Calling Jesus out on not letting gays into "heaven" & sending to "hell"

I think part of it is like how people use a candle to meditate. It's a point of focus.

Another is like teaching children about sex. First, trying to explain to a 3 year old why people have sex, both for procreation and pleasure, is an exercise in futility because there are concepts there far beyond their level of understanding. They can understand a bit about the concept of love since they like being loved themselves. So calling it "adult love" is about as much as they can handle. It's obviously more than that, but it's all they can handle.

Human spirituality is similar. Some people, regardless of age, can't get it. It's like teaching calculus to someone with an IQ of 70. Not going to happen. So breaking it down and teaching them what they can understand, such as balancing a checkbook, is about all they can handle. In terms of spirituality, the concept of a power encompassing the Universe and threading itself through everything is difficult for them to grasp, so it's described as a Sky Daddy in a white robe with a long white beard is the most they can handle. Those who have a deeper sense of spirituality, can handle higher level concepts.

 

Do you believe in TRUTH enough (a talking donkey is not truth!) to desire a Bible that does not have those crazy untruthful things in it, to give to your impressionable young children?

 

I continue to admire your intellectual level, even if we don't agree on everything.
I knew a Psychology PhD at one time, and you seem as intellectual as he was.

 

Thanks. If you give people a chance, you'll find there are many people who are intellectual, albeit with different views on this subject. My humble recommendation is to discuss, not just run up to them, piss all over them and then demand an apology for getting in the way of your piss. That's obviously not an intellectual approach.

 

Thanks. I've given it lot of thought over time. I used to be an atheist myself, but am not a Bible-thumper. The Bible, IMO, has a lot of wisdom, served a good function for well over 1500 years but isn't perfect. It's also like the game of "Telephone" in that it's been altered so many times over the past 2000 years that it's difficult to tell what is legend, what is myth and what is truth. Because of those problems, instead of focusing on the flaws, it's better, IMO, to look the purpose of religion in the first place: spiritual growth.

 

FS, I prefer the way you answer to posts with multiple posts - much better than using one l o n g p o s t with broken up quotes and replies to each fragment.

 

Is this a two-way street? If you get to dictate Christian beliefs, does that mean Christians get to dictate secular humanist beliefs?

 

If they believe in the Bible then they'd dictate to us beating slaves, hatred of non-believers, hatred of women, death to gays, no gathering sticks on one particular day of the week, etc. - that's all immoral, so no.

 

Thanks.
I've been meaning to ask you - what do you think are the top 3 improvements to their Bible, that you can think of, that Christians could make to have a more loving belief system? You're more ethical than Jesus, so I'd like to get your take on this.

 

And you would have them deny Jesus's divinity, so I guess you're SOL.

 

Yeshua was accused of being a Samaritan. He ignored the person who asked the question.

 

I see what you mean. It's likely that the original poster is like many, if not all, of you, concerned with being morally correct. I don't think condemning Nazi Germany required an appeal to natural law, though I don't deny it was utilized. Given the outcome of the war, positive law could have easily fulfilled that role.

Also, what is contra dancing?

 

Under positive law, that which is condoned by local law is legal while that which is condemned by local law is illegal. So if you gamble in Las Vegas, you won't get arrested, but if you gamble in Los Angeles, you might. Now recently that understanding has come under attack, with so-called "sex tourists" being charged with a crime in the US for their activities overseas, even though those activities weren't illegal where they were. But using the principle, anyway, there would be no way to charge Nazi SS officers with any crime because what they did was legal under local law. And since there was no international law to break, and the Geneva Convention came about as a result of WWII, there would be no way to charge Nazi SS officers with any crime under international law. The only way to do it was to charge them with "crimes against humanity", i.e., breaking some unwritten but overarching law that applied to all.

My one social outlet. Contra dance is an old American folk dance, dating all the way back to colonial days, that has now spread far and wide across the globe. It's also called barn dancing and old-time dance. You don't need lessons to go, so if you get a chance, check it out. There are contra dances in most major cities, and quite a few minor ones.

 

So was he lying when he said that he had been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel or was he lying when he told his apostles to go preach his word to everyone?

 

It's really too bad that people such as you will never know that you wasted your lives believing in imaginary characters.

 

The Bible is far more racist than the Koran. It's also more violent. It's a bad tree that bears bad fruit.

 

Christianity is based upon the idea of being a cannibal. Then there's the whole slavery thing and mass murder doctrine. Yeshua was a very bad character.

 

The Bible says that only 144,000 people from the twelve tribes of Israel will get into the giant golden cube called New Jerusalem. So why are you wasting your time believing in an ethnocentric fairy tale that doesn't apply to you?

 

Except for you, who is claiming I'm believing in an "ethnocentric fairy tale that doesn't apply"

 

I'm atheist now, and yet I don't feel I wasted one moment of the 29 years I was a believer. In fact, I felt far more a part of a worldwide community, and had far more hope for the future, as a believer than I do as an atheist. As an atheist, I feel completely alienated from everyone, believer and atheist alike, since I don't share the liberal worldview of the typical atheist, and I have no hope for the future for myself for any afterlife, and little hope for the future of humanity, since there is no Godly plan and most Westerners seem hell-bent on destroying the West.

 

I didn't know that you are a member of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. In any case, the ethnocentric fairy tale puts a cap of 144,000 who will make the club.

 

The cave bears and saber-toothed tigers got depressed as well when their world was ending.

 

The amount of things you don't know would take a few trains to haul.

 

That actually looks quite fun. I see now what you were describing. I've only heard the term barn dancing though.

As for the SS officers, I think they could have been executed simply due to being part of the defeated faction, and they had commited acts the victors were against. If the Nazis broke no law under positive law, they were still a defeated, hated form of ideological opposition. I usually feel this is enough to put down enemies.