Homosexuality and religious.

[Trailblazer]

@Truthseeker
You are batting 1000 tonight.

 

[Sheldon]

It is okay by me and Imo it is a lot better than an unmarried heterosexual couple with children.

I'd love to hear how you're defining better in that claim? Since married or unmarried are arbitrary states, why do you believe one state to be better than another? Or is this to be another unevidenced appeal to divine diktat?

 

[Brian2]

Yeah, I understand that religions need to have their rules of behavior. But how do they get people to obey those rules? When it comes to forbidden sexual behaviors, including homosexuality, they Bible says to stone them to death. Why did Christianity stop stoning people for breaking God's moral laws? The problem for me is... If God thought it was so necessary before, why did he stop demanding it?

God set up the theocracy on earth, Israel, and gave laws for that theocracy to follow and made temporal punishments for disobedience. This whole thing had it's reason and was to lead the Jews to the time of the Messiah when the Kingdom of God would not be an earthly Kingdom (as it was with Israel) and the judgement is not here on earth.
Christians have faith, and that is not just a head belief but includes obeying what God wants us to. We know when we are obeying or not and so does God and God is teaching us and changing us on the journey to be more like Jesus in character and so to do the right thing even when it seems nobody can see.
We life by faith.

 

[Brian2]

Then why did he make certain things feel good? Guys often like when you put your finger in their booty.

Yuck.
But hey, whatever.

 

[Sheldon]

Because it is exercising self-control and restraint, and the same would apply to a heterosexual suppressing sexual desire.

Denying who they are, and suppressing their natural desires is not self control, it's a pernicious enforced indoctrination. We have ample evidence now of the harm caused by trying to enforce celibacy. Being gay harms no one, it is a perfectly natural variation of adult sexual desire.

When religions claim a perfect deity sees consenting adults having sex as wrong or harmful because they're gay, it's just sufficient rational evidence the message is entirely human in origin. Since it reflects irrational human ignorance and prejudice.

 

[Sheldon]

"God is calling us to struggle against our animal nature and to become who we truly are:

By denying who we truly are, same old superstitious nonsense. We are animals, that's a biological fact, some animals are born gay, another irrefutable fact.

The woo woo religions use to perpetuate human ignorance and prejudice speaks for itself. The irony of claiming a perfect deity shares the ignorance and homophobic prejudice of evolved mammals is also a rather obvious own goal, since it logically demonstrates the message is derived from human ignorance and prejudice.

 

[Trailblazer]

I'd love to hear how you're defining better in that claim? Since married or unmarried are arbitrary states, why do you believe one state to be better than another? Or is this to be another unevidenced appeal to divine diktat?

I said:
It is okay by me and Imo it is a lot better than an unmarried heterosexual couple with children.

Did you miss the Imo? This is not an appeal to divine authority, it is just my personal opinion.
Imo, it is better to be a married homosexual couple with children than an unmarried heterosexual couple with children. I believe it is better to be married since marriage demonstrates commitment.

 

[Trailblazer]

Denying who they are, and suppressing their natural desires is not self control, it's a pernicious enforced indoctrination.

Denying who they are? Sure, their desires are natural for animals, but I do not believe that humans are only animals, they are primarily spiritual beings, so to act like the beasts of the field is unworthy of the station of man.

 

[Trailblazer]

By denying who we truly are, same old superstitious nonsense. We are animals, that's a biological fact, some animals are born gay, another irrefutable fact.

We truly are spiritual beings who live in a physical body while we are living is a physical world, so our physical desires should be subjugated to our higher purpose, which is to know and love God.
Imo.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

We truly are spiritual beings who live in a physical body while we are living is a physical world, so our physical desires should be subjugated to our higher purpose, which is to know and love God.
Imo.

Yeah, speak for yourself. That is what you deny you do, yet you do it regardless. You claim something universal about humans, which can be done differently individually.
And yet you will deny you have done it, because you claim you accept individuality.
It is not your opinion, because you treat it as a fact. It goes back you that for you the world would be meaningless if there was no God. Thus you treat the world as from God and any other version is meaningless. That is how you judge other humans.

So here are the 3 basic versions.
-I in effect act and judge people based on that there is a God.
-I in effect act and judge people based on that there is no God.
-I don't know either case to be a fact and I try to let other people make sense of their life as them as long as they don't claim a "we" that isn't there, because it is not universal, as it is individual.

And yes, some non-religious people do in effect the same as you. But that post is more than just your opinion. It is a fact to you.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Sorry. What you are saying is either going past me or above me. It feels like you are taking steps in your thinking that you are not articulating to me. That's okay.

Okay, I will try.

Take the following 3 claims of knowledge as they happen in effect all the time here on this forum.

- I know X is Y and not Z.
- I know X is Z and not Y.
- I don't know for either case.

If you are to explain all 3 cases as a part of the world, you have to accept that people can act as if they have knowledge without having it. But that requires that you accept that it could also be the case of you, because if you claim knowledge is say Y, you could find that it is not the case, if you look closer. To do that is a certain state of your brain. But you don't need that to have a life. You can still have a good enough life without being able to do that, because there are more than one way to have an actual life. That is it.

As for this:

I am unconvinced. Do you have any interest in convincing me? If you do, then you will have to start on common ground and work me up to your conclusion. If you have no such interest, then this is a good place to stop.

It is not certain that we have common ground and we don't need that in practice. In effect for our different cognition you can claim that the world is Y and I can do it differently.
It ends here for all those different words:
"philosophy, (from Greek, by way of Latin, philosophia, “love of wisdom”) the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience. ..."
philosophy | Definition, Systems, Fields, Schools, & Biographies

So here it is for the "or" in the quote. If you can understand both position as different type of cognition then you can understand that the knowledge they give are different. That is an example of cognitive relativism.

As for convincing you about common ground. It is not certain that either of us need that. If our individual worldviews work good enough differently, then neither of us need to have common ground.

 

[KWED]

Label me whatever you want to label me...
Sticks and stones might break my bones but words can never hurt me.

But that's the point - words can and do hurt people.
Gay people have been driven to take their own life because of the words used against them by the intolerant, bigoted, hateful and ignorant.

This isn't about labelling you a homophobe (you do that yourself by agreeing with highly homophobic statements). It is about educating people that homophobia (and other intolerance and prejudice) is not excused or justified simply because the words come from a religious text.

 

[KWED]

I only denied that there is a quote saying that homosexuality is actually "a shameful sexual aberration that needs to be purged from the world.” because there is no direct quote saying that.

That particular post that you responded to did not claim that such a specific quote exists. Each lament was listed as a separate, individual quote, just as they appear in Bahai texts.
Furthermore, you said that Bahai texts "do not refer to homosexuality as such". The "as such" is a term that means "not in that exact form but essentially the same", so you were merely equivocating.
"Are those new shoes?". "Not as such, I bought them this morning but they were made several months ago".

The words and phrases appear in several quotes but not together on any one quote.

So you admit that Bahai texts do refer to homosexuality in those terms.

You are cherry picking from the quotes in order to deliberately misrepresent the Baha'i Faith.

How is it "misrepresenting" it? The sentiments are exactly as claimed. They clearly show negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality. You have even admitted so yourself, so not sure what your point is.

Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data that may contradict that position.

So what is the "significant portion of similar data" that contradicts the homophobic statements?

You see confused about how "cherry picking" works. If the police charge someone with several counts of theft over a year, the defendant can't accuse the police of "cherry picking" because they are ignoring all the days when they didn't steal anything.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

But that's the point - words can and do hurt people.
Gay people have been driven to take their own life because of the words used against them by the intolerant, bigoted, hateful and ignorant.

This isn't about labelling you a homophobe (you do that yourself by agreeing with highly homophobic statements). It is about educating people that homophobia (and other intolerance and prejudice) is not excused or justified simply because the words come from a religious text.

Yes, you are right. But I live in a culture, where we don't use God. We use the normative ideas of a good, healthy, productive live as a respected member of society. If you look closer that can also hurt people.
You have to check any claim of a case for ought or normative rules and not just religious ones.

 

[KWED]

It is completely relevant.

The distinction is irrelevant. This has been explained multiple times, in the simplest of terms.
"I'm not racist. I don't hate black people, I just think black skin is a sign of inferiority and criminality".
Get it?

Like the Bible says, love the sinner but hate the sin.

You still haven't been able to explain why homosexuality is a "sin" in the first place.

 

[KWED]

Only if they are a Baha'i.

What difference does that make. Are Bahai homosexuals somehow excluded from the tolerance and respect that non-Bahais are entitled to?
Is it ok for the the manager of a football team to be racist towards his own players, as long as he isn't towards anyone else?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

What difference does that make. Are Bahai homosexuals somehow excluded from the tolerance and respect that non-Bahais are entitled to?
Is it ok for the the manager of a football team to be racist towards his own players, as long as he isn't towards anyone else?

I have been debates like this before. The problem is in the end this. A person believing it is a sin, can end up committing suicide or have a bad life.

 

[KWED]

There are no supposed tos. Nobody has to do anything they don't want to do.

What? So now you are claiming that Bahaism has no rules or laws that Bahais are supposed to adhere to? Jeez, you will literally say any old nonsense if you think it gets you off the hook for a second. You'll then just deny it in a later post.

I told you who he is. He is a Baha'i and he was the owner of the Planet Baha'i forum before he closed it down.

Haven't seen that post yet. But fyi, owning a website doesn't necessarily make your statements profound.

Everyone who does not believe anything goes is not a prude.

Did you read his essay? He seems to believe that sex for any reason other than procreation is somehow distasteful.

 

[Sheldon]

Who ever compared being gay to raping children?

Read the thread...there's one comparison quoted in the post you've just responded to.

 

[Sheldon]

Well there you go, if someone doesn't understand what a comparison is, there's little point repeating those comparisons.