Jason
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Post by Jason on Jun 4, 2007 11:27:56 GMT -4
The question then becomes, does the good outweigh the bad?
We may not be able to answer that question, but perhaps we can come up with some ideas of how it could be answered (some objective tests that could be made, for instance).
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Post by gillianren on Jun 4, 2007 16:34:26 GMT -4
"Discriminate against," Bert, just so you know.
I don't think you can look at things as outweighing each other. I think you have to look at them all. Some aspects are good. Some are bad. The ones that are good, we should admire. The ones that are bad, we should try to change.
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Post by BertL on Jun 4, 2007 16:35:56 GMT -4
"Discriminate against," Bert, just so you know. I don't think you can look at things as outweighing each other. I think you have to look at them all. Some aspects are good. Some are bad. The ones that are good, we should admire. The ones that are bad, we should try to change. My point exactly. Oh - and, thanks for the correction. Every new rule learned is a step closer towards perfect English languistic skills.
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Post by gillianren on Jun 4, 2007 20:41:26 GMT -4
You're quite welcome. Your English is so good that I sometimes forget it isn't your native language. (As an additional tip, the word is "linguistic." I believe it comes from the Latin, originally, and English just shifted the "i" to "a" sometimes.)
We want to place value judgements on everything, and it's simply not always possible to call something "good" or "bad." Good how? Good for whom? There are lots of different questions.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jun 4, 2007 20:50:34 GMT -4
But I don't think it's good when a religion teaches people to (basically) discriminate (against) homosexuals
Okay so here I go to throw the cat amoungst the pigeons. I disagree, to a degree. When it comes to inside the church I not only say that discrimination is correct, but vital. Outside of the church, it doesn't matter, if a non-church member wants to do whatever they want to do, then it isn't anyone's consern but theirs, but in the church it is. It is even a great concern when it comes to the leadership of the church. Of course I'm not just saying that only Homosexuals should be barred from leadership, but anyone that is outside the "rules" of the church. It should be treated exactly the same way as a leader who is in an adulterous affair, or in physical relationship while unwed, or is a thief, or a drunkard or a.....
When it comes to the church we have a set of rules that are said to have been given by God and have remained unchanged from 1700 years (whether or not they have been obeyed for 1700 is another story) and how can the members of the church be expected to obey those rules, and thus be in line with God, if the leadership is busy flauting them, the simple fact of the matter is that we can't. We hold up our Police, our Politicians, or Judges, and our other profesionals up to the standards and rules of their professions, demanding that they obey the rules that they place or enforce on us. Shouldn't that same standard apply in the church? Shouldn't the people that preach about living by God's rules from the alter actually be living lives that are in accordance to God's rules themselves? Wouldn't anything else be hypocitical? As such it's quite obvious that anyone that choses a lifestyle outside of those rules bars themselves from the positions where they would be teaching and encouraging others to ingnore the rules as well. It's that simple.
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Post by gillianren on Jun 4, 2007 23:54:10 GMT -4
Would you be surprised to know that they haven't been as unchanging as all that? Very, very little study is required to find out just how much some of those "unshakable" tenets of faith have changed in that 1700-year period.
Further, it is surely the point of Christianity to try to emulate, well, Christ, right? To follow his teachings and do as he would, right? Jesus is not recorded in the Bible as having said word one about homosexuality. Paul did, but Paul never even met Jesus. And, as Jimmy Carter so ably points out, given Jesus' recorded behaviour, "what Jesus would do" is something along the lines of "work in an AIDS hospice among the poor, sick, and outcast."
Further, laws change as society's values change. Fifty years ago, there were quite a lot of people citing the Bible for their belief that black and white people shouldn't marry. A hundred years before that, it was slavery. It's all interpretation based on nearly two thousand years of mistranslation anyway.
Also, who in modern Christianity obeys the rules in Leviticus about not making your garment of two kinds of fiber? Or sowing your field with two kinds of seed?
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jun 5, 2007 0:47:03 GMT -4
I generally agree with Wolf. Churches need to draw lines on some issues and stay on one side of them. An issue like homosexuality is one of them. It goes straight to the deepest parts of human identity and relationships. If God doesn't have an opinion on this then He doesn't really care much about people. An issue like whether you should make your garment out of two kinds of fiber is simply not on the same level.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jun 5, 2007 0:59:08 GMT -4
Would you be surprised to know that they haven't been as unchanging as all that?
The rules haven't changed. People's interpretation or willingness to follow them have, but the actual rules are the same today as they were for the first church. Don't confuse the rules themselves with the way some churches have governed them over the ages.
Further, it is surely the point of Christianity to try to emulate, well, Christ, right? To follow his teachings and do as he would, right? Jesus is not recorded in the Bible as having said word one about homosexuality. Paul did, but Paul never even met Jesus.
Paul might differ on if he meet Jesus or not, however regardless, the church was founded on the documents written by the Aposotles and Paul was recognised as one by the early church, including the Disciples themselves.
And, as Jimmy Carter so ably points out, given Jesus' recorded behaviour, "what Jesus would do" is something along the lines of "work in an AIDS hospice among the poor, sick, and outcast."
And as I pointed out in my posting, there is nothing wrong with that, but there is a difference between working to help people and having people outside of God's will in positions of power and teaching others.
Further, laws change as society's values change.
Yes society does, for good and ill. However for those that belive in God and God's rules, they are not up for change on the whim of man.
Fifty years ago, there were quite a lot of people citing the Bible for their belief that black and white people shouldn't marry. A hundred years before that, it was slavery.
And people will continue to try and intepert them scriptures their way, just as some try it with the Koran and so forth. Heck people try and intepret Lord of the Rings their own way, it's human nature, it doesn't make those people right when they did it.
It's all interpretation based on nearly two thousand years of mistranslation anyway.
A rather bold statment. Considering that we have have over 10,000 handwritten copies of the Gospel and other NT books that date to only 50-60 years after the originals, as well as documants such as the Dead Sea Scrolls which back up the translations of the OT, have you got proof that the texts have been mistranslated for the 2000 years in such a way as to have lost the main meaning of verses?
Also, who in modern Christianity obeys the rules in Leviticus about not making your garment of two kinds of fiber? Or sowing your field with two kinds of seed?
And if any Christian followed any of the Law from Leviticus I'd be rather worried for them. The Christian is dead to the Law and so does not follow it, in fact to do so is to quite literally deny the very principle of the Christian Faith, the death and resurection of Christ. Try reading Romans. Christ stated he came to fufil the Law, and Paul shows how his death and resurection did just that. To follow the Law still means the throwing away of that and returning to obeying the Law, and not just the Law, but the entire law, including the Sarifices. Doing that denies that Christ's scarifice was enough, a very bad place for a Christian to get themselves into.
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Post by gillianren on Jun 5, 2007 3:30:06 GMT -4
I've known quite a lot of Christians who believed that you had to follow the laws of the Old Testament. Invariably, they failed to believe me about the whole "two kinds of seed" thing.
In fact, no one knows for sure who wrote any of the Bible. We do know that there were actually more transcription errors in the early days of the Christian church, because many of those doing the copying couldn't in so many words write. They were basically drawing the books, so a lot of errors crept in very quickly.
Paul, too, said a lot of things that don't get followed anymore--assuming, of course, that Paul actually wrote those letters, which is not actually that safe an assumption for some of them, apparently.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jun 5, 2007 11:30:54 GMT -4
PhantomWolf, many Christians still put a great deal of stock in the Ten Commandments as a good moral code and read the Old Testament for its moral lessons, despite their acceptance that the Law of Moses does not really apply to them. And remember that Faith without works is dead. I agree with you that in the past the Bible has often been misinterpreted to provide support for any number of wrongful causes.
Gillian, while many biblical scholars find it unlikely that all the books of the Bible were actually authored by those tradition says authored them; as you said, the fact is we don't really know for sure either way. It's possible that tradition is accurate in their authorship. Being Mormon I maintain that "many plain and precious truths" that the church in the first century had have been lost, but I also hold that what is in the earliest manuscripts of the Bible we have has been preserved in overarching substance, if not in exact words, and that the Bible itself is still a great help to the world.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jun 5, 2007 19:56:00 GMT -4
I've known quite a lot of Christians who believed that you had to follow the laws of the Old Testament. Invariably, they failed to believe me about the whole "two kinds of seed" thing. In fact, no one knows for sure who wrote any of the Bible. We do know that there were actually more transcription errors in the early days of the Christian church, because many of those doing the copying couldn't in so many words write. They were basically drawing the books, so a lot of errors crept in very quickly. Paul, too, said a lot of things that don't get followed anymore--assuming, of course, that Paul actually wrote those letters, which is not actually that safe an assumption for some of them, apparently. By this standard we might as well throw out all history before the printing press. Can you prove that Ceaser wrote his tales of the conquest of Gaul? Can you prove that they were translated correctly? How about Plato or Homer's works? These are some of the most common handwritten manuscripts we have, and they pale in comparasion to those we have for the NT. Quite simply if we put all of history to the same standard you apparantly want the NT judged under, we might as well throw it all out because the NT is the best and most numerous of all ancient texts. As to the authorship, in most of the of the books of the NT the Author identifies themselves, in fact in all of Paul's writtening the author claims to be Paul, though usually the letter was scribed by a companion it is far from uncommon to see the words such as "See here I am Paul writting in my own hand" or something similar where he has attacted his own writting to the scribed letter. Only The Letter to the Hebrews really is in doubt as to the original authorship. PhantomWolf, many Christians still put a great deal of stock in the Ten Commandments as a good moral code and read the Old Testament for its moral lessons, despite their acceptance that the Law of Moses does not really apply to them.I have no problem with it being used as a moral lesson, I think that is why it is there for the most part. Nor do I have a problem with using the Ten Commandments, in fact Jesus reconfirmed 9 of them as ways for his followers to live by (the only one he didn't was the Sabbath which was insituted as a Covanent between God and the Israelites.) However in using the OT as a moral lesson, we still need to remember that the Christian is not and should not be bound by the Mosic Laws and to do so actually denies Christ, a very dangerous position for a Christian.
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Post by gillianren on Jun 5, 2007 23:49:50 GMT -4
The difference is, I don't use Plato to tell me what a moral life is. I don't use Plato to tell me how to see God. If we have those words wrong, which in many cases we do, does it substantially matter if we follow them by rote?
Further, Jesus himself (Christ is a title, not a name, and should therefore be "the Christ") followed Mosaic law. It's in the letters of probably Paul that we encounter the belief that Christians don't need to. Jesus himself said very little on the subject, and what he did clearly indicates that considering any group to be outcast is wrong. At least, that's what I get out of "The Good Samaritan."
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jun 6, 2007 11:25:32 GMT -4
The difference is, I don't use Plato to tell me what a moral life is. I don't use Plato to tell me how to see God. If we have those words wrong, which in many cases we do, does it substantially matter if we follow them by rote? What particular words do you feel have most distorted the original intent of the authors, Gillian? Perhaps if we get more specific here we can come to more of an agreement. A mere quibble. Titles that are particularly familiar to the reader can be used without "the" in many cases. You can say "Elizabeth the Queen" but "Queen Elizabeth" is just as acceptable. "The President George W. Bush " becomes "President Bush". Jesus Christ "the anointed savior" works the same way. You can say "Jesus the Christ" but "Jesus Christ" is just as acceptable. By the Christian viewpoint, the Mosaic law was not fulfilled until Jesus' death. Only after his resurrection was it no longer binding. Therefore Jesus and his apostles obeyed Mosaic law before his death. The application of the Mosaic law to non-jews wasn't an issue until Paul began to proselite among the gentiles, so it's not surprising that the issue didn't come up during Christ's lifetime (Jesus himself said "I am sent to none but the house of Israel" although he did make occasional exceptions). The message of the Good Samaritan is indeed that you should love your neighbor and that everyone is your neigbor, yes, but loving your neighbor is not the same as loving everything your neighbor does. In fact, implicit in the parable is a condmnation of the Pharasee and Levite who passed on the other side of the road and didn't help the beaten victim. Jesus was very merciful during his lifetime, but those he forgave were also admonished to "go and sin no more."
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Post by gillianren on Jun 6, 2007 15:47:36 GMT -4
What particular words do you feel have most distorted the original intent of the authors, Gillian? Perhaps if we get more specific here we can come to more of an agreement. Well, for one, James VI of Scotland, I of England, is known to have, shall we say, heavily influenced his translators, getting them to add stronger condemnations of witchcraft and homosexuality. (They were also using texts that were known to be pretty inaccurate to begin with, or anyway are known now. But anyway.) Comparisons of the King James version and translations not based on it show clear differences, though I fully acknowledge that the language of the King James is prettier, and I wish a better translation were half so poetic. Also note that some of the stronger admonitions (most notably, I think, "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"--in better translations, it's "poisoner") are in the Old Testament. The Scottish Kirk of the time was just as firm about the Old Testament as the new. Yes. But just calling him "Christ" isn't. "The Christ," or "Jesus Christ." But not "Christ." See, there's another problem I have, right there. There is no one "Christian viewpoint" and hasn't been for some 1500 years. In fact, I'd say a strong case could be made that there has never been one Christian viewpoint, given the constant schisming and claims of heresy in the early Church. However, once the Eastern Orthodox church split off from the Catholic church, any hope of a single viewpoint died. Still, it doesn't stop many, many sects from claiming that what they believe is the one Christian viewpoint. From an outside perspective, that's pretty arrogant. True, including at least one Samaritan, who made a snappy comeback to Jesus Himself. (You mean "proselytize." Also, "Jews" should be capitalized. Always.) However, the point remains that all Jesus Himself said about the law was that the two most important commandments in all the Torah were "I am the Lord thy God and thou shalt have no other Gods above me" and "love thy neighbor as thyself." Oh, and He worked on the Sabbath. He didn't change it, though. It's a little more specific than that, you know, and in order to understand it properly, you have to understand the implications of "Samaritan" to a Jewish audience of the time. As it says in Don't Know Much About the Bible, an excellent primer for Biblical studies, the modern-day equivalent would essentially be "the Good Palestinian Terrorist." Also remember that Jesus Himself never said that homosexuality was a sin. Clearly, adultery was; that's the woman to whom He most famously said "go forth and sin no more." So we may safely assume that sex outside of marriage, or at least that harms another's marriage, is wrong. However, He also said that, in Heaven, there would be no marriage nor giving in marriage. And your church doesn't agree with that one.
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reynoldbot
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Post by reynoldbot on Jun 6, 2007 18:02:02 GMT -4
I find discrimination indefensible and completely unjustifiable. The discrimination of homosexuals by Christianity and other religions is exactly as indefensible as any other kind of discrimination. To blindly discriminate just because a book tells you to is ridiculous and shameful. I don't care what your argument is or how you plan to tell me I'm wrong. Nobody (in most countries anyway) is enslaved to their religion and they don't have to discriminate just because their religion tells them to.
Nearly all problems I have with religion have to do with what people do in the name of religion, but this issue is different. I could never belong to a religion that supported intolerance. I think its despicable that so many people are still willing to cling to these old prejudices. If Jesus was preaching love and acceptance, Christians sure have a funny way of practicing it.
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