I mean, if someone truly believes their god thinks homosexuality is a sin, and that he will punish homosexuals, and the country in general if we tolerate it, then why wouldn't they be justified in speaking out against it and trying to make life harder for those who are "sinning"?

And if you can't PROVE they're wrong... well, we've been down this road before. It's why you don't want to think about the tough questions and would rather just cover your ears and pretend they aren't being asked.

seems to enjoy using it so much.

Funny, that.

1. Same sex couples can still have and raise children by a variety of means.
2. Opposite-sex couples do not all have children, or intend to have children.

Her objection is NOT contingent upon marriage being procreative. She's a liar. And full of shit.
It's predicated upon the Christian arrogance that they own the definition of marriage. Sorry folks, the concept is far older.

She is a bigot.

their holy texts drip with bigotry.

because they don't or won't worship the same god in the same way as you do is one of the defining features of religion throughout history. Gotta rid the world of heathens, gentiles and infidels.

Of course, I'll probably be called an intolerant bigot for pointing that out.

To paint all religious people with the same brush requires bigotry.

I said the major religion's own texts drip with bigotry. Which, they do.

Which is what you generally do.

all are fundamentally bigoted in numerous ways just from reading their texts. There's nothing wrong with pointing that out. It needs to be done. Religion shouldn't get extra protection from criticism.

fundamentally bigoted.

There is nothing wrong with pointing that out. It needs to be done. Religionophobes shouldn't get extra protection from criticism.

You don't seem to be able to explain why calling out bigoted beliefs systems is bigotry.

Broadbrushing entire groups with negative attributes based on limited information, fear, loathing, prejudice, contempt, distrust and contempt is bigotry.

Saying that all the people that follow the 3 major abrahamic religions are bigots is just a beautiful example of that kind of broddbrushing.

It is bigotry. Not very mellow and not very democratic. In fact, pretty damn despicable.

I'm criticizing a belief system. There nothing broad rushing in saying that it requires bigotry to believe a bigoted belief system. It's pretty obvious.

What's damn despicable is dishonestly defending bigoted belief systems in the name of privilege.

And trying to parse the words so they don't say that is not going to work.

It must take some mighty strong cognitive dissonance and intellectual dishonesty to get to that place.

Does it come from a position of privilege and childhood indoctrination?

No one is immune and I suspect your point of privilege is way above that of most of the people on this earth.

have lots more privilege than most people on Earth. Which has nothing to so with the fact that believing the Bible requires bigotry because of the numerous explicit bigoted beliefs that form it's core. You don't argue that the Bible contains bigoted beliefs all over the place, and you certainly haven't pointed out how one believes in the Bible in any honest way as the word of god without subscribing to bigotry.

The only way not to is to cherry pick and choose, which isn't religion, it's your personal morality. It means that you don't believe the Bible is the word of god.

comparison to all the other rungs on that ladder. And if you are muslim or mormon or pagan or pretty much anything but christian, it can actually be a negative.

Your continuing to take the position that religious belief requires bigotry is your choice. It says much more about you than it does about those you sling that arrow at. You base it on a presumption that all those who believe in the bible must believe every word - a position only literalists take. And the only literalists I know are fundamentalists and people who take your position.

Cherry picking is just fine. It allows one to get the good fruit while discarding the rotten. You cherry pick, but only go for the rotten fruit.

It's too bad. I hope that over time you will actually mellow and come to embrace those with whom you have more in common than differences.

But for now, you are mired in a quicksand that I can't even imagine. It looks terribly painful from here and I hope that you are able to find some way to escape it.

It's completely dishonest to claim to believe a religious text is the basis of your belief system while simultaneously claiming it's not. Only the privilege of religion allows that idea to be remotely viable.

It allows the most privileged to have their cake and eat it too. To claim the privilege of affiliation while disregarding the nasty things the text promotes, and tacitly supporting and giving authority to them by even saying it's the word of god at all.

It also gives cover to all the bad parts in the Bible to say you believe in it when you really don't.

I never talked about literalism, just belief in the Bible. Most cherry puckers won't even go,that far, because there is no way to explain many parts of the Bible with the excuses of metaphor and interpretation etc. without realizing how weak and dishonest an argument it is, so they know just to say it's not the "true" part of the Bible.

I've escaped the quicksand. I'm a lot happier for it. Your pity is misplaced, not to mention condescending and rude. I like to point out things that cause suffering and
try to stop them. That doesn't make me militant or sad, it means I'm aware. Just because you disagree with me doesn't mean I'm a sad sack in need of saving. I've heard that line quite a few times when I was religious.

Nuance.

No nuance, just sarcasm.

Edit: we've discussed this several times in the past, but MellowDem just cut to the chase.

Glad to see you finding some like-minded people to hang out with.

Cherry picking is a good and valuable activity when one is confronted with a group of books that are contradictory and inconsistent.

That is if one is looking for the good stuff. If one is only picking out the rotten cherries, well they will end up with some very spoiled fruit indeed. I guess you could make mash out of it or just throw them at people you don't like.

you accuse of only cherry picking the good fruit?

Other than leaving you with a handful of rotten fruit?

homosexuality is a sin. Or that a woman should be subordinate to a man. For starters.

Atheists can be bigoted too, but it's not intrinsic/institutionalized into the lack of faith.

and misogynistic points of view. Some of them got them from their religious texts, others did not.

There are acclaimed atheists who are islamophobic and misogynistic. Surely they did not get their ideas from faith based books or texts.

And there are religious and non-religious people who have devoted their lives to civil rights and social justice, who fight daily against homophobia and misogyny. Some of them would say their intrinsic and institutionalized faiths inspire and lead them.

The problem is being able to distinguish the subgroups or individuals within a group and draw wide conclusions based on the beliefs and actions of some.

What would one call that?

I'm sure it was unintentional of you.

The point is that the sacred texts and institutionalized doctrines of religion contain rotten fruit in the first place. The sacred texts and institutionalized doctrines of atheism don't, because there aren't any.

The Bible, Torah and Koran all are very bigoted.

A person could cherry pick through them to pretend they aren't, but they are.

Unlike your statement that spares no one who believes in the major religions.

What amazing irony that you would accuse others of bigotry. But you can't even see that.

religiously-commanded ethnic cleansing.

I don't see a credible avenue by which someone can argue against this.

most inspired writing about love, compassion and justice that I have ever read.

Are you trying to make the argument that if someone has taken what they believe to be the positive message from these books and rejected what they believe to be incorrect, they are being hypocritical? Are you saying that in order to embrace one part they have to embrace the whole?

Are you a literalist?

the advocation and commission of genocidal, bigoted, ethnic cleansing described in the Bible is "so what"?

That's a new low, even for you, cbayer.

You have just chosen what you like so you can use it as you want.

No different than anyone else who cherry picks.

Those are some very serious blinders you have there. Very serious.

just to make sure, you know, that he was loved.

Also that whole 'wipe out the entire planet' thing was pretty compassionate. Also, a top score.


I'm genuinely curious why you are deflecting it back onto me, rather than enthusiastically sharing the love, compassion, and justice that the bible is supposedly rife with.

I have really read the bible and not seen anything about love, compassion and justice?

I know that you've see the other things. You have made that clear. I'm curious as to why you missed the good stuff.

BTW, I read Job at a particularly difficult time in my life and found it really valuable at that time. Even though I did not believe in god, I thought the message about what a person can bear was very important.

I'm deflecting it back on you because I vigorously disagree with your position.

"They also contain some of the most inspired writing about love, compassion and justice that I have ever read."

I said 'read more'. Because no, the bible does NOT contain 'some' of the 'most inspired writing about love, compassion and justice' that *I* have ever read.

I asked you to cite some. Quell surprise that you refuse.



How was Job useful to you? A apocryphal tale about a man being deliberately tortured by god, and innocent bystanders being murdered by god helped you understand 'how much a person can bear'? Ok, so you say that is valuable. Does it then fall under 'love, compassion and justice', or is your objection completely unrelated?

Your loss. There is some good stuff in there. Asking me to produce it approaches the ridiculous. Really.

My comment on job was merely a personal reflection and to say that even that which you find most heinous may send a positive message to some people who are different than you. Bottom line was that I thought I had reached the end of my rope. Reading job helped me see that I was no where near it.

It's like how I thought I understood poverty and privilege until I went to Kenya.

Because that's the core material of Job; torture and murder. According to that tale, not only did god take his wealth, it killed his entire family. Murder.

How does one gloss over that and come out with a useful nugget about perseverance? That a man whose family could be murdered, can still find love for the murderer, who simply relents and supplies him with a new family (different people)?


It's such an incredible horror overshadowing the entire story, that no, I don't see it as 'good stuff' or 'inspiration'.

I don't understand people who interpret that material like you do. To sift through bloody-minded outright slaughter of humans to find a nugget of positivity, and ignore the field of blood you had to wade through to get to it. That's fucking horrifying. I do not understand you.

It's like the people who talk to kids about the wonderful promise made to the world in the form of rainbows, and the uplifting story of Noah and the animals and the ark, and completely glossing over planetary genocide. Murder. Death. Drowning. Horrible, awful murder, elective murder, over a lack of mutual respect, essentially.

Horrifying.

It's not 'cherry picking' to recognize what the bible itself says and how much blood gets on your hand when you reach into that pile of murder and torture, and horror, sifting through for a bright spot.

Not being a believer, I read this in a way that really employed god as a metaphor. I suspect that is the way many read it. It's ok if you didn't get anything from it.

Right after that, I read ecclesiastes, which is probably the perfect antidote to job.

The fact that you don't understand people that interpret things differently than you is an issue for you, I guess. But it's a fact that others do interpret things differently. That's what makes life so interesting, imo.

You obviously see really horrific things where others see stories that inspire them or make them reflect in a way that they hadn't before.

Not sure why that's a problem. Do you really want everyone to have exactly the same experiences as you? Do you really want to convince others that the way you experienced a given event or story is the right or only way.

Life is full of times when you have to reach into piles of very difficult and ugly things to find the nuggets. Buddhist tenet #1: Life is hard. Get over it.

Having raised children, I think it's possibly one of the most important things that got me through some of their really bad times.

you break?

Because that's the scope of Job; deliberate torture to see if he fails.

I'd be worried, and seeking professional help if my kids were deliberately injuring me to the limits of destruction on our relationship.

The kind of situation you describe is not as simple as you paint it.

Again, your interpretation of job is your interpretation. Clearly it had a pretty profound impact on you. That is possibly because it is a powerful story that is open to interpretation and likely to be read differently by different people based on their own filters and state of mind at the time.

I hope you will not need to seek professional help, but that you are able to access it should it become necessary at some point in your life.

God murdered incidental bystanders to hurt him, to see if he would break. That's literally what it says. It also literally tortures him.

Innocent bystanders. Killed. That's not interpretation, it's objective fact. No amount of added nuance can obviate that fact. To get from Point A to Point B, god killed a bunch of innocent people. (Satan being his creation, and ever his implement for destruction, in this case, at god's direct command.)

It's stories, allegory, metaphor, etc.

Maybe you taking it as literal is why you find it hard to see that others might interpret it differently.

Literal interpretations of the bible almost always fail, imo, and those that insist on it rarely make their point.

torture and murder?

You could just pretend he lost his WEALTH and not people, and that he wasn't tortured, but that would obviate much of the story entirely.

You get it wrong.

Nowhere have I said that the story doesn't include torture and murder. Nowhere.

"It's stories, allegory, metaphor, etc.

Maybe you taking it as literal is why you find it hard to see that others might interpret it differently.

Literal interpretations of the bible almost always fail, imo, and those that insist on it rarely make their point."

I was trying to give you an avenue to demonstrate your claim, that this could be allegory or metaphor. If it's not torture and murder, what is it? If it is torture and murder, then you are wasting my time, because my assessment holds.

Sorry to waste your time. Feel free to move along and find someone more educable.

You have taken a conversation with cbayer - when you dare to disagree with her - to its inevitable conclusion.

in some people's minds. When is murder not murder? When god does it, apparently. Or rather, the murder can be completely ignored to salvage some 'beautiful truth' out of it.

The fact that the poster couldn't offer any specific 'love, beauty or truth' passages speaks volumes about actual comprehension of the contents of the bible.

Like finding a human skin, skull, and bone lamp 'lovely to read by', at Hannibal lecter's garage sale.

God didn't murder or take anything away from Job. He allowed Satan to do so. That's not an argument for the righteousness of testing Job, but it's still a pretty big distinction.

and was pointing that gun at someone else, and was saying "I'm going to kill you" to that other person, and I make no effort whatsoever, and hell, even make a bet with the person with the gun, that wouldn't make me criminally responsible?

that the other party ONLY kill Job's loved ones, and not kill Job himself?

That's usually called Felony Murder in US law.

he wasn't culpable. it's just a mild correction to the story. I never said that the trials of Job were good or right or just.

Isaiah 45

I form the light, and create darkness:
I make peace, and create evil:
I the Lord do all these things.

The whole story reads like an old time version of Dangerous Liasons.

It's terrible. But it's a distinction in the story, and I tend to be very exacting when it comes to literature.

Then religion should begin to lose some of its aura, shouldn't it? Should you continue to speak of it so reverently?

And if religion in the PAST has made such huge mistakes ... couldn't even our new and better modern Christianity be making some too? Errors that it just hasn't noticed yet?

Given the record of this genre in the past, most of us are not so entirely sanguine as you are about even cherry-picked "modern" Christianity.

that you would continue to dishonestly misrepresent what someone else has said here, just so you can pull your standard family shtick of accusing others of being bigots. And even more ironic, since you've explicitly agreed with what was actually said (i.e. that the sacred texts of the major religions are full of bigotry).

I defy you to show us the "amazing inclusiveness" in the Bible that even comes close to the level of genocidal bigotry.

"To believe in the major religions requires bigotry"? So you believe that Martin Luther King was a bigot, to give just one obvious example.

Painting all members of a diverse group with the same brush is the essence of bigotry.

to answer that in the negative. As long as they still perpetuate their religion's institutionalized assessment that homosexuality is a 'sin', then it is founded on bigotry, regardless of whether followers ACT upon that consciously or not.

You condemn bigotry, in a bigoted manner. How hypocritical of you

That makes me a bigot.

Drop the false equivalency.

For example, you are equating believers with members of the KKK.

No, you are opposing bigotry, but in a bigoted manner.

And I stand by my previous comment -- you are equating believers with the KKK.

"You condemn bigotry, in a bigoted manner. How hypocritical of you"

I showed that statement is pure nonsense. It is not bigotry to point out bigotry. I can point to line item bigoted items in the major faiths that were discussed upthread. If I couldn't, then that would be a problem for me, I suppose. But I can. (And have elsewhere in this thread.) So that means pointing out a bigoted foundation to a particular faith, isn't bigotry.

Even the poster you objected to upthread, is an invalid claim on your part. "To believe in the major religions requires bigotry"

If the bigotry is foundational/institutionalized in the faith, it is not bigotry to point that out.

Does that make the objection clearer?

And now you are pretending that you did not. Because, after all, you clearly want to express bigotry, while not admitting that you are a bigot.

You are now soloing in this conversation.

one to see in plain daylight.

There was no equivalency made between religious believers and the KKK outside your mind.

is to just call other people bigots at every turn. And if they have to make shit up out of thin air to do it, they will. They don't even realize that everyone else sees through their shit and their lack of evidence for anything they say, which is even more pathetic.

Also why, you can be sure it was alerted on, and survived a jury anyway.

Really seems to make them mad when you make the plain, factual observation that there is bigotry in the original source code of multiple mainstream religions. In plain text. It isn't a mistranslation.

Granted, the United States Constitution did too, but we amended it, something you probably can't do to core religious texts supposedly the direct word of god. (Well, the Mormons did it in '78 to let black people in, but their faith HAS an amendment process, more or less.)

"And he said unto them, Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean." Acts 10:28

But presumably the verses that deal with bigotry are more significant than the ones preaching brotherhood.

Bryant

Religion doesn't require bigotry, but it often foments it. Provides a safe haven for it. Protects it. Tacitly supports it. Provides a forum for it. Etc., etc., etc.

Religion does do some of the things you say.

It also fights bigotry, promotes civil rights, fights for social justice.

Bigots are bigots, be they believers or not. Liberals and progressives are liberals and progressives, be they believers or not.

But I think any of the positive things you mention could be had without the religion and without the mythology and without the dogma and without the controlling, intrusive paternalism and without the authoritarianism.

But even if we could know, would it matter? If there are good people doing good things in the name of religion, I think we should support and celebrate them

It is possible to do this while fighting against the groups that are using it to harm others.

You just display an incredible double standard when you do. If you're OK with that, then please proceed.

And that can be very ugly indeed.

...purest and most theoretical sense, may not require bigotry. For whatever reasons, when it comes to the practical application of the precepts and tenets, many of the loudest practitioners are the most guilty of a variety of bigoted actions.

Theory and reality often part ways.

Last edited Tue Mar 11, 2014, 01:40 PM - Edit history (1)