Right.

Anybody of a meek nature look away now.

This aint gonna be pretty.

And I ain’t gonna be nice about it either.

CelticRose, on this subject I am afraid you are a peddlar of the utmost drivel. It is offensive in its nature. It is offensive in its assumption that your readers are too simple to be able to see the inherent inconsistencies in it. It is offensive because it seems to actually support a man offering his (female) children to be gang raped so that his adult male guests may be spared. And it is offensive just because it is offensive, but is presented as some well thought out tract on a history.

So. Now I am going to call your guff.

Normal, patronising drivel from those who choose only to believe what they believe and to hellfire and damnation for the rest of us lesser mortals and second class humans. Construct an argument, ... or just keep quiet.

But since you are going to use that sort of patronising tone, I feel perfectly at liberty to do so now myself. You asked for it.

Let me paraphrase this for you so that you might see the important parts close together since you are so obviously unable to keep several things in your closeminded head at one time.

Bible says wickedness in story, Lot defines wickedness in story, somehow or other the two wickednesses in the one story are not linked, despite absence of other wickedness. Talk about selective interpretation! I think I’ll need to get a picture of me naked from behind so you can see I don’t zip up the back! First mark of bigotted zealotry is when the brain departs through the hole in the wall where the light comes in.

Paragon of virtue this Lot guy, then, eh! I suppose, then, that you are advocating that it’s a lesser sentence for raping a woman than for raping a man in this bible thingy you want us all to understand better. What planet do you live on?

It’s just less bad on your daughters whom you are responsible for than for male guests who have more ability to look after themselves, in this bible thingy you want us all to understand better.

Ah. OK. I see. NOT! The connection is established, (albeit with a huge big massive ‘might’ fired in there which I see you choose to ignore) but the sinfullness lies only in the derivation from the action and not in the action itself.  Somehow there is a connection and there is also no connection at the same time. Whit? And no. I didn’t come up the clyde in a banana skin either.

This is parallel universe stuff. While parallel universes may be possible, they are still at the Dr. Who stage in our technology. And please please please don’t suggest that the good doctor’s tardis might have actually been the bright star in the heavens which the wise men followed.

Oh well, that disproves the ancient and the current link between the word sodom, or Sodom, and homosexuality. NOT

Which proves precisely what exactly? That the Bible is written by a whole load of men with a whole load of interpretations which are unique to each of them? And we are supposed to give this book any credence at all. I think I am beginning to understand this bible thingy very well. thanks for your help. I now know to completely and utterly ignore it.

Oh yes, and I came down in the last shower too! How can you justify saying that there is no proper connection between the bible and its interpreters (otherwise known as Christians), and sodomy as a sin, and then tell us that it is exactly the case, and has been for the past 1500 years, and expect us to pay any attention to you at all, except to tell you that you are a person of the most simplistic silliness.

Oh well, that disproves it, then. You’ll clearly not be very gay then! You’ll not have had your head kicked in as I have because someone tells you that you have no place on the planet. You’ll not have had people stand outside your work and wait for you so they can kick the living sh1t out of you as my mate did. You’ll not have had to bury your son because he was murdered for his inbuilt and undenable sexuality.

Are you too s*****d (I’m not allowed to use the actual word even though you are allowed to insult me beyond belief) to understand that; a) there is a connection in the bible, and; b) even if there wasn’t an actual one, the religious right tell us often enough that there is, and call for our destruction on that basis ... which is what fuels the fires in the hearts of the idiots who try to prosecute our removal from the planet.

And can you not get that your own admission that you don’t believe much of it any more means that you should not be trying to defend its abberations which you acknowledge wholeheartedly. Any defence or seeking to foster a better knoweldge of something as it is written and which you do not accept on that basis, is ethically fraudulent and morally bankrupt.

So, wait a minute. He was prepared to hand over his daughters so that his guests didn’t get buggered? And you admit that that was the culture of the time. But you don’t admit that buggery was a leading cause of the ascription of sinfulness (otherwise known as wickedness) to Sodom, and therefore the leading cultural value which rendered the city to have been deemed wicked and sinful? Do you have any sense of logic? Or is logic just an inconvenient and mutable trifle in the bible? It is very logical for Lot to prioritise his guests over his daughters, but the logic of the interpretation of sinfulness is not valid when it comes to anal sexual activity between men?

Tis true. You didn’t. Neat that. The way you step back from the argument having caused a whole load of offence. Bit like the sort of tactic Fnord uses. And for your information, as explained in the later exchange with ZodRau, I reacted to a universe of semantic propositions encapsulated in the word, which, granted, might be a little to much for you to comprehend.

And it’s all too apparent thus far that Fnord, despite having been invited to, and despite having posted since, has not yet seen fit to confirm or deny this. Which in my opinion makes him as much of a stirrer.

Doubtless Gareth will pm me now (again) and tell me to calm down. But when it comes to a fight for my right to be, I will neither calm down, nor shut up. I will stand on the line and repel all the repellant nonsense that is thrown at me and those like me. Hitler eugenecists, queerbashers etc alike, beware. Funny how that sounds like the underpinning values of AFF!

Nope. Much as I like your basic premise atypical, I am afraid that that it needs a rider, that each person must do good. Sorry to be so picky, but I just feel quite alert on this just now

I am glad the dark ages are over.

1. The Old Testament said the Canaanites were to be annihilated. The New Testament says they are to receive the Good News along with the rest of the planet. This time (somewhere in the NT) there is no male no female no free no slave no Jew no Gentile in the Kingdom of God.

2. You don't hand over your daughters as a substitute offering to a sex crazed mob. Lot preceded the Ten Commandments and Leviticus. By later standards in the Old Testament what Lot did was wrong. By later standards the daughters by getting Lot drunk and having incestuous kids with him were wrong.

It is so easy to pick and choose extreme cases of behavior in the Bible esp. the Old Testament (recall one story in Judges I think in which a Levite's concubine is raped and murdered and he sends one of 12 pieces of her to each tribe of Israel as a call to action), but the rules of the Old and New Testaments do not make them right.



Let me leave you with one last thought

They will know we are Christians by our love.
(Not our hate)

It is regretful that we have something on the currency and in the pledge of allegiance that divides rather than unites. People think if they take God off those things we are less of a country. Having those things doesn't make us any more holy! It is a sham. We can't have an official religion but we try to have one on coins and in the pledge? Hypocrites. Go the whole way or not at all.

I don't think I've ever been involved in a flamewar on this site, not yet anyway. And if you cared enough to look at the context in which I made the above comments, you'd see that far from "demonising people" I was actually speaking in jest. And by the way, quoting other people's posts out of context in a different thread to support your own agenda is, one might think, the action of a flamewar veteran.

You know ... you are the second person to have claimed the speaking in jest defence today. As for not being involved in flame wars ... have a look at the evidence above, and when you have stopped blushing, wateva!!!!

Oh, and if you do ... really, really, do ... want to crack jokes. Don't use me for them. Ta.

Evidence, evidence, what evidence? lol
You're right I am blushing, with embarrassment...for you.
I'd be honoured if you'd quote these extremely offensive remarks in your attempts to get me banned.
Actually, there's no need. I'm leaving. Was that a sigh of relief I heard?
Strange as it seems I really do dislike flamewars; and I think if I stay we'll find ourselves in one.
All the best buckthesystem... it's been fun.

I don't want to get mired in this topic (I'm overtired of adolescent-atheists ((that's an attitude, not an age)) on the interwebs as it is, and equally wearied by fundamentalists of any hue), but if I may, buckthesytem, I'll ask you to bear in mind that it is fallacious to judge the standards of distant cultures by your own.  We are talking about a desert people, who struggled to stay alive in a harsh landscape.  For [whichever biblical character it was and I make no apology for not even scrolling back to find out], hospitality to the stranger was critical (arab cultures could not countenance denying your enemy water).  Meanwhile, women were treated in ways which would not be acceptable today (that's decre... sorry, wrong thread).  There are many valid arguments against theism in its common manifestations (and just as many valid arguments for the overall social good of religion), but the fallacious condemnation of an alien culture's failure to conform to your standards is not a valid argument for anything.

It's also fallacious to insist that the wickedness of Sodom was homosexuality.  That the guests were male is incidental - that you, from your own distant perspective, regard male guests as less worthy than female children is also incidental.  The wickedness identified in the bible is the scant regard of Sodomites for the common courtesies of that distant culture.  I do not know (and barely care, truth be told) why it should later have become associated with male homosexuality.  But it is appallingly fallacious to condemn the bible (any bible), let alone its message (which is love, peace and understanding, after all) just because of some of the people who've read it.

Oh, and while I'm (still) here, dagnabit I refuse to relegate my religion to the realms of 'Other'.  How offensive is that??  Either list them all or not at all.

Jiggeryqua ... I think you've missed the point entirely. I was reacting to a current usage, which was then supported by people on the basis of the bible and its interpretations. I argued against those interpretations and their use in the modern world and in the course of this argument. Therefore none of that is fallacious from my persepctive. I didn't bring it up. Fnord did. Followed by Cindyc and Heyoka. But as you have found to your cost on another thread, Fnord has a habit of nip and run as I have said and cannot be pinned down on things.

So I'm afraid that criticising me on the basis of the arguments I made is pointless.

Lastly, while I do take your point about understanding distant cultures on their own terms, I will actually stand up for my belief that in no society can it be acceptable that a child can be offered up for gang rape. I don't care what society or how distant. No father can be judged to be a good father if he offers his daughters up in that way. It is, and always has been counter to the parental imperative. And the parental imperative has always been recognised, whether in mythical or factual accounts.

Remember, if you please, that the god squad would very happily have us all live by the standards in the bible. And I aint buying into that nonsense, if it includes persecuting people for being the way 'god' made them, or that a father should prize his own social standing above the right of his children not to be raped. If those standards ever did exist in that way, they can stay there, and any of those bible thingys can be consigned to the bin of history if that is the sort of moral framework they propose to us.

It is utterly flawed logic to propose the bible as a sacred text, but then only to be selective about what you want to take from it. The logical thing, in that case would be to re-write the blessed thing with an acceptable set of moral and ethical guidelines. But unfortunately nobody has the bollocks to do that. Instead, the fictitians in the world prefer to stick by the lie that the book is a reflecter of general good. This allows them to selectively pick, then run and hide.

It won't wash.

B.C before ceaser
A.D year of domination

B.C. == "Before Christ"
A.D. == "Annō Dominī " ~~ "Year of Our Lord"

B.C.E == "Before Common Era"
C.E. == "Common Era" (The period of time coinciding with the Christian era.)

H.E. == "Holocene Era"

http://agards-bible-timeline.com/q4_ad_bc_ce.html

oh for fu....

See, this is what happens when I don't actually READ a thread

now, let's see, we're in the religion forum, so the three strikes rule is in effect. Two reports so far, so that's two gone...

If I get one more complaint about this thread, it's locked, savvy?

debating religion aint no fun,its pointless. State your belief, get in get out,its done.There are/have been too many cultures/religions in the history of humans. Each belief is personal.............

I like that concept it is very simple.

As a part of the great European Folkway, Asatru has a number of characteristic beliefs. Some of these are:


The world is good. Prosperity is good. Life is good, and we should live it with joy and enthusiasm.


We are free to shape our lives to the extent allowed by our skill, courage, and might. There is no predestination, no fatalism, no limitations imposed by the will of any external deity.


We do not need salvation. All we need is the freedom to face our destiny with courage and honor.


We are connected to all our ancestors. They are a part of us. We in turn will be a part of our descendants.


We are also linked to all our living kin - to our families and to every man and woman rooted in the tribes of Europe. They are our "greater family."


We are connected to Nature and subject to its laws. The Holy Powers often express themselves in Nature's beauty and might.


We believe that morality does not depend on commandments, but rather arises from the dignity and honor of the noble-minded man and woman.


We do not fear the Holy Powers, or consider ourselves their slaves. On the contrary, we share community and fellowship with the Divine. The Holy Powers encourage us to grow and advance to higher levels.


We honor the Holy Powers under the names given them by our Germanic/Norse ancestors.


We practice Asatru by honoring the turning of the seasons…the ancestors…the Divine…and ourselves - in everyday life.


http://www.runestone.org/