Homosexuality and Religion

Remove all ads!

That's why I said, "as close to infinite as you can possibly get". there's more matter in our own galaxy than we can possibly measure, and there are more galaxies in the universe than we can possibly measure. And in this scenario, anything which can happen almost invariably will happen.

yes, that's exactly what I'm arguing. You could take separate bits from about 2000 prophecies and use it to prophecise the coming of Jack Nicholson, if you put your mind to it. if there was one prophecy which accurately foretold the coming of the Messiah, then I'd concede your point. But there hasn't been. it's just a rickety framework of interpretations.

I don't know how this got so derailed. I just wanted to point out that stuff that God clearly said in the Bible has been contradicted by fact, wither showing that bits of the Bible was written by ultimately infallible humans, who decided to impose their own morals on the texts (HINT HINT), or that God's a big liar.

So, if most of the Leviticus stuff was the laws of Israel, why are they in a book that's just supposed to be stuff God told us to do? or is that these laws were passed down by God to the people of Israel, but weren't supposed to apply to anywhere else? help me out here.

 

This is great and all but what does it have to do with homosexuality?

 

@NOG...No, I don't have Mithra mixed up. I never said that Jesus was cognate with Mithra, I said that most of the ceremonial practices and ritualistic practices are traced back to that religion, Mithraism - a secret exclusive religion. Although it shares a commonality with Mithra, it is completely distinct from Zoroastrian religion. Same with the Osiris cult so prevelant in Roman times, which too was a different cult than the true worship of Osiris was. They merely used names of ancient gods for their secret religious practices.

The ahura class of deities is the same as the aesir class of deities and also the same as the asura class of deities. In Proto-Indo-Iranian religion, there were two sets of gods; the Asura and the Deva. Those peoples who migrated to what is now Iran - the Medes and Persians of the Bible - they venerated the Asura and it became Ahura due to shifts in the language over time (hence Hind becomes Sind etc). Those who ended up in what is now India worshipped the Deva. Over time the Iranians viewed Deva as being demons of darkness, and the Indians viewed the Asura/Ahura as being nothing more than power-hungry unworthy false gods.

It was due to the Iranian religion, which predates
Zarathustra himself, that Judaism developed a distinct 'light vs dark' cosmology during their captivity in Babylon.

I thought all of this was common knowledge...

 

Because if the laws were made by men rather than god, thereby having only subjective moral value, there would be no justification for trying to force them on others.

 

You're right, but try and convince the fundamentalists here that. They don't want to admit that their faith isn't as solid as they want it to be. It's sad really.

We always seem to get off topic because of the problems with these laws that were written down 4000 years ago that don't always apply to our lives the way they applied to nomadic desert dwellers in 2000 BCE.

 

Being made by a god isn't a justifiable reason in itself for forcing a law on others, especially if they don't believe in said god.

I wake up every day thanking fate that I live in a country where religion is the last thing politicians consider when passing a law.

 

Homosexuality and birthcontrol were banned in the Republic of Ireland because of religion (in my lifetime!) so it was ironic that peope fled accross the border to Ulster to avoid persecution. Now that the Republic is more secular, people are free to practice their religions and be with someone of the same sex. Now they need to make abortion legal to be a completely free society.

 

I just don't think anyone really cares about religion here in NZ. I mean, we had that 'Bishop' Tamaki guy with his Christian party and church that did some protests and rallies, and he claimed that homosexuality was destroying family values. And then he predicted to win an election with his conservative fundamentalist party...and boy was he wrong, he barely made a dint in the elections. Didn't even get a seat in parliament.

And how exactly is homosexuality destroying family values? If two homosexual people want to get married and raise children, how is the family being un-valued? If anything, allowing homosexual couples to marry and raise kids is promoting family values.

In some ways I am sad that NZ politians are so unmotivated by religion when passing laws, since it will mean they certainly wont pass marijuana decriminalization laws for people whose religion invloves ritualistic pot smoking. And, yes, mine does...Lord Shiva smokes chronic and meditates on Mt. Kalish for thousands of years, and then sometimes he gets up and smites some evil or dances up a blissful storm...and then he sits back down again to smoke and meditate. My God is so much cooler than the Christian god

 

@Clixby:

You're making a very stretching approximation here, and we're dealing with probability numbers where it can be dangerous. As long as there is a finite number of solar systems, there are probability levels higher than that. The question is, is this one of them.

On a side note, we can measure the mass of our galaxy, and we have (to a rough estimate) by the gravitational effects. We've estimated the masses of other galaxies, too. We even have a ball-park on the number of galaxies (assuming the quazars are the edge of the expanding universe, as they seem to be) and the number of star-systems in each. Now all these are rough numbers, and there's no guarantee we're right, but they are educated guesses.

Ok, one, there is little interpretation (context) involved in these. I won't say none, but what there is has been pretty solidly nailed down. Lets not get into context again, please.

Two, the idea that these are complimentary prophecies, i.e. they all concern the same person, means that you CAN combine them and consider the probability and accuracy as a whole. The accuracy is 100%, and the probablity was given above.

@Ab:
This was all in response to the 'heavy evidence that the universe was planned' comment I made. It has no direct connection at all, but seems to be covering some similar topics (i.e. context).

@Nataraja:

If you mean the 'good vs evil' philosophy, then that developed far before their captivity in Babylon. If you mean the 'light=good and dark=evil' idea, I'm not sure where that developed, but I'm pretty sure it was after Babylon. Throughout the Old Testament, light is seen as the divine mercy of God and darkness as the divine judgement of God, and this includes the books of the prophets written during and after their captivity in Babylon. The 'light=good and dark=evil' idea doesn't seem to surface until the New Testament, written several hundred years after the last of the OT.

And now who's picking and choosing?
1.) These laws were not given to a group of 'nomadic desert dwellers', but a people on the run who continued to use them long after they had established a flourishing civilization.
2.) How many of these laws are still applicable today? Murder? Theft? Purgery? Incest? These are things that apply to humanity as a whole, regardless of your civilization.

@Cuchulainn:

Hold it, hasn't the standard always been not harming others or interfering with their rights? Nevermind, you probably don't consider the foetus a living being or some such nonsense.

 

His credibility hit rock bottom when he stormed parliament with his mob of black t-shirt, black boot wearing, work shy layabouts yelling "Enough is Enough". At least the religious people on these Boards take the time to provide explanations for their beliefs. Tamaki's peasant army had too many echos of jackboot wearing Nazi fanatics for my liking.

 

He had credibility full-stop?

He was one of those evangelical religious nuts who had a show on TV at about 10:00am (the time where most sane people are at work) and he only tarnished the Christian image by making the public think that Christianity was a religion whose sole purpose was the condemnation and eradication of homosexuality. Rather than spending their money trying to save children dieing from disease and malnourishment they would spend it on rallies to protest against homosexuality.

 

Yeah, he was preaching about 'family values' yet his protest mob was full of kids. If kids are so important, shouldn't they have been at school?!

 

Bishop Tamaki should have gone into stand-up comedy. What a joke...

 

You mean to say he wasn't a stand up comedian?! I thought that was always the point of having a large, expensive house and then preeching from a book that claims "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." (Mathew 6:24)

Jumping back a page or so...

So Gnarf, it's alright for religous groups to want their voices heard but not homosexuals? Piss poor democracy where such groups are brushed aside, if you ask me...

If we bring in alternative or parrellel universes (which is just as valid as a God) then we can have infinite. And it can also be used to explain those remote possibilities that you mentioned on the previous page.

 

Indeed there is a finite amount of mass (it will never increase) yet the size of the universe is infinite. And yes I stand by that the universe is infinite the same way that a Christian can believe that God is real. I see no end to the universe so frankly I believe there isn't one. I think the idea of there being an end to the univserse is harder to fathom than the universe being infinite, actually.

Yeah, I know, off-topic, sorry.

Let's ban Christians from getting married and disallow them from raising children. Obviously they aren't suited to the task, they believe in this great big invisible man, they're deluded and a delusional person is a danger to their children and their spouse.

 

Since Christians can freely quote from their scripture, surely I can too.

"Those who know that the duration of creation lasts 4.32 billion years and that the duration of destruction also lasts 4.32 billion years, they are the knowers of the cycles of creation and destruction. (8.17)" - Lord Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita

"All beings merge into My primary material Nature at the end of a cycle of just over 311 trillion solar years, O Arjuna, and I create them again at the beginning of the next cycle. (9.07)" - Again, Lord Krishna to Arjuna

"An enlightened person - by perceiving God in all - looks at a learned person, an outcast, even a cow, an elephant, or a dog with an equal eye. (5.18)" - And again...

"One must elevate - and not degrade - oneself by one’s own mind. The mind alone is one’s friend as well as one’s enemy. The mind is the friend of those who have control over it, and the mind acts like an enemy for those who do not control it. (6.05-06)" - Again...

So there's the answer to both the universe and homosexual questions...the universe is incredibly ancient and people should look at each other with the same eye, and not judge each other.

There are other verses in other Hindu scriptures that say that the entire energy of the universe is in a constant flux between expanded state and compressed state. At the moment we are experiencing the expanded state of matter, and when the universe falls back in on itself, it will be the compressed state of matter. Then, eventually that compressed state of matter will expand - hence the big bang - and then the universe will do what it does again. This will happen a total of 100 times, and then that is the end of this universe entirely - both its compressed and expanded states. At the moment I think we are in the 7th of the expansion things. I really should find these texts, theyre around somewhere...

All the Vedas and other texts are so superior to the Bible in knowledge, wisdom and just plain common sense.

 

Oh no! You made a sweeping statement against Christianity... Waaaaaait for it.

 

Since it has even less brain activity and awareness of self then animals, its hardly human, so like most people, i dont consider it a living human, i cant deny its living, but hell so was the steak im eating at some point. But thats a discusion for another thread.

Regarding does prophecise, i sat down and read them. some of them are not even prophecise, just bible qoutes, others of them first appear in maetheus, now work with me, Maetheus writes his version of Jesus life roughly 100 years after jesus death, he has never met Jesus, he has never heard Jesus preaching, he has 3th party stories or even further away stories, he has Marcus envangelion and does evengelions that didn't made it into the bible, put down in the year 300, And he has one more tool, the old testemony...magicaly Jesus opholds some of the prophecies about the savior...

oh and i still find it very dodgy that the Bible holds no evangelion written by anyone who actually met jesus, even though we know they exist.
(the stories in The davinci code and holy blood/holy gral, are fictions build on the discovory of the Thomas Evangelion)

Thirdly NOG you seem to be picking and choosing laws, i meen you say the laws in the bible are for all, but the laws in levitus is only for isreal (which you still havent proven) except does of sex which is for all

Actually in south america there are several indian tribes that practise a form of incest as a rite. male boys suck the seemen of men, to gain some of thier strength. but offtopic.
Does basic laws, are just basically Human laws. just like animals have some very semiliar basic animal laws.
so whats your point in qouting god forbad murder! So did most societies without the help of god, its piss easy, most people dont like getting killed randomly.
theft, again back in the old days, theft was often as bad as murder, you steal my money, i die of hunger, you steal my food, i die and so on, didn't take to much time to forbid that.
Incest is harder, but most societies had a minimum age for males and females, simply becouse they knew there was an age of maturity, but back then in many societies children could get married away anyhows. but again, there is nothing divine in these laws, just basic human logic.

 

You're right, it's as I've said before...morality is contextual. It's common sense, and every culture has a different 'common sense' in nearly every respect.

People need to realise that life as we know it is a relatively recent phenomenon, and that for 99.9...% of human history, life was not the way it is now. Things were not better in the past, things were hard, rough and not pleasant. Life is very mild in comparisson with what it was like the past.