Frank, no Christian can possibly comply with everything that the Bible says, since it frequently contradicts and defies all logic. It reflects the changing morals and opinions of so many people over such a long period of time that you can find a verse to condone virtually anything you want to do.
It has been my experience that Christians read the Bible very selectively. Anything that supports their beliefs is gospel; everything else is simply ignored. If you quote verses that contradict what they believe, they will claim that it is taken out of historical context or has been superseded by the NT. What is truly amazing is that they seem to be unaware of the spin that Paul put on Jesus' teachings, sometimes a complete 180 degrees.
It amazes me that seemingly intelligent people take the bible as the word of God. IMO It was written by man and influenced by human conditions at the time of it's writings. If they story of Sodom and Gomorra is a reflection those times one can understand many of it's admonitions. Come to think of it is today's moral climate much different from the time of Sodom and Gomorra.
Sooooo, is it thumbs up ot thumbs down?
Lest we forget, the bible(s) had plenty of editors as well. Those in the know do know what happens to a movie when too many writers are involved.
A huge rain, thunder and lightning storm has hit after my filpent remark and I've got to shut down. Frank, tell the guy I'm sorry for me.
lab rat wrote:...done to "purify" the Israelites, preserving them from the influence of evildoers, so that they might reflect the holiness of their God...
Oh, so
that's where Shrub got the old "evildoers" reference ... was just wondering and I thank you for providing the answer :wink:
!
Just received this one from a friend in Georgia. c.i.
***************
Letters at 3AM
BY MICHAEL VENTURA
July 11, 2003:
In all the hubbub about Lawrence v. Texas -- editorials, op-eds,
talking heads, Net reports -- there were two words I didn't come
across. So, just for the record: As a straight man I want to say to
my gay brothers and sisters, thank you.
Like the blacks (and whites) of the civil rights movement, in
fighting for your liberty you fought for mine. Thanks is hardly
enough, but it's all I've got. It's only been 34 years since Stonewall
(for those who don't know what that is, do a Net search; it ain't
Stonewall Jackson). In that brief time you have achieved what
many struggle for and few manage: a substantial strengthening of
our Constitution.
To read Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority
(6-3) opinion is to believe again that America can be America ...
sometimes, on some days, in some crucial ways.
Justice Kennedy wrote: "Liberty presumes an autonomy of self
that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain
intimate conduct [my italics]." That last phrase is enormous. You
will not find that thought in the Bible (written 2,000 to 5,000 years
ago) or the Quran (written 1,500 years ago). You will not find it in
the Magna Carta (written 900 years ago) or in the thousands of
governmental documents or declarations since. It was implied in
Thomas Jefferson's 1776 founding thought that "Life, Liberty, and
the pursuit of Happiness" (Jefferson's capital letters) are
"unalienable Rights" (not inalienable -- un-alienable, not subject
to being alienated) ... but only implied. It took another 224 years
for American homosexuals to agitate us into accepting that "certain
intimate conduct" is a right that the expression of collective will that
we call "government" is bound not only to protect but to value.
With Justice Kennedy's formulation, consensual adult sex has --
for the first time, to my knowledge -- been legally recognized as a
force not limited to its function of procreation. The Justice's
decision says this clearly: "When sexuality finds overt expression in
intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one
element in a personal bond that is more enduring." Packed into
those words is the concept that sex, before it is anything else, is a
form of communication. Commune-ication. Such
communion/communication may be procreative or not; Lawrence
v. Texas, dealing with homosexual sex, says that intimate physical
communication -- "absent injury to a person or abuse of an
institution the law protects" -- is important enough to be protected
by law and from law. "It suffices for us to acknowledge that adults
may choose to enter upon this relationship in the confines of their
homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as
free persons. ... The issue is whether the majority may use the
power of the state to enforce [their] views on the whole society
through operation of the criminal law."
Justice Kennedy cites Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa.
v. Casey: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own
concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the
mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define
the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion
of the State."
Justice Antonin Scalia, in his rabid (and often incoherent) dissent
from Lawrence v. Texas, scoffed at those words as Casey's
"famed sweet-mystery-of-life passage." But the sweet mysteries
are exactly what Lawrence v. Texas demands the law recognize
as the right of consensual adults, to explore sex free from the
"compulsion of the State."
Those who say, as Scalia does, that the Constitution cites no
specific "right" to be homosexual, or to explore sex in any way one
chooses, or to choose an abortion, pointedly ignore both the Ninth
and 10th amendments. They bear re-reading:
Amendment Nine: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain
rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
retained by the people." Amendment 10: "The powers not
delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited
by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to
the people [my italics]."
These amendments forcefully present two concepts.
Firstly: The Founders were pointedly not including all our rights in
the Constitution. They conceived of the Constitution as a
mechanism for telling the government what it could and could not
do. The government -- not us. They stated clearly and specifically
that the people possessed further rights that government must not
deny or disparage. The Founders had an enormous respect for
language (after all, they created a nation through words); they said
what they meant; when they left something vague, they had a
specific and impelling reason. If they did not define those "certain"
rights, it was because they wanted the parameters to remain wide
... they wanted us to define those rights, and (read their letters!)
they trusted that we would. They felt that, if we were their worthy
inheritors, we wouldn't brook any infringement of liberty without a
struggle. And they respected us too much to decide in advance
what liberties we would struggle for.
Secondly: The Ninth and 10th amendments postulate three equal
interests and powers -- the federal government, the states, and
the people. The 10th Amendment says clearly that any powers
not specifically "delegated" to the federal government or to the
states are reserved for the people. Us. Which means that the
"strict constructionalists" -- those who claim that the only liberties
available are those stated in the Constitution -- aren't being true to
that document; rather, they're trying to nullify it, ignore it. For the
Constitution says specifically that the people have powers that are
not specifically stated within its boundaries. The Founders wanted
the Constitution's boundaries to be flexible, permeable -- or they
would never have included and ratified the Ninth and 10th
amendments.
The Founders assumed we had a future they couldn't conceive or
imagine. They left room for that future -- our present -- in their
painstakingly chosen words, deliberating long and contentiously
over each sentence, attempting to leave spaces for you and me to
fill in. The Ninth and 10th amendments are the bravest, most
audacious, and most generous statements of any law anywhere.
Justice Anthony Kennedy's decision includes this quote (the
source of which I could not pin down): "It is a promise of the
Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the
government may not enter."
And that says it all. That's America. The rest is a shopping mall.
Justice Kennedy: "The petitioners are entitled to respect for their
private lives. The state cannot demean their existence or control
their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."
The state cannot control their destiny.
Thank you again. That's the ball game.
It's worth noting the most hilarious reaction to Lawrence v.
Texas. Kenneth Connor, an official of an Orwellian vagueness
called the Family Research Council (read: Be Straight or Die): "If
the hallmark is privacy and consent, as long as you have those
two, the court is saying you have no basis for legislation to the
contrary. Notwithstanding the public health issues involved when
you have sexual relations [wha? when you have sexual relations? I
don't wanna think about it ...], for example, between a mother and
her adult son."
This Connor person ... where his mind goes to ... right away ...
with no suggestion from anybody ... is sexual relations "between
a mother and her adult son."
Please, dear God, protect me from ever having to see that man
and his mother in the same room.
Will all this lead to legal gay marriage? I understand intellectually
why you'd want the right, but emotionally ... having struck out at
marriage twice (the second time is recent and still smarts, to say
the least), why you'd want the right to **** up the same way
straights do is your business, and you're welcome to it. Since I
was 14 years old, too many married women have made passes at
me for me to believe this is a right worth a struggle. But, as we
used to say on the street when I was a street kid, "Go f'y'self."
You've strengthened the spine of the Constitution, and I owe you
for that. For the rest ... welcome to the wonders of marriage.
Good luck.
Great post, ci. Thank you for sharing it.
Well, on the doctrinal level Christianity is strongly hostile toward homosexualism. But it is legal in most of the Christian countries (when I use this term I mean countries pertaining to the Western world where Christianity was the main civilization shaping factor; there are no Christian theocracies in the world, except Vatican), some of the latter even recognize gay marriage, while Islamic regimes imprison or even execute homosexuals. I am not talking about the open ones, I strongly doubt that you can find any in Iran, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan (under rule of Taliban), the special squads of police look for those being secretive about their sexual proclivities, reveal them and bring to "justice" (such a term is, IMO, incompatible with radical Islam). The same police squads persecute women that dare to consider themselves being equal with men, and these brave ladies also face death threat, but leaders of feminist movement supported by the Left prefer to deal with sexual harassment allegations toward the White Christian corporate bosses calling their female secretaries "baby".
But it is not a wonder that the clandestine Communists keep blind eye on Islamic outrages, while systematically scrutinizing Christianity: Islam is considered being the main ally of the Reds in the "freedom fighting" (aka terrorism) issue, it does all the dirty job the "fine intellectuals" are scared to do themselves, so any atrocities of its followers get very lenient and even supportive treatment.
steissd quote: "But it is not a wonder that the clandestine Communists keep blind eye on Islamic outrages, while systematically scrutinizing Christianity: Islam is considered being the main ally of the Reds in the "freedom fighting" (aka terrorism) issue, it does all the dirty job the "fine intellectuals" are scared to do themselves, so any atrocities of its followers get very lenient and even supportive treatment." What in hell do you think the US is doing with Saudi Arabia? If that's not "blind eye," please explain what it is? c.i.
U.S. is pressurizing the Saudi regime to perform democratic reforms that are supposed to decrease influence of radical Islam. Of course, taking into consideration long-term friendship and cooperation of these countries, persuasion techniques strongly differ from these applied to Iraq. But the goal is the same: to deprive Islamic militants of their financial and military facilities.
I am very far from alleging that Mr. George W. Bush and his team are members of the neo-Communist underground.
steissd wrote:... but leaders of feminist movement supported by the Left prefer to deal with sexual harassment allegations toward the White Christian corporate bosses calling their female secretaries "baby".
But it is not a wonder that the clandestine Communists keep blind eye on Islamic outrages, while systematically scrutinizing Christianity: Islam is considered being the main ally of the Reds in the "freedom fighting" (aka terrorism) issue, it does all the dirty job the "fine intellectuals" are scared to do themselves, so any atrocities of its followers get very lenient and even supportive treatment.
Steissd
These remarks are so far over the top, I damn near doubled over with laughter while reading them.
Keep up the good work.
A good laugh is worth more than gold.
He laughs best who laughs last. I shall laugh when the last Hizballah/Hamas fighter is hanged, using the last Iranian Islamic Revolution guardsman's gut as a rope.
I see a long, laughless, future for you, steissd.
ehBeth wrote:I see a long, laughless, future for you, steissd
No one could have expected that it would take several years to completely dismantle the Communist regime of the USSR either...
steissd wrote:He laughs best who laughs last. I shall laugh when the last Hizballah/Hamas fighter is hanged, using the last Iranian Islamic Revolution guardsman's gut as a rope.
Gotta be honest with ya, Steissd. I have a hard time imagining you laughing first, last, or anywhere in between. Your postings are among the most humorless commentary I've ever encountered in any Internet forum -- often lacking, by the way, not only humor, but humanity.
Any laughs I derive from your efforts -- and I derive considerable laughs from them -- come as an accident of what you've said -- not because of intentional effort on your part at wittiness.
Not that I cannot at least try to imagine you grinning as you watched some Palestinian being handed with a rope made of another man's guts. From the sound of your comments here in A2K, my guess is that such a sight would bring at least a smile to your face.
In any case, I guess this would be a good time to thank you for another laugh you have provided -- the one I got when reading about you "laughing last."
That was a knee-slapper.
Keep 'em comin'.
Steissd has humor, if you look hard enough you'll see it. Some of it falls flat but most of it just goes unoticed because it's understated.
Steissd also has humanity.
My one qualm is that every time he has spoken about Muslims I have hoped he was joking.
I'll take your word for it, Craven. You are more observant than I in these kinds of things.
Perhaps he is "joking" when he says some of the things he says about Muslims and Palestinians -- but it is a very strange sense of humor indeed.
In any case, it looks like my topic has run its course -- and this thread, like so many threads, is just doing a bit of rambling. I think I'll ease back.
And to show my heart is in the right place -- in case you're still here, Steissd, here is a bit of humor for you...
FRANK TO STEISSD: "Do you know your postings are seriously lacking in humor."
STEISSD BACK TO FRANK: "No, but if you hum a few bars, I'll try to fake it!"
Frank
Location, location. How can we who sit fat, dumb, happy and secure in the US hope to understand how it feels? To be in danger of being blown to bits every time we venture out. To be called to do battle on a continuing basis and also to have spent years battling the same enemy.
Taking all those factors in consideration would you have a kind word for that enemy or perhaps would you feel the same way as Steissd
As the saying goes walk a mile in my shoes.
au: sit back and wait for the slings & arrows; happened to me on another thread...BTW, thank you for your bravery
