Posts by Jonathan Drake

61

God loves Gay, Lesbian, and Transgendered People

by FusionTheism in

god's view of gays and lesbians.

why should anyone care what i have to say on this topic?

i am not a priest.

Jonathan Drake

Are you offended at the mention of the U.S. Constitution because the Founders owned slaves, or were Pro-Slavery?
Do you insist on rejecting anything to do with the Constitution?
Or, do you instead, try to improve the Constitution and get people to use modern morals to better interpret it?

There is no comparison here FT. The laws of the land have changed with the progression of morality, the bible has not. God himself states in the bible that he does not change (despite his contradictions throughout the bible).

The bible and Christianity both make the claim that the book is the inerrant word from God, that only by obeying gods expectations set out in the book will God approve of you and grant salvation. All who disobey his laws will be judged for their sins.

The constitution makes no such claims, and is amendable to a progressive culture. The bible would have us locked into an archaic time of stoning our children for being disrespectful.

What is it going to take for people to realize that they are holding on to an ancient peoples ignorant worldview and that because of so many doing this our society is suffering? If you would just honestly evaluate all the harms this book has brought our species both in the past and present, you'd be left with the truth - that the bible is no different from Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology, roman mythology, etc and deserves to be viewed just as fictitious.

67

All Christians Should Accept EVOLUTION

by FusionTheism in

it is time for christians to accept evolution, in my opinion.. there are many reasons why i think it is long overdue for all christians to finally accept what science says about evolution.

below i will show these reasons.. .

the bible tells people to pay attention to nature to see the glory of god (psalm 19; romans 1:19-20).

Jonathan Drake

Why is a literal Adam required when a literal prodigal son isn't required for Jesus' parable and a literal good Samaritan isn't required for that parable?

Without a literal Adam and Eve there is no original couple to pass on sin to all humanity. Without the Fall there is no necessity for the Messianic savior from the consequences of sin passed on from the fall.

The Christian Faith is absolutely non negotiable on Adam and Eve, but if possible all the more so on Jesus Christ being the messianic savior. The only means for salvation per the bible is belief in the Christ as the messiah. These are not allegory stories FT, the Christian Faith believes them literal truths.

You cannot make Adam and Eve allegory without also making allegory the story of Jesus, if that story is not literal then there is no life after death and no resurrection of the dead. There would be no point in the faith.

61

God loves Gay, Lesbian, and Transgendered People

by FusionTheism in

god's view of gays and lesbians.

why should anyone care what i have to say on this topic?

i am not a priest.

Jonathan Drake

How do you know the Bible is anti-gay if you didn't read my argument to the contrary?

I want you to seriously think about this question. Are you asserting that only you can properly understand the bible and we should be thanking you for showing us this "new light"? I don't mean to sound snappy here, I'm being serious.

I again refer to all the verses I posted above which completely destroy your OP title, and I argue that reading your entire OP is unnecessary. You can think what you will about the bible, and ignore what you will about it, but it says what it says.

From Old Testament to new, the bible proscribes one solution to gay rights - death. You are lying to yourself if you truly believe the bible is pro gay rights or God loves the LGBT community. It's absolutely untrue, and you can read it right out of the book itself.

61

God loves Gay, Lesbian, and Transgendered People

by FusionTheism in

god's view of gays and lesbians.

why should anyone care what i have to say on this topic?

i am not a priest.

Jonathan Drake

I am a little confused as to how I can "offend" atheists by saying I support gay rights and gay marriage???

Its not you supporting gay rights that's offensive, it's trying to contort the bible so it does as well. It absolutely does not, and no matter how hard you try, you will not get around the verses I posted above.

Regardless of your own feelings, the bible is anti-gay, and the God of the bible promises to wipe all of them out for their sinful profanity of nature. It's disgusting.

im glad you support gay rights, but whether you admit it or see it for yourself or not - as a theist the only possible way you can support gay rights is with the proviso that they are still sinning and profaning nature, and that God will judge them.

you know why most people support it? Because it's the right thing to do, because love should not be banned or restricted, because homosexuality is an observable part of nature, and so many more moral reasons! And they support it without believing they are a sin and a stain on creation.

61

God loves Gay, Lesbian, and Transgendered People

by FusionTheism in

god's view of gays and lesbians.

why should anyone care what i have to say on this topic?

i am not a priest.

Jonathan Drake

The only way most religiots don't go mental with all the contradictory beliefs is that they are usually only capable of having single, simple thoughts at a time so they never notice the issues.

This is it exactly, and I'm trying so hard not to go off on a tangent on this thread because I feel it would be hypocritical so soon after making the same kind of assertions myself.

God cannot both love the LGBT community and tell them that if they don't change their very nature he will kill them all. You cannot both love someone and assert they are a profanity of nature, an error, etc. This is a completely absurd and contradictory notion.

On this subject, as with many others, saying God loves the gay community is like saying that a man who beats his family and threatens to kill them constantly loves his family. It's absolutely, unequivocally, demonstrably, a lie.

You got my blood boiling with this one FT.

305

McKinney Texas pool party?

by Marvin Shilmer in

so today i was asked my thoughts on the pool party incident in mcminney, texas.

my response: it shows a clash of expectations.

i saw police officers who expected citizens to listen to and follow instructions.

Jonathan Drake

It's a cycle. We're at one extreme of it. Expect the crime rate to go up and eventually politicians will be using "tough on crime" as an election slogan instead of their current position of being critical of the police.

I bet this is absolutely correct. It makes sense with some other things I've read too (which now I only vaguely remember, like forgetting the broken windows effect had a name lol).

Too bad we have such cycles, it'd be nice to see society evolve beyond them.

anyway I guess I kind of diverged from the actual topic and made it a bit more broad, my apologies to the op. Regarding this specific example, I haven't actually seen anything about the pool party yet, I'll have to look up what's going on.

61

God loves Gay, Lesbian, and Transgendered People

by FusionTheism in

god's view of gays and lesbians.

why should anyone care what i have to say on this topic?

i am not a priest.

Jonathan Drake

First off, the Scriptures are clear that God doesn't view homosexuals any differently than any other human beings on earth--

Ok I tried to read it but got to this and I just can't. I respect the time taken to try to put this argument together, but it's absolutely wrong and knowing better, it kind of offends me.

61

God loves Gay, Lesbian, and Transgendered People

by FusionTheism in

god's view of gays and lesbians.

why should anyone care what i have to say on this topic?

i am not a priest.

Jonathan Drake

I didn't read the OP, because I found the thread title offensive and assume that everything stated in the OP must be an example of accidentally committing intellectual dishonesty with ones self.

copy and paste from one of my other posts:

Any Christian that is for gay marriage or who even tacitly approved of it is not following or agreeing with what the bible says. They can engage in all the mental acrobatics that they like to avoid having to face what their Book of Truth actually says - but it doesn't change it. So long as being a Christian is defined in part by being an adherent of the bible they will be expected to uphold the following views:

Leviticus 18:22:
"Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable."
Leviticus 20:13:
"If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."
Romans 1:27:
"27and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error."
Romans 1:26:
"For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged naturalintercourse for unnatural"
1 Timothy 1:8-10:
"Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it legitimately. This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching"

I'll just stop here. That last one is particularly condemning of this apologetic view of the bible, for not only is it in the New Testament, but it's upholding the Old Testament view of homosexuality as an abomination that is unholy, profane, godless, etc.

Further, these are not allegory verses. They are clearly addressing a specific type of people toward whom the bible (as just demonstrated) holds a 100% consistent view of being unnatural and damned.

There is no explanation for any other view than this being found in the bible except either willful intellectual dishonesty or ignorance.

305

McKinney Texas pool party?

by Marvin Shilmer in

so today i was asked my thoughts on the pool party incident in mcminney, texas.

my response: it shows a clash of expectations.

i saw police officers who expected citizens to listen to and follow instructions.

Jonathan Drake

We have armed police here in Canada but many rarely draw their weapons (going off reports). Is that solely because of the police themselves or because they reflect the communities they police? I suspect in some other areas they do have to draw their weapons more if the neighbourhood they police is more violent.
Which is the cause and which is the effect? I have yet to see police anywhere invading peaceful law abiding neighbourhoods and turning them into hotbeds of crime but that is what some seem to want us to believe.

This is a very good point. All of it.

its also exactly what I've been wanting to find, information from other countries on such statistics as how they handle themselves. I've been too busy reading other material to take it up, but I've long thought we just need a good example from another country to follow. (Reason why I had the Austrian example ready to use)

i read read a psychology book once (I honestly can't remember what I it was called now) in which they were talking about the crime rate in NYC back in the.... 70s? I think... In any event, what they ended up doing to stem the high crime rate was clean up the city. They kept the subways free graffiti and fixed broken windows and and kept the high crime areas comparably cleaner than they were during times of high crime.

Crime went down. And eventually stayed down. Directly because of these efforts.

this brings me to my point, and another aspect of all of this I've been thinking: could this all be a systemic problem of Americas poor infrastructure? Any thoughts on that?

67

All Christians Should Accept EVOLUTION

by FusionTheism in

it is time for christians to accept evolution, in my opinion.. there are many reasons why i think it is long overdue for all christians to finally accept what science says about evolution.

below i will show these reasons.. .

the bible tells people to pay attention to nature to see the glory of god (psalm 19; romans 1:19-20).

Jonathan Drake

I almost forgot to address the BioLogos foundation, and I must.

It is funded by the John Templeton Foundation. John was a Presbyterian convinced that science would answer what he called "the big questions". These questions are a mix of scientific and religious things like evolution, infinity and time as well as prayer. He believed that science would prove God essentially, and to that end left his fortune to support this goal. It's a hugely biased endeavor. And no matter how they try to contort discoveries and rely on "God of the gaps" arguments, science just keeps proving it all wrong, little by little, one step at a time.

though these organizations are hugely accommodationalist and work very hard at using their intelligent to show that theists can accept Jesus and Darwin, my last post by itself thoroughly destroys such an idea.