal blunders in American history -- Prohibition -- was directly caused by a fundamentalist group called the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Thanks to them, we now have organized crime syndicates. I'm sure Al Capone and Lucky Luciano would give you fundamentalists a big juicy kiss if they were still alive. Of course, the Amendment banning alcohol was repealed later because everyone realized what a boneheaded mistake that had been.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Are you saying our leaders of past generations simply had different brains so they couldn't achieve the great standard of logic and morality that we have today?
*sigh* I really hate having to explain things like this.
No, our leaders of past generations had the same brains and the same capacity to learn and understand as we do today. If you plucked an infant Israelite right off Mount Sinai as he was waiting for Moses and brought him to our time and educated him with our knowledge, he could be a nuclear physicist or neurosurgeon or anything we could do. No, it's not about innate intelligence.
It's about what was known and understood at the time. What makes humanity the dominant species is our ability to pass on knowledge from one generation to the next. We don't have to keep inventing the wheel and harnessing fire every time a new generation of people grows up.
Therefore, our knowledge generally increases -- excepting the Dark Ages when little of Roman knowledge was passed on. At any rate, leaders of past generations simply didn't know as much as we know today. Even geniuses of their time would have been paralyzed by fear, superstition, angry gods, and the vast number of unknowns that existed in their worlds. An Israelite Einstein wouldn't know any more about what causes lightning than the dumbest person in the group -- they would both be inclined to explain a thunderstorm in terms of the supernatural and the direct powers of an angry god.
Fortunately, we know what a thunderstorm is, so we don't have to scream and run to our temples in order to appease a god. Now our only fear is getting struck by lightning, flash flooding, and having our outdoor plans ruined. But no rational, modern American still thinks that every thunderstorm is God telling them he's angry about gays, liberals, feminists, the ACLU, and the rest of the "usual suspects."
We learn and we grow as a collective, some areas of the world learn and grow faster than others -- as the sectarian and religious violence in the Middle East certainly proves.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
OTOH, if their brains were the same, why did they outlaw homosexuality? Even just a few years ago, most of our society did not support gay marriage.
Did we suddenly gain more morality in our brains over such a short time?
We gained more knowledge. We discovered more about the human brain in the last 10 years than we discovered in the previous 6,000. Instead of teaching intolerance and hatred, we began teaching tolerance, understanding and, if nothing else, how to accept people who are different. In today's world, with everything we know, a person would have to make an active effort to remain a racist, a bigot, and to hold on to conclusively disproved stereotypes. It's just too bad fundamentalism continues to maintain a divisive, destructive worldview as the rest of the world tries to evolve.
Religious fanaticism has ALWAYS been the biggest roadblock to progress. Even wars are more helpful given the amount of technology wars produce. As I keep saying, look to places in the Middle East -- not a day goes by when a bomb doesn't go off, killing members of some rival religious sect. That's fundamentalism without the rule of law. The Islamic world was once the most advanced culture on the planet. Everything from algebra (an Arabic word itself Al-Gebra) to the names of the stars in the sky came from the Muslims. Then the fundamentalists came to power and now you can see how some places are still living in the Stone Age with hyper-strict fundamentalist religious laws. Part of the reason why Iran experienced a revolution in 1979 is because they were against modernization and scientific advancement. That's fundamentalism for you. And it's why I'm an enemy of fundamentalism.
You can't prove that the Bible was inspired by a real god either, and not just copies of previous stories and gods of other cultures.
And I can't prove that the sun exists to a sun denier. They might say it's an illusion in the sky. Point is that
there is plenty of evidence out there that God is real, but the evidence is only applicable to those who don't harbor great bitterness against Christianity.
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Originally Posted by caverunner17
Homosexuality was never "outlawed". It just was never legalized, until last month. Just because something isn't written as legal, doesn't mean it's illegal. Like driving cars. When the first cars were coming around 100+ years ago, there weren't such things as driving ages or speed limits or anything. That didn't make the first people to drive cars "outlaws" and participating in illegal activities.
Sodomy laws once existed in the US.
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Originally Posted by caverunner17
I feel like someone needs to take a drill to your skull and insert into your brain the simple fact that HUMAN = HUMAN
Have no idea how baking a cake for a gay person would be contrary to christianity. I can see not making a cake due to an obscene object or nasty verse being placed on the cake. This would then apply to any person requesting said cake. So does this mean if any one of us were to be invited to a gay shower or to a wedding and we declined we also would be breaking some law? This country is making my head hurt!
Her statement sounds to me like she is saying any justification for discrimination using the Bible is wrong. Such a position would only be achieved if you believe that man can come up with a more moral or just law than God's laws in the Bible.
No Jeff . . . It just means that the Bible's laws are irrelevant to society. They only apply to you and your personal life.
And I can't prove that the sun exists to a sun denier. They might say it's an illusion in the sky. Point is that
there is plenty of evidence out there that God is real, but the evidence is only applicable to those who don't harbor great bitterness against Christianity.
Sodomy laws once existed in the US.
Pointless and condescending as USUAL.
Then stop being a jerk who likes to categorize people based on what they do in their personal time. Fundies are a disease to our society, keeping us in the dark ages. Thankfully, the youth see through the BS and don't believe anymore. And you know what. SSM is a huge reason for this. The conservatives are the ones pushing the youth away. Your rigidity and failure to adapt and progress with the rest of the world only makes you outcasts. It's only a matter of time before people like you and my great-aunt who was born and lived in the south, who to her death called all black folks "animals" and "ni**ers" die out and we can finally move on with our lives.
You can prove the sun exists. I can see it. Science proves the hypothesis of the sun. I can't see god, Jesus, Allah, Ra, Thor, Jupiter, or Hermes. Science can't prove the existence of a god, nor are the stories of Christianity or Judaism even original to their religion.
As far as Sodomy laws.... Oral sex was outlawed too in some states, even among married couples. And un-married sex was outlawed in others. Clearly, those laws were just "on the books" and not enforced. Jeff -- I don't know if you're married or not. But if you had a blow job at some point in your life, you broke the Sodomy laws. The act of homosexual intercourse may have been outlawed, but the legal union of SSM wasn't outlawed.
Then stop being a jerk who likes to categorize people based on what they do in their personal time. Fundies are a disease to our society, keeping us in the dark ages. Thankfully, the youth see through the BS and don't believe anymore. And you know what. SSM is a huge reason for this. The conservatives are the ones pushing the youth away. Your rigidity and failure to adapt and progress with the rest of the world only makes you outcasts. It's only a matter of time before people like you and my great-aunt who was born and lived in the south, who to her death called all black folks "animals" and "ni**ers" die out and we can finally move on with our lives.
Wait, you are the one being condescending yet I'm the jerk? The only thing I'm doing here is voicing my right to express my belief that homosexuality is a sin and SSM is wrong. Yet hypocritically you categorize me as a fundie and a disease on society. Frankly I don't think you have a clue what really goes on in churches. Like my church has a Friday night support group for people struggling with addictions. No judging, no shame just showing support and love for those in pain. Another church has a support group for people dealing with grief over people who have lost loved ones. We can offer love and hope that this world is not the end. Not what is so horrible and disease like about that? What does atheism offer? NOTHING. No hope.
The youth are so buried in their phones that we have a socially isolated generation that is angry, suicidal, violent, and faces a bleak future. SSM is not progress.
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Originally Posted by caverunner17
You can prove the sun exists. I can see it. Science proves the hypothesis of the sun. I can't see god, Jesus, Allah, Ra, Thor, Jupiter, or Hermes. Science can't prove the existence of a god, nor are the stories of Christianity or Judaism even original to their religion.
Science can make mistakes just like men are fallible. The skeptic would still say it is an illusion. On the flip side, science reveals more and more that we are created beings from a source that is infinitely more intelligent that we could ever hope to be. Like the fact that our bodies can somehow house 100,00 miles of blood vessels. You think men would ever be able to fit that much wiring in a robot?
Quote:
Originally Posted by caverunner17
As far as Sodomy laws.... Oral sex was outlawed too in some states, even among married couples. And un-married sex was outlawed in others. Clearly, those laws were just "on the books" and not enforced. Jeff -- I don't know if you're married or not. But if you had a blow job at some point in your life, you broke the Sodomy laws. The act of homosexual intercourse may have been outlawed, but the legal union of SSM wasn't outlawed.
Wrong.
"1903 – In New York on 21 February 1903, New York police conducted the first United States recorded raid on a gay bathhouse, the Ariston Hotel Baths. 26 men were arrested and 12 brought to trial on sodomy charges; 7 men received sentences ranging from 4 to 20 years in prison.[53]"
Wait, you are the one being condescending yet I'm the jerk? The only thing I'm doing here is voicing my right to express my belief that homosexuality is a sin and SSM is wrong. Yet hypocritically you categorize me as a fundie and a disease on society. Frankly I don't think you have a clue what really goes on in churches. Like my church has a Friday night support group for people struggling with addictions. No judging, no shame just showing support and love for those in pain. Another church has a support group for people dealing with grief over people who have lost loved ones. We can offer love and hope that this world is not the end.
What does your church do for the thousands of LGBT kids whose fundamentalist parents kick them out of the house, Jeff? Those kids end up on the street. Many of them sell their bodies for sex or make porn so they can have a place to stay and something to eat. While their parents cloak themselves in piety and busy themselves doing church work.
Johns and pimps LOVE to find kids tossed out of the house by religious parents who think homosexuality is a sin, Jeffy. They know those kids are desperate and will do pretty much anything to survive.
No judging? Oh pul-eeze. Fundies won't even sell a gay couple a cake, Fundamentalists judge every time they refuse service to a gay man or lesbian. Or donate to a GoFundMe account for someone who does.
Last edited by DewDropInn; 08-17-2015 at 08:12 PM..
Wait, you are the one being condescending yet I'm the jerk? The only thing I'm doing here is voicing my right to express my belief that homosexuality is a sin and SSM is wrong. Yet hypocritically you categorize me as a fundie and a disease on society. Frankly I don't think you have a clue what really goes on in churches. Like my church has a Friday night support group for people struggling with addictions. No judging, no shame just showing support and love for those in pain. Another church has a support group for people dealing with grief over people who have lost loved ones. We can offer love and hope that this world is not the end. Not what is so horrible and disease like about that? What does atheism offer? NOTHING. No hope.
The youth are so buried in their phones that we have a socially isolated generation that is angry, suicidal, violent, and faces a bleak future. SSM is not progress.
Science can make mistakes just like men are fallible. The skeptic would still say it is an illusion. On the flip side, science reveals more and more that we are created beings from a source that is infinitely more intelligent that we could ever hope to be. Like the fact that our bodies can somehow house 100,00 miles of blood vessels. You think men would ever be able to fit that much wiring in a robot?
Wrong.
"1903 – In New York on 21 February 1903, New York police conducted the first United States recorded raid on a gay bathhouse, the Ariston Hotel Baths. 26 men were arrested and 12 brought to trial on sodomy charges; 7 men received sentences ranging from 4 to 20 years in prison.[53]"
A gay bath house is a place for men to have sex with other men. Sex with other men was illegal. The civil union of men was not. You still didn't say you have never received a blow job -- in which case you'd be in that "illegal" arena too
I agree that Churches can do a lot of good, and I think most Atheists agree that there are a lot of positive Christian programs. And frankly, many pastors are more liberal these days and accepting of people regardless of race/income/sexuality. The ones who constantly hold on to the fundamental old ways will eventually die off (like the most racist folks back in the 50s and 60s) and things calm down.
Science makes mistakes and adapts upon the new findings to further humanity. Religion refuses to adapt and rejects new findings to hold humanity back.
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
10,202 posts, read 7,922,771 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
...
Science can make mistakes just like men are fallible. The skeptic would still say it is an illusion. On the flip side, science reveals more and more that we are created beings from a source that is infinitely more intelligent that we could ever hope to be. Like the fact that our bodies can somehow house 100,00 miles of blood vessels. You think men would ever be able to fit that much wiring in a robot?
]
If science makes a mistake, it is self correcting and new science will correct that mistake. You've been told that many times before.
Although you've also claimed many times before that science finds that we are created, you neglect to ever provide proof of your claims.
Science can make mistakes just like men are fallible. The skeptic would still say it is an illusion. On the flip side, science reveals more and more that we are created beings from a source that is infinitely more intelligent that we could ever hope to be. Like the fact that our bodies can somehow house 100,00 miles of blood vessels. You think men would ever be able to fit that much wiring in a robot?
The iPhone 6 has the equivalent of 2 billion transistors in its CPU. For those of you who may not be familiar with 1960s era electronics, a transistor is a gizmo that works a little like a switch. It can be off or on depending on a few factors. The important part for this analogy is that a transistor has 3 little wires coming out of it. If we assume that each wire is 1/4" long, including connecting wires to all of the other transistors, we get 1.5 billion inches of wire, which translates to 23,674 miles of wire.
We obviously have computers far more complex than an iPhone. Let's say any desktop PC or Mac. That will have the equivalent of millions of miles of wire.
Got any other challenges Jeff?
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