Christianity; the World's Most Violently Persecuted Religion

[Sheldon]

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Fair enough. I'll add history to the list of things you don't want to learn about.

This assumes it's anything worth learning about (It isn't )

[/quote]
Indeed, or that I didn't already know it of course. Debate is hard enough, without his grandiloquent nonsense sucking all the air out of the room. He's had his last chance. If he ever offers something of value that's on topic, and manages not to be an arrogant self opinionated point scoring cock, that might change. He can take his risible Pygmalion act elsewhere, and find himself another Elisa Doolittle.

[h4ym4n]

I disagree, to say gay sexual desire is fine, as long as you live a lie, and deny who you are by never acting on it, is a condemnation of being gay. It tells gay people there is something wrong with them if they act on on their innate sexual desires. Sex between consenting adults who happen to be gay harms no one, that's a simple fact. 

It's possible you're being a tad anachronistic here. The Bible doesn't condemn being gay, because the concept of being gay didn't exist yet. It doesn't say anything about "innate sexual desires."
The word "homosexuality" was coined in the 19th century.
What the Bible condemns is sodomy. 
The ancient world had different categories. They didn't distinguish between gay and straight, they distinguished between the one who puts it in and the one who gets it put in. Generally the one who put it in was not looked down on, no matter where he put it in. The one who had it put in, if he was a man, was considered to be overly weak and passive. Not a "real man." 
Julius Caesar would not be mocked for fucking male slaves, but he would be mocked for getting sodomized and liking it.
Interpretations of the Bible according to modern categories are anachronistic. And I'm aware that lots of Christians do this too.

Was yahweh unaware that a man could fuck another man?

Was yahweh mad at the first time it occurred?

[Paleophyte]

God dooms people to hell by creating a reality where hell is a necessary feature. Seriously, what sort of deity builds hell into the universe as if it were a cool add-on? You are arguing for a sane and competent deity here, yes?

The same kind that made this world a meat grinder full of heterotrophs..even though it could clearly magic autotrophs into being.  This is why natural theology failed christianity.  The natural world suggests things about a hypothetical god what created it which none of the faithful are willing to accept.

Even our autotrophs are black-hearted murderers. Look for any spot in the forest where an old tree has fallen and watch the saplings strangle each other in their race for the top.

[Paleophyte]

No, it's not a valid criticism of it because you have misrepresented the bible.  The bible states that the act of homosexual sex is wrong, not being homosexual.  Most authorities agree that the concept of sexual orientation was somewhat problematic for the people of the time, which might explain why some passages in antiquity refer to same-sex behavior as acts typified by a specific gender or sex, rather than something related to an enduring sexual attraction.  They basically had no words to refer to someone as having a specific sexual orientation, and so they didn't.  Thus they were limited to hating the sin, and loving the sinner in this specific case.

Looking to the ancient world it's pretty clear that they had no problems finding the words or the concepts. Many cultures also had no problems with any of it. Looking at you Ancient Greece. And it was pretty clearly "Hate the sin, stone the sinner." Nobody's getting warm snuggles from a well-aimed cobble.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sex was only kosher within the confines of an approved relationship, and wouldn't you know it, there was only one kind of approved relationship. It's utterly ridiculous to suggest that the abrahamists, who've all had a long and explicit tradition about homosexuality as an abomination, didn't know what gay was. They knew. Gay was Jacob down there who wouldn't leave your son alone. Gay was your daughter Rebecca, who violently refused every boy you tried to sell her to and kept running of with the neighbor girl. To the old magic bookists...gayness was foreign. It was the thing the Other people down the hill were up to and not jewish. One of the many ways they were stealing the jewish girls and ruining the jewish boys and a clear sign of the coming destruction of the land and people at the hands of god. It's in the rules, the prophets talk about it, and rabbinical literature is downright pregnant with it. To the new magic bookists it was that and roman too, a holdover from the bad old times before they captured the roman state and culture. It was part of the cause of the antonine plagues (according to the them) that would be instrumental to the spread and development of christianity. Not much has changed today, really, as the abrahamists in the us believe that they need to eliminate homosexuality..which is fundamentally european and not american, so that god will not send disasters, or as a precondition to bestowing blessings on the land.

That some contemporary apologists realize this long standing view is an existential issue for the faith in a society with a less narrow view of permissable sex isn't entirely unlike their need to come up with a rationalized version of their magical religion. It's not easy to say god was wrong without saying god was wrong. It took them about 1k years to realize that it didn't look good to lack a rational grounding, and then it took them another 1k years to realize it didn't look good to lack a moral grounding. Neither of these things is anyone's problem but their own, and there's no point in making excuses for why this happened as they themselves will blow up any excuse anyone deigns to offer in history or in present.

[TheWhiteMarten]

The Bible doesn't condemn being gay, because the concept of being gay didn't exist yet. It doesn't say anything about "innate sexual desires."

Romans 1-27: "Likewise, the men abandoned natural relations with women and burned with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error".

While not explicitly condemning, it is being called unnatural to lust after another man or woman.

[The Architect Of Fate]

While not explicitly condemning, it is being called unnatural to lust after another man or woman.

Which it is of course not

[TheWhiteMarten]

While not explicitly condemning, it is being called unnatural to lust after another man or woman.

Which it is of course not

The human body - like all other mammals - is designed/develops to reproduce sexually; that is through a male and female combining sperm and egg.

[The Grand Nudger]

The eggshell the faith has to walk to make it through this moment so that there's some hope of rebuilding. It is abundantly clear from old magic book, new magic book, external historical sources, and present day rhetoric...that abrahamism condemns homosexuality. I think it's good and even healthy that a gay person or gay friendly apologist can sift through the mountain of shit and find a way for their god to be more in line with their current attitudes on the matter, so that their christianity is not a problem for their orientation or their allyship. There's a sense..especially when we jettison the superstitious aspects of religious beliefs.... in which no religion is forever doomed to repeat the mistakes of it's past.

Does christian scripture, tradition, and ethics condemn homosexuality? OFC it does, and unsurprisingly so for it's origin. Christianity, though, has been becoming less christian in order to appeal to it's constituent population. Very...very... specifically along the lines of the culture war.

[TheWhiteMarten]

Anyways, back on topic though slightly oblique; Syria.

As the Turkish-backed ISIS/Al-Qaeda/Jihadist rebels now have control over the Western section of the country, Syria's 500,000+ Christians (as well as Jews, Druze and other minorities) are on the block for a spike in targeted persecution - while the Al Asad government was not saintly it didn't particularly engage in religious persecution... more just, "Anyone he didn't like."