Sometimes in the world of politics, you describe things in terms that are way too complex because you want to place them in a proper historical context. Right now I would like to use one simple word to describe something I just read: crazy.
Ladies and gentleman, Guy Randall Adams, writing on Alan Keyes’ Renewamerica about the “Secularization of America”.
Logic and common sense has all but disappeared in America in some circles. For example, homosexuality is not “gay.” There’s nothing ‘gay’ about it. It is a lifestyle of misery, loneliness and extraordinarily high medical risk. All of nature tells us it is wrong. God is not schizophrenic. If you believe in God, you’d agree that it’s impossible to believe that God made a mistake. Otherwise He’s imperfect, and at the worst, a liar. How can God call homosexuality an abomination and order us not to engage in it and then turn around and create a small group of people who can do nothing but engage in it? If you’re an evolutionist, the continuation of the species doctrine proves that Bruce cannot, and should not, mate with Steve. Consider that over thirty years ago America was able to get two spacecraft, each going approximately 17,000 miles per hour, to dock perfectly in space using technologically male and female engineering, yet we can’t seem to see that God did not intend male-to-male docking, so to speak. If it doesn’t fit, you must quit.
It gets more deranged from there. But the question I want to ask is - how can we get more Republicans to admit their true feelings like “Guy” does here?
Now they’re both awaiting moderation
Well I won’t comment on the rest of the nuttiness, but wrt male-to-female spacecraft docking at 17,000 mph, I will point out that thousands of male-to-male dockings occur every day at speeds of up to 1.34 million miles per hour.
Now if science could address apartment floors that let in the extreme bass and treble but leave out all the midrange, I would be happier. Shrieka-boom, Shrieka-boom. Garg, it’s only 1:30pm….
“All of nature tells us it’s wrong”
Homosexual behavior is common throughout the animal kingdom. The perponderance of this behavior increases with higher order species.
Religion is becoming more transparant in its falseness as the facts of the universe get exposed.
I supposed it’s being moderated because I used the word homosexual in a comment on a thread about homosexuals.
Computers: can’t live wth ‘em — can’t - the hell with it.
Frank is getting more and more and more transparent in his denial of observable fact as the fact of his need to attack blindly without regard to wit or intelligence becomes exposed.
Hooray! I made a funny!
Seriously though Frank, you act as though the acknowledgement that science does not now have all the answers is a major failing. On the contrary, it is its willingness to admit its limits that allows it to grow beyond them. Science is flexible, bendible to suit all observable and demonstrable fact. Religion is rigid, brittle, and easily broken when we witness, oh lets see… since this is about gays, and Leviticus is the go-to book for proving that teh kweeres r teh evile, lets talk about God/Bible refering to bats as birds (Lev 11:13) or saying hares chew their cud (Lev 11:5) when they dont, and how about those “flying creeping things which have four feet” (Lev 11:23) Can you name one such creature? Four legs and wings? No such animal, great or small, past or present.
Now obviously I’m not going to say Ive succecsfully proven to you that the bible is almost entirely untrue in only three lines from one book, sincec eclearly you are incapable of reconsidering your beliefs when the facts conflict with them. If you would like more example of scientific, mathematical, or logistic impossibilities within the bible which prove it false, you have only to ask.
Science is getting more and more transparent in its uncertainty as the unprovable assumptions made about the Universe become exposed
And religious assumptions have been proven or are even close to being proven? You know, like the Bible is the inerrant word of God, end of story, just because Christians are so certain that is the truth? I’ll stick with unprovable theories based on solid evidence over blind faith any day. That’s why I’ll never be Republican. And, no, I’m not atheist.
Let’s try it in smaller pieces.
His logic applies to heterosexuality, as well: Is it not a sin to have sex (an act God made us for) before marriage? Is it not a sin to have sex (an act God made us for) with a women not your wife? As a matter of fact, if he had only jumped ahead a few pages, into the part of the Bible called the New Testament, he might have found the part where we learn about the imperfectability of humans, and the prayer asking God to deliver us from temptation, a prayer it is expected we will have to say more than once.
Even if one chooses to believe the two references in Leviticus mean exactly what it seems like they mean (you cannot lie with a member of the opposite sex, or dress to look like the opposite sex), it would seem to me that it would be the act itself that would be a sin, and perhaps desiring to commit the act would be a lesser sin.
I’m not giving up
tells me that he fits on the political spectrum somewhere between
pumpkin;
Please excuse my familiarity, but my docking speed is a mite slower
Let’s try it in pieces
we’re getting closer
If God cannot make a mistake, then He did not make a mistake making homosexuals. While there is some evidence that homosexuality results from nurture, there is much more evidence that it is both genetic and congenital in origin, even though it most often makes its appearance in puberty, as do heterosexual longings.
I have posted a very long comment in response to Guy Adams’ diatribe, which I am sure will tickle your amoral heart. Your view that all religions are alike and are rigid in their dogma isn’t just untrue, it’s “rigid, brittle, and easily broken.”
I m not going to say Ive successfully proven to you that the bible is almost entirely untrue in only three lines from one book
You should have quit while you were ahead, or added, “given the fact that there has been about 6000 years of scholarly study that supports its veracity.”
Leviticus 11:23 (NIV) says: But all other winged creatures that have four legs you are to detest.
You have a problem with that? What about Darwin’s variations? They’re could have been lots of them, back then. Detesting them sounds easy to me.
Incidentally, if you think for a minute about both the definition of, and significance of, faith, you would understand that there are no such things as “examples of scientific, mathematical, or logistic impossibilities within the Bible which prove it false.”
Think is something you science guys are supposed to be good at. Give it a shot.
but a quick glance at his column headlines
[Originally posted at 3:00 PM]
You and I might actually agree, Oliver. (Even a broken clock can be right twice a day). While the word gay has undergone a transformation from joyous and happy, to straight and perverse, to homosexual, there may be an argument to be made for the lack of gaiety in the gay life. But, wherever I come down on the issue of gay rights or gay marriage, their gaiety (or lack of same) is not relevant.
As a future Marital and Family Therapist, I have been taught that couples are couples, I have been taught that couples are couples, and that, as a therapist, my personal / political beliefs get left outside the office door.
stymied with about two sentences to go.
Of course, if you re an evolutionist (a theory, that, as you know, I find shaky), then homosexuals are far below the number on the bell curve of People of Normal Sexuality approximately 6%, whereas homosexuals make up about 2 - 3% of the population not Kinsey s 10%).
Certainly not enough to affect the world s reproductive rate. And, of course, gay children have straight parents, if memory serves.
…crap…okay, I concede that I misspoke, Frank, you kinda got me. Scientific, Mathematical amd Logistical impossibilities contained within the bible do not prove that the whole bible, whichever version, is entirely false, rather that it is merely fallable, and can contain error. This means, fundamentally, that treating what the bible says as fact, based on the idea that the bible is right about everything, is inherently wrong.
Yes, millenia of scholarly study have backed up several of the biblical accounts (archaeologists can prove that Jesus lived around 2000 years ago, and that a Noah-like figure did at his appropriate time as well) yet they cannot prove everything. There is no empirical evidence that says Moses ever existed. No historical record outside the Bible, no archaeological, no footprints in the sand, no “Moses wuz heer” graffiti, nothing.
I mentioned the four-legged winged creatures, and so did you, and neither of us could actually name a single one. Seriously, if you can, hit me. Pegasus? Griffon? Dragons? No such animal nor its remains have ever been found. But I’m sure you believe they must have existed (not just one species, but enough that the bible had to refer to them by a general description rather than by names) because the book says so. Yes, Darwin’s variations could theoretically account for such a thing (though I think there is actually biological precedent that says otherwise, but as I cannot prove this I will not say that as fact) but whereas the theory accounts for the possibility of their existence, nothing accounts for the fact of it.
Given then that the bible is not an entirely reliable record of fact, should we trust it even to give us Gods own opinion re: teh gay? And ought we also base public policy on such a record?
That’s truly a demented rant - but the truth is that a lot of fundies believe exactly as he does, and they are happy to “share” their hatred any time.
They don’t really keep it a secret.
I read the whole thing - I don’t believe there is anything in the wingnut software download that he left out :))
Did you see:
Since leading Democrats can’t muzzle their mouths, we really do need an Office of Censorship. We had such an office in World War II, and no one seriously opposed it because we knew we had to control our rhetoric. “Loose lips sink ships” is as true today as it was then, and even more so because in the nuclear age, more is at stake. Now, unpatriotic Democrats don’t want any form of censorship, claiming the right to “free speech.” However, free speech should not lead to the deaths of Americans, but the Democrats want to get back into power, and hey, if it costs a few thousand American soldier’s lives to do so, then so be it.
Rex: You didn’t quite catch the dinstinction I was making betwen what is believed, and what is known.
If you know a little about the Shroud of Turin, you may know there that there are three schools of thought about it.
1) It is the real thing (it has been “proven real”)
2) It’s a fake.
3) It need not be proven — you just believe it.
Rex: a number of winged insects look ike four legged creatures with wings — dragonflies come to mind. Maybe that’s what they meant. Maybe they meant, “If you come across a creature with four legs and wings, don’t eat it.” You wouldn’t have to warn me about that.
Peter Farb’s Consuming Passions presents a number of theories, related to religious sanctions related to animals. He claims, for example, that the “sacred cow” of the Hindus is far more valuable alive, for calves and milk products, than it is butchered and eaten.
There are other (sometimes similar, sometimes not) relationships between dietary restrictions and various aspects of anthropology, as opposed to religion.
When meat was a regular part of our diets, eating fish and / or mac ‘n’ cheese on Friday’s was no big deal for us Cat’lics, but now meat is a little harder to get your hands on, that rule is gone.
The dietary laws are no way to judge the veracity of the Bible, and they are certainly no way to trust its usefulness (even though I still ain’t eating no dragonflies, or pigs’ feet)
But I m sure you believe they must have existed (not just one species, but enough that the bible had to refer to them by a general description rather than by names) because the book says so.
Actually, no I don’t. I have read the Bible three times cover - to - cover. With a certain amount of repetition, it took me more than four years (approximately a chapter or more a day). I don’t even recall seeing that verse. I’m not ashamed that my eyes glazed over in the middle of Leviticus, and I was only reading it a chapter per day. Between the shellfish, and the cloven hooves, I wasn’t terribly excited. Who knew from four - legged winged creatures.
I don’t believe every word that’s in the Bible as literal truth? No. I don’t have to. I’m a Catholic. We have Papal Bulls and Encyclical to guide us. And, of course, which of those I obey or disobey is my business and God’s.
aside to tiponeill: You should be honest, and admit that you really have no idea how many people what he wrote. How could you possibly know?
“Science is getting more and more transparent in its uncertainty as the unprovable assumptions made about the Universe become exposed.”
What a come back Frank. If only those scientists had quit while they were ahead after discovering the true movements of the planets, that the world was round, the speed of light, microbes, vaccines, electricity, genetics, radioactivity, nuclear power, and the list goes on … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_scientific_discoveries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_scientific_experiments
History has shown that the closer science reaches the limits of human knowledge, Frank, the more it seems to always push those limits just a little further back.
I wasn’t trying to be clever; I was just pointing out something that the poster may have over looked. Simply put, without the references to the World Book Encyclopedia of the Internet: “The more you know, the more you find out you don’t know.”
At least my statement possessed more truth than his.
I am happy you took the time out to comment on my comment, and ignored everything else that was written on the thread.
And more importantly, you wrote a few dozen words without an obscenity or a profanity, and without calling me a name. I guess I’m getting better, eh?
What about that squirrel that can fly from tree to tree? Maybe a loophole.
Frank_D, at last we have something we can agree on - “The more you know, the more you find out you don’t know.” Actual science is like that (and also like watching teenagers grow up). The minute you think you know everything something happens to remind you that you don’t.
Having said that, however, science and the scientific method are a much more reliable way of finding out about the origins and nature of the universe (us included) than trying to divine them from a cobbled-together re-re-re-re-translation of an incomplete set of scrolls and handed-down stories.
As to what causes homosexuality, the jury is very much out. From an evolutionary perspective, homosexuality would seem to work against propagation of species if it were to crowd out heterosexual mating, so it can’t be a really adaptive trait. (Keep in mind that according to ET the purpose of sex is to propagate genes, and the purpose of life is to support sex. Given the way humans tend to behave, this is actually plausible.)
If you assume that homosexuality is genetic, you’d have to factor that in when you try and explain why it keeps reoccurring in the gene pool instead of being permanently selected out the way other such traits are. Maybe it was a local adaptation (the way sickle-cell was against malaria); maybe the only thing that’s genetic is a sensitivity to some hormone or virus that changes the part of the brain involved in sexual response, and the relatively low occurrence (Frank_D’s figure of 2-3% is the one with the most evidentiary support) reflects the joint probability of (a) having that genetic makeup and (b) being exposed to factor X at just the right developmental point.
It’s not a simple picture at all. But you’re a lot more likely to find the answer scientifically than you are in the Bible. *That* you can read to see how one particular society dealt with it way back when.
Before HIV / AIDS was even known to exist, there were other diseases that were (are) associated with activity of homosexuals. It is to these that we may look for the origin of the religious sanction. Everything forbidden by religions isn’t necessarily foolish nonsense.
You can also read the Bible to find out one particular society can deal with things right now.
Foolish monkey–once again, you’re pulling things out of your butt and proudly holding them up expecting attention. Though I have to wonder how many of these social diseases you contracted back in Saigon. Or did you avoid sickness by sticking it to the youngest boys you could afford?
boorish, obnoxious and disgusting! A Trifecta!
Mama BFB would be so proud…
bfb, when are you actually going to submit a comment on this blog?
I’ve often heard, from the homophobes, that God created homosexuals to test them against their “base and wrong urges.”
But I wonder…
Isn’t it just as likely that God created homosexuals to test everybody else’s capacity for love and acceptance?
I suppose it depends on whether you think God is Love, or God is the Old Testament Tyrant.
“I wasn t trying to be clever.”
That was obvious Frank. As it is here:
“Before HIV / AIDS was even known to exist, there were other diseases that were (are) associated with activity of homosexuals.”
Do you actually want to name some?
In the first place, I anticipated that question, and its answer. I didn’t expect it to come from you, though, because I thought you knew everything
Google and other search engines only contain hits related to AIDS — after all, I’m not going to research all day to answer your question.
You’ll have to look in medical books and journals to find clear evidence of rectal and anal damage, infections, and of course tansmission of contagious diseases, including, of course, STD’s.
If you choose not to believe me, then call me names. It has been oh so effective in the past, for whatever your purposes might be.
I have a question for you — Were you challenging me, are you so incredibly naive as to believe that male homosexual sex is harmless to the passive partner?
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” -Albert Einstein
Religion seeks to explain the unexplainable through faith. Science seeks to eplain the unexplainable through reason. Instead of answering the big questions of “Why?” with a simple “because.”