Atlanta Fire Chief - fired for being Christian.

[Mountain Man]

Well as an atheist I don't think anything ever written was divinely inspired. From a Christian perspective, there's no reason to believe Paul's writings are inspired in the first place.

Yeah, moron, it's that latter assertion that I'm asking you to actually expound upon and defend.

[Sparko]

Well as an atheist I don't think anything ever written was divinely inspired. From a Christian perspective, there's no reason to believe Paul's writings are inspired in the first place.

[Mountain Man]

Well Acts disagrees with you, where Jesus visits Paul and makes him an apostle and gives him missions.

And Peter disagrees with you too:

2 Peter 3:14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Sounds like you and others want to ignore or distort his writings, to your own destruction. Have fun.

Yeah, well, there's no reason to think that Luke or Peter were inspired, either, so there!

[Sparko]

Yeah, well, there's no reason to think that Luke or Peter were inspired, either, so there!

Not if you are an atheist. But he said, " From a Christian perspective, there's no reason to believe Paul's writings are inspired in the first place."

and that is just wrong.

[Mountain Man]

Not if you are an atheist. But he said, " From a Christian perspective, there's no reason to believe Paul's writings are inspired in the first place."

and that is just wrong.

Well, yeah, I know that. I was just trying to imagine what idiotic "argument" he was going to come up with next.

[RumTumTugger]

Well, yeah, I know that. I was just trying to imagine what idiotic "argument" he was going to come up with next.

You mean what idiotic assertion not so ably disguised as an argument don't you?.

as I said before about PM stupid posts as stupid is.

[Teallaura]

What we have here is a difference of opinion based on completely incompatible world views. Conservative Christians believe homosexuality is a sin. Sin is dangerous to the soul. They believe that the sinner must be called to repentance by recognising their activity is sinful. They do this out of what they consider the best interests of the homosexual.

People of more progressive world views consider homosexuality as a valid expression of human sexuality. They perceive criticism of homosexuality to be a form of persecution or oppression. Many advocate for what they consider the civil rights of the homosexual. They do this out of what they consider the best interests of the homosexual.

These views can never be reconciled and arguing about it is imo a waste of time.

In a pluralistic society we must accept that people are free to hold and expound views we do not personally like. The least we can do is recognise that in many cases they are motivated by the same positive motives we are.

What you're not saying is that these positions are mutually exclusive, and determining which is right is a question of tremendous importance. At least as far as the Christian is concerned, a philosophy of "Live and let live" is contrary to the Bible.

Actually, there's room for both. I think PM goes to far in assuming that because they cannot be reconciled they should not be debated (that does seem to be where you were going - correct me if I'm wrong) but his second point, that we should be aware that the motives may be well intended, is valid and worthy of consideration. That doesn't mean just accept it and never get around to telling someone they are in error - that would be both stupid and a disservice. It does mean taking the motive into account as we debate.

I'm not prepared to make an argument that's different from the argument I actually made, no. I will argue that being pro-homosexuality and being Christian are not incompatible.

You've not actually argued anything. You made a bald addition and then refused to defend it when challenged. So until you give us a good reason why Paul's writings should be discarded from the Biblical canon, it's correct to believe that the Bible harshly condemns homosexuality.

You're engaging with a straw man. You keep trying to make me take a position I don't have.

You said "Not a lot of wiggle room there for people to act like the Bible doesn't strongly condemn homosexuality."

I said "The wiggle room is that condemnation of homosexuality comes from two places: the OT, and Paul. The OT condemnations can be justified as no longer applying at the very least. Paul's condemnations can be justified as not being the word of God."

I am letting you know where the wiggle room lies.

It's also wrong to think that someone applying that wiggle room must personally de-canonize Paul's writings. While that's certainly an option for the adventurous sort, I can also imagine someone claiming that Paul's writings are canon because of his role in history, but he is not speaking for God.

It's also wrong to say the Bible "harshly" condemns homosexuality. The Bible just as "harshly" condemns women wearing men's clothing and arrogance. It is quite curious why some Christians focus their attention on a single sin that is no greater than most others.

Well as an atheist I don't think anything ever written was divinely inspired. From a Christian perspective, there's no reason to believe Paul's writings are inspired in the first place.

Yeah, moron, it's that latter assertion that I'm asking you to actually expound upon and defend.

You made an argument you cannot support, PM and got called on it. Don't dig deeper - you look silly enough as it is. If you lack expertise enough to debate the canon then do not base your arguments on the content of the canon. Your assertion is what MM is demanding - quite rightly - that you support. Having heard some guys on the internet who said they were Christians say something about Paul not belonging is NOT even CLOSE to supporting that assertion. That's stupid. PM, at best you are quoting heterodox Seventh Day Adventists - at worst, pure heresy. Neither represents an orthodox Christian view of the canon. Let me translate that for you: the idea that Paul isn't a valid NT author is total and complete bullcrap. Without that BC you have no support for the idiotic assertion that there is 'wiggle room'.

Stay out of the other guy's rhubarb if you don't have enough sense to learn the garden first!

[Starlight]

Or worse... should we not expose pedophiles for fear that they will commit suicide?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3629679/

Suicide is obviously something that should be taken extremely seriously. And so yes, people should definitely be reflecting carefully about the finding that pedophiles are committing suicide at higher than usual rates. However where pedophilia is concerned there is an obvious harm to the children involved. So any action we take out of love has to consider both the harms done to the children and the harms we might to do the offenders.

Gay relationships, by contrast, are between two consenting adults, and there is no victim and no harm, but there are a lot of benefits. So it is not a matter of weighing pros and cons, like it is with pedophilia.

And your comment that discrimination against gays is higher than racism is a complete joke.

In selected parts of the US, racism may be worse than anti-gay discrimination. However this is not the case in most of the Western world.

And it also says

For several reasons, little can be said with certainty about suicide deaths among LGB people. Most mortality data do not include sexual orientation. However, based on the higher rate of suicide attempts among LGB youth and the relative seriousness of their suicide attempts, it is likely that LGB youth experience higher rates of suicide deaths than their non-LGB peers.

What they are meaning is that once people are dead you can't interview them and ask them why they did it. Nor do records about suicides record if a person was gay. While it is obvious to everyone who works with the gay community or on suicide helplines that gay suicide rates are very high compared to non-gay rates, such anecdotal evidence doesn't form a good basis for a scientific analysis of the data.

So for scientific purposes the data that researchers primarily focus on is failed suicide attempts (because people who attempt suicide are usually referred through the mental health system and are thoroughly documented and talked-to by professionals, so we have good data on failed suicide attempts), and on surveys and interviews of people who report feeling suicidal or having seriously considered suicide. Estimates about the actual rates of suicide are thus made based on the data on suicide attempts and on survey results about suicidal thoughts, which is why they are estimates. But if gay people report feeling suicidal about four times as often as straight people do, and make failed attempts at suicide about four times as often as straight people do, then there seems every reason to believe that they are likely to be successfully committing suicide at around four times the rate of straight people.

2. Anti theism pushes theist to suicide.

I am getting sick of this lie being repeated. It's totally false and no one here has provided the slightest bit of scientific evidence whatsoever even remotely suggesting any truth to it. We've had a grand total one person claim they felt suicidal after they voluntarily and repeatedly sought out people on the internet to talk to who they strongly disagreed with. I got told off earlier in this thread for using anecdotes, but apparently I'm expected to 100% believe this anecdote at face value?

anybody who says you can be both a committed homosexual and a committed Christian is effectively calling God a liar.

I'm just calling you a liar, not God. You lie to people about the level of certainty we have that the bible says what you think it says. You appear to be no qualified expert whatever in Greek or logic or ancient history, with (as far as I know) no qualifications that would make you better than anyone else at biblical study, yet you go around announcing your absolute certainty that the bible says whatever you think it says and telling other people that what they think it says it absolutely wrong for sure. That's massively arrogant, self-righteous, and just plain stupid. And then you proceed to claim that all of your own views are God's views and that everyone that disagrees with you disagrees with God. That's exactly what firstfloor was complaining about, and you prove his point admirably with your own misconduct alone.

[Bill the Cat]

Suicide is obviously something that should be taken extremely seriously. And so yes, people should definitely be reflecting carefully about the finding that pedophiles are committing suicide at higher than usual rates. However where pedophilia is concerned there is an obvious harm to the children involved. So any action we take out of love has to consider both the harms done to the children and the harms we might to do the offenders.

Gay relationships, by contrast, are between two consenting adults, and there is no victim and no harm, but there are a lot of benefits. So it is not a matter of weighing pros and cons, like it is with pedophilia.

This way boys...

goalposts.jpg

[Sparko]

This guy is better than square_peg at changing his story with every post!

So it is OK to tell someone out of love that they are wrong even if it kills them, as long as you also consider some other group too?

Telling a pedophile he is wrong probably won't make him stop so it does nothing to protect children. But if it does work, and the pedophile changes, then that is a good thing.

He basically destroyed his own first argument. I smell a teenage liberal weasel here.

[Mountain Man]

(FYI, I didn't mean to Amen your post; that was a mis-click)

I'm just calling you a liar, not God. You lie to people about the level of certainty we have that the bible says what you think it says. You appear to be no qualified expert whatever in Greek or logic or ancient history, with (as far as I know) no qualifications that would make you better than anyone else at biblical study, yet you go around announcing your absolute certainty that the bible says whatever you think it says and telling other people that what they think it says it absolutely wrong for sure. That's massively arrogant, self-righteous, and just plain stupid. And then you proceed to claim that all of your own views are God's views and that everyone that disagrees with you disagrees with God. That's exactly what firstfloor was complaining about, and you prove his point admirably with your own misconduct alone.

How are you not engaging in baldfaced hypocrisy with this post? By calling me a liar, you are announcing with absolute certainty that I'm wrong (not to mention violating tWeb's rules of conduct). That's massively arrogant, self-righteous, and just plain stupid. Your words, not mine.

Now how about actually addressing my argument instead of plucking a single sentence out of context and sputtering with self-righteous rage? Let's try this again:

I could care less about surveys or some people's attemps to reinterpret the Bible through the lens of political correctness. The Old Testament clearly says that homosexuality is a sin (Leviticus 18:22, "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable," and, no, this is not limited only to temple prositution; see Leviticus 18 and Homosexuality); Jewish teaching and tradition over thousands of years held that homosexuality is a sin (so did they misinterpret their own sacred laws? I doubt it.); and the New Testament reaffirms that it's a sin (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, "Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."; the word interpreted as "men who have sex with men" is derived from traditional Jewish writings that condemn homosexuality). Your only argument is to pretend, in turns, that we don't know what the Bible is talking about, that it quietly approves of homosexual relations, or that it is entirely silent on the matter, and this despite what the Bible clearly and unambiguously says. There is no confusion here. Homosexuality is a sin, period, and anybody who says you can be both a committed homosexual and a committed Christian is effectively calling God a liar.

[Jedidiah]

False dichotomy!

That is the point, yes.

[phank]

There is no confusion here. Homosexuality is a sin, period, and anybody who says you can be both a committed homosexual and a committed Christian is effectively calling God a liar.

And yet there is a considerable number of people who grew up to be committed Christians, only to discover at puberty that they are biological homosexuals. And like Ted Haggard, they go through continuous agonies over this. They KNEW their orientation is a sin, but that orientation is what psychology calls "persistent" - it does not go away. Conversion therapies were very popular for a while, because their target population was really desperate. Today, those places have closed down due to what amounts to 100% recidivism within a year or two.

You can't become an EX-homosexual anymore than you can grow a foot taller and become an NBA center just by wanting real real hard. What you can do is try to fake it, and many closet homosexuals have done this for centuries at least. They get married, they have children and raise families. Ted Haggard had five children by his devoted wife. And very visibly and publicly, he prayed himself silly. Didn't work, because it can't work.

Does that mean the good reverend Ted Haggard is "effectively calling God a liar"? His faith in Christ is as sincere and devout as ever. His frustration with his sexual orientation is as strong as ever. Both commitments are deep seated - one psychologically, and one physiologically. Would Haggard regard himself as a sinner? What Christian would not? But he and many like him (like Eddie Long) are living proof that you CAN be both a committed homosexual and a committed Christian. Sin and all.

What's not clear is whether both of them are choices. Certainly sexual orientation is not a choice. Whether Christianity is a choice is open to debate.

[JonathanL]

And yet there is a considerable number of people who grew up to be committed Christians, only to discover at puberty that they are biological homosexuals. And like Ted Haggard, they go through continuous agonies over this. They KNEW their orientation is a sin, but that orientation is what psychology calls "persistent" - it does not go away. Conversion therapies were very popular for a while, because their target population was really desperate. Today, those places have closed down due to what amounts to 100% recidivism within a year or two.

You can't become an EX-homosexual anymore than you can grow a foot taller and become an NBA center just by wanting real real hard. What you can do is try to fake it, and many closet homosexuals have done this for centuries at least. They get married, they have children and raise families. Ted Haggard had five children by his devoted wife. And very visibly and publicly, he prayed himself silly. Didn't work, because it can't work.

Does that mean the good reverend Ted Haggard is "effectively calling God a liar"? His faith in Christ is as sincere and devout as ever. His frustration with his sexual orientation is as strong as ever. Both commitments are deep seated - one psychologically, and one physiologically. Would Haggard regard himself as a sinner? What Christian would not? But he and many like him (like Eddie Long) are living proof that you CAN be both a committed homosexual and a committed Christian. Sin and all.

What's not clear is whether both of them are choices. Certainly sexual orientation is not a choice. Whether Christianity is a choice is open to debate.

Why are you posting nonsense that has nothing to do with anyone's position in this thread and has already been answered in previous posts?

[lilpixieofterror]

I am getting sick of this lie being repeated. It's totally false and no one here has provided the slightest bit of scientific evidence whatsoever even remotely suggesting any truth to it. We've had a grand total one person claim they felt suicidal after they voluntarily and repeatedly sought out people on the internet to talk to who they strongly disagreed with. I got told off earlier in this thread for using anecdotes, but apparently I'm expected to 100% believe this anecdote at face value?

That's right, you took the option of just IGNORING what you don't want to hear because you're arguments are showing yourself to be wrong, but you're too full of pride to admit you're wrong, here is what he said:

....You know I was going to make a really long drawn out comment about the stereotypes, prejudice, and outright hostility I've encountered on english-speaking message board communities almost entirely inhabited by "enlightened accepting liberal westerners who are closeted intolerant theophobes, especially against Christians and Muslims", NOT a few individuals, which at one time nearly drove me to the brink of considering killing myself if it was not for sites like TWeb, Quodlibeta, or Tektonics

You were the one that has aruged that we should take somebodies word, at their face value, right? Here is what you said before:

It turns out that these results all basically agree and that the easiest way to get to the correct answer is just to ask people how happy they are, because people know accurately how happy they are. So tests now tend to either ask people once or twice to rate their lives and happiness on various scales, or to ask them on a daily basis how much they are feeling various emotions that day, depending on what's required from the study.

So you seem to be saying that asking people, about their emotional state, seems to be the best way to ascertain their emotional state. Yet, when you start running into things that disagrees with your assumptions, suddenly that doesn't count because your precious assumptions are being questioned and nobody dare question the great Starlight's assertions. That's hearsay! You're one sick puppy for wanting to discount what one person says, but blindly accepting what another says. That is just plain wrong (and I think you know it, so the reason you have to attack my integrity and just narrowly define what evidence you'll accept).

Thank you for so thoroughly refuting yourself because I didn't say a lie at all. I am using YOUR LOGIC again and you seem to not like what your logic says. Why can we accurately trust people to tell us how happy they feel, but we suddenly need 'scientific evidence' when how they are feeling dares to disagree with what you say they should feel? Why the double standard? Because you're just incapable of admitting you're wrong, in any way? So when are you going to shut up with any objections to Christianity or is this (as I suspect) just a one way street that is just a made up excuse to shut up all opposition to your views?