RE: Fairly new and hoping for advice and help
May 17, 2014 at 10:16 am
(This post was last modified: May 17, 2014 at 10:23 am by potch.)
I was partially motivated to begin my search for answers of how reliable the bible was when I fell in love with somebody of the same gender and realized how painful it was for us to both have to force ourselves to be apart because of our beliefs. I decided, for him, that I would do my absolute best, despite my actual bias TOWARD theistic belief, to try to take an unbiased look at both sides of the issue.
Being told that you're going to burn in hell every day because you're gay is not exactly good for the soul, but nevertheless I tried to understand why God would punish me that way. I would even dare to say that I do understand the answer, at least somewhat. I decided that if my search led me to seeing faith as true in the end, I would grit my teeth and live life without the love of my life. I decided that if it wasn't true, I would finally tell him that I want to be with him for life. You might say that in that case I'm already biased. It's true that I'm biased toward the person I love, but I'm also biased toward NOT burning in hell for eternity. Overall, I'm very confused. I try to deal with these things logically, but I'm only 20, and I'm a social work major in college with only a basic understanding of science. This whole thing has been very stressful at times, trying to be completely unbiased and weigh all these arguments and data while he's on the other end of Skype telling me how much he loves me, and my Rabbi is on facebook telling me I'm doomed to hell if I don't get rid of these feelings.
By the way GC, I mentioned Dawkins because he was the first to really make me doubt, but I've also been listening to debates online almost every day, have been reading stuff on the historicity and inerrency of the bible, such as Dr. Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier, have bought "The Origin of Species" as well as Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box," and intend on buying every book I can snatch up about both sides of the issue.
Being told that you're going to burn in hell every day because you're gay is not exactly good for the soul, but nevertheless I tried to understand why God would punish me that way. I would even dare to say that I do understand the answer, at least somewhat. I decided that if my search led me to seeing faith as true in the end, I would grit my teeth and live life without the love of my life. I decided that if it wasn't true, I would finally tell him that I want to be with him for life. You might say that in that case I'm already biased. It's true that I'm biased toward the person I love, but I'm also biased toward NOT burning in hell for eternity. Overall, I'm very confused. I try to deal with these things logically, but I'm only 20, and I'm a social work major in college with only a basic understanding of science. This whole thing has been very stressful at times, trying to be completely unbiased and weigh all these arguments and data while he's on the other end of Skype telling me how much he loves me, and my Rabbi is on facebook telling me I'm doomed to hell if I don't get rid of these feelings.
By the way GC, I mentioned Dawkins because he was the first to really make me doubt, but I've also been listening to debates online almost every day, have been reading stuff on the historicity and inerrency of the bible, such as Dr. Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier, have bought "The Origin of Species" as well as Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box," and intend on buying every book I can snatch up about both sides of the issue.
