This is Nice to See for a Change

[Losty]

I like 100% cotton

[professor]

Hi Abaris, the apostasy is (in context) from the faith. What faith? the New Testament.

I like cotton too.
Right now, a good place for cotton is underneath my wool socks

[robvalue]

If God knows everything, that includes the future, so why should I be impressed if he can prophesize it? He's just looking it up in the Big Book of Events.

[professor]

Yeah Rob, He is.
But we still have a choice to make, whether to investigate/ accept/ follow, or go our own way.
Our whole life is a faith walk (whatever we place our confidence in is our faith) and for the most part we are only given clues.
For the purpose of ourselves having and open field of choice.
Don't shoot the messenger.
I didn't write the script.

[FatAndFaithless]

I love it when Christians call other Christians Satanic instead of calling atheists Satanic. Nice change of pace.

[robvalue]

Well, if he knows what we are going to do, in fact we don't have a real choice. We are following the script. We can't choose to do something he knows we won't do.

And since he knew all that when he made us, he's entirely to blame for anything not to his pleasing out of this weird puppet show.

This is the problem with claims like omniscience, it leads to ludicrous consequences.

[Chad32]

Such an important choice to make, that will determine the rest of eternity, and all we have is faulty/incomplete information to go on. Thanks Yahweh.

[Faith No More]

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Considering there are plenty of seething Christians out there ready to deny people their rights, it seems that their reasoning truly is the former and they just think it's the latter. People see what they want to see in the bible and are drawn to the passages that reflect how they already feel, so just because they say Jesus is the reason, it doesn't necessarily mean they haven't made a moral judgement on their own terms.

This is nice to see.

None of the posts above address the mentality of Christians that I find opposed to gay marriage and business policies on service.
1. one issue is they feel it's not recognized that some people have been healed of abuse that explains previous homosexual behavior.
many think that ALL cases of homosexuality are unnatural and are more upset and shocked this isn't being looked into seriously
(in reality, I find that such cases aren't so common, and it is overrated how many can actually change; but yes it is clear some cases are unnatural from abuse, but NOT ALL)

If the gay activists would publicly recognize some people do change and not all are natural, that would get rid of this FEAR of blanket denial that both sides are scared of.
I find most of the hype is politicized against liberals and not directly against the homosexual community which most people, even if opposed to gay marriage, do feel compassion for.
But they just don't want what they perceive to be "special rights" demonizing the opposition, and thus fueling the equal opposition to "liberal agenda."

2. the other issue is that church marriage as a religious/spiritual ceremony is separate from civil contracts and unions through the state.
This language needs to be separated, or Christians mix the two in their heads as one, because their faith requires them to obey secular authority.
They cannot always separate church from state, and marriage is going to have to, in order to open up to these other choices they don't all agree to.

If the state laws can be written neutrally where it neither endorses nor bans gay marriage, then this wouldn't be an issue of crossing the line and putting things in state laws they are religiously opposed to by their beliefs.

Otherwise, keep marriage totally private, give churches and individuals full freedom to exercise their beliefs outside the state.
And either keep just the civil unions and custody/estate/domestic contracts under the state, or divide it by party if they want to manage their separate political beliefs that way.

What Christians cannot take is forcing beliefs that violate theirs into the state through laws.
So they have to be written carefully, and passed by consensus to make sure all people are represented and nobody's rights or beliefs are excluded on either side.

===========
Note: this church-state issue in Christianity is one of the hardest things I've ever had to wrap my mind around, equalled only by how secular political beliefs can operate as creeds or religions that people cannot change. both sides think the other side should change, but these are like religious beliefs. So the govt cannot be abused to force ANY person or group to change their beliefs. Even if masked as secular in format.
It seems unconstitutional on its face for someone to "not believe in separation of church and state" but given this is a belief, it is technically supposed to be accommodated and not discriminated against by law.
Thus the only way I have found to accommodate beliefs like "right to govt health care" that cannot be separated from govt, is to either form a consensus where all sides agree anyway, or to agree how to separate such as by state or by party where this isn't mandated one way or the other by federal govt. This is why I feel we are headed for a Constitutional convention, because all these issues are bringing out political beliefs.

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Loads of nonsense.

You can't change your sexual orientation. You can attempt to suppress it, which is unhealthy BTW, but you can never change it. Regardless of whether it is more influenced by genetics or environment, sexual orientation is deeply ingrained into our most primitive biological functions. You cannot change what arouses you anymore than you can change the fact that you feel hungry when you don't eat.

And I'm not even sure what you mean by "unnatural" cases of homosexuality, but I'm sure it's not worth responding to.

Christians are more than free to hold onto their bigoted beliefs, but they need to recognize that when those beliefs attempt to deny others their rights, those rights trump their beliefs. The problem isn't with defining marriage properly between religion and government. Just as we wouldn't start redefining marriage because of a church refusing to let two black people get married, we won't do it with this, either.

No one has to placate bigots when it comes to allowing people to exercise their rights, and Christians need to just get over it and move on. This is a personal problem for them, not an issue of making them comfortable.

[professor]

FNM, you are free to believe and do what you want (you also can deal with the choices you make),
but when you want to call the decisions of people (who make up a locality or state or nation) bigoted-
you are attempting to violate their right to make choices.
Therefore, you are guilty of the very thing you place upon Christians.

And Rob, we have been down that road of foreknowledge, that word only includes knowledge, not action.
You can know about an event which is coming, without being included in anything having to do with the event.
We do that all the time.

[FatAndFaithless]

when you want to call the decisions of people bigoted-
you are attempting to violate their right to make choices.

You've said some pretty fucking random things, prof, but that's hitting a new level of nonsensical horseshit.