[quote]Mr. Chen wrote:
The bible teaching on homosexuality is that it is a perversion of nature. [/quote]
and was it not the good prophet TC, in the book of Atomic Dog, who mentioned something a while ago about the bible saying you had to stone to death any of your fellow men who wore cotton/polyester trousers?
yeah I havent read the bible ever since this girl that kept jumping into bed with me said it declared she couldnt have “lustful thoughts” but I believe everything i read on the interweb
'course my bible doesnt say any such thing - give me the good King James translation any day!
speaking of which, who has read the bible in its native tounge? well bloody shut up then about me passing on second hand information about what the bible says. (sorry, got a bit pre-emptive there but lets face it, I bet thats what god-squad was thinking…)
You won’t want to miss this! This is the part in every thread where the liberals attack you for not fully embracing their lifestyle. Simply tolerating it is not good enough. You must accept it…how open minded of them.
Zeb,
I am not suggesting that I am gay and want to be accepted. I am suggesting that people who hold such harsh judgements of other human beings could possibly be a lot happier if they didn’t want to transform everyone to their own image. What a boring world this would be!
Chen,
Its an easy little trick for you to use my own acceptance of others to mean that I am violating my own principles to not accept you for your intolerance, but you miss the point. I actually do accept you. I certainly don’t hate you. What I am trying to do is hold up a mirror so you can see your own hatred. You claim you don’t hate “homos”, but your language would suggest otherwise. Its not like I am saying that you have to be gay or anything. I am straight, married, and I have three kids, and happy to be that way, but I don’t think of gay people as sub-human and not deserving of the right to pursue happiness in the way that they choose. Its part of the American dream. Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad, like giving members of the KKK rights of free speech. I am not suggesting that you be silenced… I am trying to break through your judgements and reason with you. Its okay for people to have their own judgements and to even voice them, but to actually have a law in place that sanctions discrimination is another thing altogether.
Incidentally, I am far from uneducated, particularly where religion is concerned. How 'bout we drop this trading insults as we won’t make any progress in understanding each others points of view in this discussion. I’ll do the same. I will start by apologizing for suggesting in an earlier post that you were a repressed homosexual. I was reacting to your anger and deliberately trying to hit your buttons and it was not productive. What do you say?
Sorry if I misrepresented you. I did not mean to imply that I thought you were gay. However, it seems that anyone who wants to defend traditional marriage is somehow termed as intolerant, or hateful. In reality it seems to me that those on the left (not you personally) are quite intolerant of others who refuse to accept gay marriage.
Marriage is an institution that exists between one man and one woman. Those who want to change that need to understand that most (check the 11 states who voted it down) will not like it.
Seems gays and those who want gay marriage need to be more tolerant of tradition and the majoritys core values.
[quote]Roy Batty wrote:
By the way, isn’t the homo group still the highest risk group for AIDS?
Actually no… African American women and Hispanic women are both getting HIV at a much higher rate than gay men. [/quote]
Wait, does that mean that I have to be against African American and Hispanic women now as well? This is all just too confusing. I guess it makes sense considering what my earlier post about the evils of women and the lack of segregation in the bible.
Despite the leanings of our current administration, we have a fundamental separation between church and state. Our legal code may have some founding in biblical teachings, but in no way is required to conform to them.
I don’t see the problem here; if Jesus doesn’t like same-sex marriage, so what? It isn’t my religion, why should I give a damn what the Bible says?
This is a push for state recognition and benefits, and the majority church should not have a say.
Should my children be forced to accept homosexuality in their classmates when they grow up? To accept gay marriage means that teachers would have to teach kids that homosexuality is okay and i think i have a right to guide my own children’s conscience. I think their needs to be a line drawn somewhere. If we accept gay marriage, we will then have to accept polygamy, brother-sister marriage, dog-man marriage, etc. “Why should we judge these people’s lifestyles? If a man wants to marry his mother or his dog, what’s wrong with that? Who am I to judge him?” That is just bullshit to me. As has been stated in above posts, there is certainly a civil morality in america. If we don’t draw these lines on morality somewhere, then soon we will lose all morality. Lines have to be drawn.
It’s been so long since I’ve heard the slippery slope argument, I almost thought your post was in sarcasm.
At this point, you have a choice like everyone else. You can continue repeated the company line, justification be damned.
Or you can read and learn, and give serious thought to why you believe what you do. It’s easier not to think, and I won’t hold it against you if this is your avenue. Prove to me at least one person is willing to consider both sides with an open mind. If your thoughts continue to run counter, I’d very much like to hear why.
Your children will decide on their own. It won’t happen immediately. If they’re young, they’ll parrot whatever you tell them.
But make no mistake; this country is on an inexorable slide to tolerance. They will have gay friends and positive gay role models, and the more vitriol you instill now, the more difficult it will be for them to transition when they start to think for themselves.
You stated: “I almost thought your post was in sarcasm. You can read and learn and give some serious thought to why you believe what you do.”
My how condesecending of you. Since BKerne does not march in lock step with the gay party line then by all means they must not be smart enough to have given it much thought. How open minded of you. Unfortunately how typical of your side. You want others to accept gay marriage for example, and in the process you demean all who question such a union. Where is your tolerance for those who want to protect an institution that has been around for thousands of years? Are you closed minded?
The posters point is every bit as valid as your point. In fact, it carries far more validity in my opinion. It’s wrong to defend traditional marriage? Now why is that, because 1% or 2% of the population is homosexual? Would you also be in favor of group marriage? How about Dog and Man marrying? No? How intolerant of you! My gosh man do your research and open your mind! Hah.
We have a tradition in this country of marriage between one man and one woman. If gay people don’t like that tradition they do have a right to try to change it. Those of us who appreciate the system as it is have a right to prevent it from being changed. Neither side is evil, are they?
You can fall back and scream the old cliche’ of intolerance if you like. However I suspect that people such as yourself seem every bit as intolerant of the other point of view. Unless it is not tolerance that gay people are after Perhaps it’s acceptance. Big difference!
America is a wonderful place to live. If two gay people want to live together they have every right and should not be bothered in any way, by anyone for any reason. They deserve every right that any American is entitled to. However, when they attempt to change a heterosexual institution they move from the realm of tolerance to wanting heterosexuals to “accept” their lifestyle. Are heterosexuals attempting to change any particular homosexual tradition or practice? No. I suspect that if we were you would be hollering about how intolerant we were. Odd huh?
Are heterosexuals supposed to sit back and watch as the tradition of marriage is changed forever, and say nothing for fear of being labeled as “intolerant” by people like yourself? I think not.
whoa WHOA!
the hetero institution of marriage?!
now i dont know shit bout the history of Blessed Union, but I believe if the STATE will recognise “marriage” as it does, homos should be entitled to that. If the nomenclature upsets you, change it - heteros can have “marriage” and homos can have some equivalent non-religeous term, both seen equally in the eyes of the State. Although why SHOULDNT homos have marriage? blasphemy you say? like lustful thoughts and mixed thread clothes? and this is your interpretation of someone else’s translation of the word of God transcribed into the tounge of mortal homo-- er-- heterosapians?
Homosexuality has been around far longer than christianity, incidentally, so I dont like this lark about christianity having the final say about it.
[quote]Roy Batty wrote:
Chen,
What I am trying to do is hold up a mirror so you can see your own hatred. You claim you don’t hate “homos”, but your language would suggest otherwise.[/quote]
I don’t think I have used any language that would suggest I hate homos. I have repeatedly tried to make it clear that I put a difference between the person and their behavior. I am glad to have a discussion with you Roy, but please don’t play psychologist with me, and tell me how I hate someone I have told you I do not.
This is the crux of the matter- our laws discriminate against what is considered immoral behavior. Such as shoplifting and public drunkeness. If a party in a divorce suit can prove the other party committed adultery, that party recieves favorable judgement.
What is at issue is the nature of homosexual behavior, is it immoral or merely natural behavior. I believe it is an immoral behavior. As to what laws should discriminate against it, not affording them the right to marry is a good one.
Apology accepted Roy. On the uneducated thing- Almost no one gets educated about Creationism vs. Evolution in a public school. However, there is A LOT of science that backs up Creationism. You’ll have to go the the link I gave you and do some reading before we can discuss it. It would take up too much space for me to paste articles on the topic.
“Would you also be in favor of group marriage? How about Dog and Man marrying?”
Comparing gay marriages to bestiality? Very classy.
Why not ban gay marriages? While we’re at it, make divorce illegal and criminalize adultery. That would certainly serve to strengthen the institution of marriage, as well.
With all the shit going on in the world right now, I cannot believe we’re stressing gay marriages.
I demean the party line. Nearly all of it is intellectual bunk, and even the side in favor knows as much. When I see such an argument ripped verbatim with no reasoning or support, I question the author.
And then you went and repeated what he said. My link? Didn’t read it. Good for you.
Let’s be fair. You were overly harsh with the previous poster. The poster has every right to take the opposing view without having to be questioned as to whether or not they are educated on the topic. “Your side” does quite a lot of this. If you disagree with any fine point you are presumptuously called uneducated and intolerant. Personally, I think you are above that sort of approach.
I’m sure you have read quite a lot on the topic, and I congratulate you on this. You are making an informed decision to back Gay marriage. I have read quite a lot on the topic as well and I am making a decision to oppose Gay marriage. Neither of us is evil for our different beliefs. We can disagree without being disagreeable.
Here is one piece that you may or may not enjoy:
What Marriage is For
Maggie Gallagher
Maggie Gallagher is President of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy and a co-author of The Case for Marriage. She also edits MarriageDebate.com, a Weblog (“blog”).
GAY MARRIAGE is no longer a theoretical issue. Canada has it. Massachusetts is expected to get it any day. The Goodridge decision there could set off a legal, political, and cultural battle in the courts of 50 states and in the U.S. Congress. Every politician, every judge, every citizen has to decide: Does same-sex marriage matter? If so, how and why?
The timing could not be worse. Marriage is in crisis, as everyone knows: High rates of divorce and illegitimacy have eroded marriage norms and created millions of fatherless children, whole neighborhoods where lifelong marriage is no longer customary, driving up poverty, crime, teen pregnancy, welfare dependency, drug abuse, and mental and physical health problems. And yet, amid the broader negative trends, recent signs point to a modest but significant recovery.
Divorce rates appear to have declined a little from historic highs; illegitimacy rates, after doubling every decade from 1960 to 1990, appear to have leveled off, albeit at a high level (33 percent of American births are to unmarried women); teen pregnancy and sexual activity are down; the proportion of homemaking mothers is up; marital fertility appears to be on the rise. Research suggests that married adults are more committed to marital permanence than they were twenty years ago. A new generation of children of divorce appears on the brink of making a commitment to lifelong marriage. In 1977, 55 percent of American teenagers thought a divorce should be harder to get; in 2001, 75 percent did.
A new marriage movement?a distinctively American phenomenon?has been born. The scholarly consensus on the importance of marriage has broadened and deepened; it is now the conventional wisdom among child welfare organizations. As a Child Trends research brief summed up: “Research clearly demonstrates that family structure matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage. Children in single-parent families, children born to unmarried mothers, and children in stepfamilies or cohabiting relationships face higher risks of poor outcomes… There is thus value for children in promoting strong, stable marriages between biological parents.”
What will court-imposed gay marriage do to this incipient recovery of marriage? For, even as support for marriage in general has been rising, the gay marriage debate has proceeded on a separate track. Now the time has come to decide: Will unisex marriage help or hurt marriage as a social institution?
Why should it do either, some may ask? How can Bill and Bob’s marriage hurt Mary and Joe? In an exchange with me in the just-released book “Marriage and Same Sex Unions: A Debate,” Evan Wolfson, chief legal strategist for same-sex marriage in the Hawaii case, Baer v. Lewin, argues there is “enough marriage to share.” What counts, he says, “is not family structure, but the quality of dedication, commitment, self-sacrifice, and love in the household.”
Family structure does not count. Then what is marriage for? Why have laws about it? Why care whether people get married or stay married? Do children need mothers and fathers, or will any sort of family do? When the sexual desires of adults clash with the interests of children, which carries more weight, socially and legally?
These are the questions that same-sex marriage raises. Our answers will affect not only gay and lesbian families, but marriage as a whole.
IN ORDERING GAY MARRIAGE on June 10, 2003, the highest court in Ontario, Canada, explicitly endorsed a brand new vision of marriage along the lines Wolfson suggests: “Marriage is, without dispute, one of the most significant forms of personal relationships… Through the institution of marriage, individuals can publicly express their love and commitment to each other. Through this institution, society publicly recognizes expressions of love and commitment between individuals, granting them respect and legitimacy as a couple.”
The Ontario court views marriage as a kind of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval that government stamps on certain registered intimacies because, well, for no particular reason the court can articulate except that society likes to recognize expressions of love and commitment. In this view, endorsement of gay marriage is a no-brainer, for nothing really important rides on whether anyone gets married or stays married. Marriage is merely individual expressive conduct, and there is no obvious reason why some individuals’ expression of gay love should hurt other individuals’ expressions of non-gay love.
There is, however, a different view?indeed, a view that is radically opposed to this: Marriage is the fundamental, cross-cultural institution for bridging the male-female divide so that children have loving, committed mothers and fathers. Marriage is inherently normative: It is about holding out a certain kind of relationship as a social ideal, especially when there are children involved. Marriage is not simply an artifact of law; neither is it a mere delivery mechanism for a set of legal benefits that might as well be shared more broadly. The laws of marriage do not create marriage, but in societies ruled by law they help trace the boundaries and sustain the public meanings of marriage.
In other words, while individuals freely choose to enter marriage, society upholds the marriage option, formalizes its definition, and surrounds it with norms and reinforcements, so we can raise boys and girls who aspire to become the kind of men and women who can make successful marriages. Without this shared, public aspect, perpetuated generation after generation, marriage becomes what its critics say it is: a mere contract, a vessel with no particular content, one of a menu of sexual lifestyles, of no fundamental importance to anyone outside a given relationship.
The marriage idea is that children need mothers and fathers, that societies need babies, and that adults have an obligation to shape their sexual behavior so as to give their children stable families in which to grow up.
Which view of marriage is true? We have seen what has happened in our communities where marriage norms have failed. What has happened is not a flowering of libertarian freedom, but a breakdown of social and civic order that can reach frightening proportions. When law and culture retreat from sustaining the marriage idea, individuals cannot create marriage on their own.
In a complex society governed by positive law, social institutions require both social and legal support. To use an analogy, the government does not create private property. But to make a market system a reality requires the assistance of law as well as culture. People have to be raised to respect the property of others, and to value the traits of entrepreneurship, and to be law-abiding generally. The law cannot allow individuals to define for themselves what private property (or law-abiding conduct) means. The boundaries of certain institutions (such as the corporation) also need to be defined legally, and the definitions become socially shared knowledge. We need a shared system of meaning, publicly enforced, if market-based economies are to do their magic and individuals are to maximize their opportunities.
Successful social institutions generally function without people’s having to think very much about how they work. But when a social institution is contested?as marriage is today?it becomes critically important to think and speak clearly about its public meanings.
AGAIN, what is marriage for? Marriage is a virtually universal human institution. In all the wildly rich and various cultures flung throughout the ecosphere, in society after society, whether tribal or complex, and however bizarre, human beings have created systems of publicly approved sexual union between men and women that entail well-defined responsibilities of mothers and fathers. Not all these marriage systems look like our own, which is rooted in a fusion of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian culture. Yet everywhere, in isolated mountain valleys, parched deserts, jungle thickets, and broad plains, people have come up with some version of this thing called marriage. Why?
Because sex between men and women makes babies, that’s why. Even today, in our technologically advanced contraceptive culture, half of all pregnancies are unintended: Sex between men and women still makes babies. Most men and women are powerfully drawn to perform a sexual act that can and does generate life. Marriage is our attempt to reconcile and harmonize the erotic, social, sexual, and financial needs of men and women with the needs of their partner and their children.
How to reconcile the needs of children with the sexual desires of adults? Every society has to face that question, and some resolve it in ways that inflict horrendous cruelty on children born outside marriage. Some cultures decide these children don’t matter: Men can have all the sex they want, and any children they create outside of marriage will be throwaway kids; marriage is for citizens?slaves and peasants need not apply. You can see a version of this elitist vision of marriage emerging in America under cover of acceptance of family diversity. Marriage will continue to exist as the social advantage of elite communities. The poor and the working class? Who cares whether their kids have dads? We can always import people from abroad to fill our need for disciplined, educated workers.
Our better tradition, and the only one consistent with democratic principles, is to hold up a single ideal for all parents, which is ultimately based on our deep cultural commitment to the equal dignity and social worth of all children. All kids need and deserve a married mom and dad. All parents are supposed to at least try to behave in ways that will give their own children this important protection. Privately, religiously, emotionally, individually, marriage may have many meanings. But this is the core of its public, shared meaning: Marriage is the place where having children is not only tolerated but welcomed and encouraged, because it gives children mothers and fathers.
Of course, many couples fail to live up to this ideal. Many of the things men and women have to do to sustain their own marriages, and a culture of marriage, are hard. Few people will do them consistently if the larger culture does not affirm the critical importance of marriage as a social institution. Why stick out a frustrating relationship, turn down a tempting new love, abstain from sex outside marriage, or even take pains not to conceive children out of wedlock if family structure does not matter? If marriage is not a shared norm, and if successful marriage is not socially valued, do not expect it to survive as the generally accepted context for raising children. If marriage is just a way of publicly celebrating private love, then there is no need to encourage couples to stick it out for the sake of the children. If family structure does not matter, why have marriage laws at all? Do adults, or do they not, have a basic obligation to control their desires so that children can have mothers and fathers?
THE PROBLEM with endorsing gay marriage is not that it would allow a handful of people to choose alternative family forms, but that it would require society at large to gut marriage of its central presumptions about family in order to accommodate a few adults’ desires.
The debate over same-sex marriage, then, is not some sideline discussion. It is the marriage debate. Either we win–or we lose the central meaning of marriage. The great threat unisex marriage poses to marriage as a social institution is not some distant or nearby slippery slope, it is an abyss at our feet. If we cannot explain why unisex marriage is, in itself, a disaster, we have already lost the marriage ideal.
Same-sex marriage would enshrine in law a public judgment that the desire of adults for families of choice outweighs the need of children for mothers and fathers. It would give sanction and approval to the creation of a motherless or fatherless family as a deliberately chosen “good.” It would mean the law was neutral as to whether children had mothers and fathers. Motherless and fatherless families would be deemed just fine.
Same-sex marriage advocates are startlingly clear on this point. Marriage law, they repeatedly claim, has nothing to do with babies or procreation or getting mothers and fathers for children. In forcing the state legislature to create civil unions for gay couples, the high court of Vermont explicitly ruled that marriage in the state of Vermont has nothing to do with procreation. Evan Wolfson made the same point in “Marriage and Same Sex Unions”: “[I]sn’t having the law pretend that there is only one family model that works (let alone exists) a lie?” He goes on to say that in law, “marriage is not just about procreation–indeedis not necessarily about procreation at all.”
Wolfson is right that in the course of the sexual revolution the Supreme Court struck down many legal features designed to reinforce the connection of marriage to babies. The animus of elites (including legal elites) against the marriage idea is not brand new. It stretches back at least thirty years. That is part of the problem we face, part of the reason 40 percent of our children are growing up without their fathers.
It is also true, as gay-marriage advocates note, that we impose no fertility tests for marriage: Infertile and older couples marry, and not every fertile couple chooses procreation. But every marriage between a man and a woman is capable of giving any child they create or adopt a mother and a father. Every marriage between a man and a woman discourages either from creating fatherless children outside the marriage vow. In this sense, neither older married couples nor childless husbands and wives publicly challenge or dilute the core meaning of marriage. Even when a man marries an older woman and they do not adopt, his marriage helps protect children. How? His marriage means, if he keeps his vows, that he will not produce out-of-wedlock children.
Does marriage discriminate against gays and lesbians? Formally speaking, no. There are no sexual-orientation tests for marriage; many gays and lesbians do choose to marry members of the opposite sex, and some of these unions succeed. Our laws do not require a person to marry the individual to whom he or she is most erotically attracted, so long as he or she is willing to promise sexual fidelity, mutual caretaking, and shared parenting of any children of the marriage.
But marriage is unsuited to the wants and desires of many gays and lesbians, precisely because it is designed to bridge the male-female divide and sustain the idea that children need mothers and fathers. To make a marriage, what you need is a husband and a wife. Redefining marriage so that it suits gays and lesbians would require fundamentally changing our legal, public, and social conception of what marriage is in ways that threaten its core public purposes.
Some who criticize the refusal to embrace gay marriage liken it to the outlawing of interracial marriage, but the analogy is woefully false. The Supreme Court overturned anti-miscegenation laws because they frustrated the core purpose of marriage in order to sustain a racist legal order. Marriage laws, by contrast, were not invented to express animus toward homosexuals or anyone else. Their purpose is not negative, but positive: They uphold an institution that developed, over thousands of years, in thousands of cultures, to help direct the erotic desires of men and women into a relatively narrow but indispensably fruitful channel. We need men and women to marry and make babies for our society to survive. We have no similar public stake in any other family form–in the union of same-sex couples or the singleness of single moms.
Meanwhile, cui bono? To meet the desires of whom would we put our most basic social institution at risk? No good research on the marriage intentions of homosexual people exists. For what it’s worth, the Census Bureau reports that 0.5 percent of households now consist of same-sex partners. To get a proxy for how many gay couples would avail themselves of the health insurance benefits marriage can provide, I asked the top 10 companies listed on the Human Rights Campaign’s website as providing same-sex insurance benefits how many of their employees use this option. Only one company, General Motors, released its data. Out of 1.3 million employees, 166 claimed benefits for a same-sex partner, one one-hundredth of one percent.
People who argue for creating gay marriage do so in the name of high ideals: justice, compassion, fairness. Their sincerity is not in question. Nevertheless, to take the already troubled institution most responsible for the protection of children and throw out its most basic presumption in order to further adult interests in sexual freedom would not be high-minded. It would be morally callous and socially irresponsible.
If we cannot stand and defend this ground, then face it: The marriage debate is over. Dan Quayle was wrong. We lost.
[quote]Mr. Chen wrote:
Almost no one gets educated about Creationism vs. Evolution in a public school. However, there is A LOT of science that backs up Creationism. You’ll have to go the the link I gave you and do some reading before we can discuss it. It would take up too much space for me to paste articles on the topic.[/quote]
Mr Chen,
There isn’t a SHRED of scientific evidence to back up creationism. Just doesn’t exist.
Mr. Chen,
To be fair, I did go to the site that you linked me to. Not in any way to insult your point of view, I had a lot of problems with it. It still takes a HARD line literal interpretation of the Bible, basically asserting that the earth is really only 6,000 years old. Their basis on believing this is the mere acceptance of Biblican authority, which immediately repudiates any scientific evidence that would suggest that the planet is actually billions of years old. When it comes to science, simply believing something not to be so because an authority tells you not to, does not make it invalid.
For example, they reject any notion of evolution whatsoever, of humans or any other animals. We can witness endless examples of how species make adaptive changes and evolve over a period of time. Now, to make it fit with the bible’s version, what if you take away the time factor and you say that perhaps evolution happened as part of God’s plan to create humans? That way you don’t have to let go of your strongly held beliefs, but you also acknowldedge evidence from carefully researched scientific studies. Would that be a challenge to your faith?
Personally I think it is dangerous to interpret the Bible too literally. If you take that to its logical conclusion, then you would also then believe it is your duty as a subject of God to kill someone for working on the Sabbath, which at the time was actually on Saturday, not Sunday (it was changed to Sunday by Constantine and the Council of Nicea to help make the transition to Christianity from Paganism in 318 CE). Along with that, it would be okay to also murder a woman for adultery, and kill any of her living offspring that may have resulted from that daliance. I could go on and on, but I think you understand what I am trying to say.
Again, I don’t want to challege your beliefs, but just want to know where you draw the line with regards to your interpretation of the Bible. Are you willing to kill someone (like your own son) if you “hear a voice” that says its God? Yes, the famous Abraham question. I would have told God to go fuck himself if he had asked me to kill one of my children. And yes, I know God stopped him at the last possible moment, but only after he was convinced that Abraham was going through with it. If someone today told you that they talked to God and they had been instructed to kill a non-worshipper, would you think that they were connected to the divine, or would you think that the person was an unmedicated schizophrenic who needed immediate medical attention? Why was it different then than it is now?
I do understand what you and others are trying to say about having some kind of moral boundary. I would suggest that we take the word “morals” out and replace it with “ethics”. Morals are generally pretty subjective, but ethics mostly refer to how we treat other human beings. For example, some Southern states (like mine) still have morality laws in the book claiming that two people - even a married couple - can’t perform oral sex on one another. Obviously that law is a bit out of date. But no one is getting hurt if my wife give me a hummer (quite the opposite really). I would like to know who enforced those laws, personally. So if my actions with another consenting adult don’t harm others, what business is it of theirs? Some people have such strict beliefs that they do believe oral sex is immoral. That is their business (and their loss). Should they have the right to impose their subjective belief on me or society at large? If it were harmful to her, to myself, or to innocent bystanders then it would become something that should be illegal. Maybe homosexuality is immoral to your perosonal code, which is fine, but there are a LOT more of them than you realize, and they aren’t all outrageous, circuit-party attending, X-popping, home-decorating, efeminate she-males (sorry for the generalization). They are architects, attorneys, plumbers, teachers, truck drivers… They are otherwise invisible to you, and they are normal, hard-working, tax paying, yes - even church going, Americans.
My personal opinion is that we as a society will be much happier if we quit trying to define happiness for everyone else and relax and enjoy our own lives. Live and let live, you know? Doesn’t look like I will see things turn out that way though, as Bush and his majority repub congress will ban it. I think it is a step backwards, but other than expressing my opinions in forums like this one.
[quote]Roy Batty wrote:
Mr. Chen,
To be fair, I did go to the site that you linked me to. [/quote]
It would be better to read because you are curious about a position you have not previously studied in depth.
[quote]
Not in any way to insult your point of view, I had a lot of problems with it. It still takes a HARD line literal interpretation of the Bible, basically asserting that the earth is really only 6,000 years old. Their basis on believing this is the mere acceptance of Biblican authority, which immediately repudiates any scientific evidence that would suggest that the planet is actually billions of years old. [/quote]
As a comprehensive world view, Christians do take this view. However, when discussing Creationism vs. Evolution, the bible doesn’t need to come into it. The debate is- Did the universe (especially life as we know it) come about as the result of evolution, or is it the product of a Designer/Creator’s special creation. Non-believers tend to flip out and cry religion when you point this out, but accepting that the universe is created is merely a logical conclusion to the question of ultimate origin. And by the way, there is lots of evidence for the short age of the earth. You can find it on the site.
Yes, this is true. However, you should understand adaptive changes within a species does not equal evolution into another species. There is a decided lack of evidence for this step. And considering the shear number of fossils out there, this is a BIG problem for the THEORY of Evolution. I have pasted an article at the end of this post that talks about this. Similarly, there is no good explanation for the change from non-living chemicals into living cells.
Few of the punishments for violating Old Testament law are carried into the New Testament. The only one I can think of offhand is capital punishment.
Except for the Apostles Paul and Peter, there is no direct communication from God to the believer in the NT like in the case of Abraham.
Concerning Abraham-
He understood that his child was given to him by God, and God therefore had the right to take him back. He certainly had more sense than to curse his Creator.
Abraham believed God would raise his son again from the dead. (See Hebrews 11:19) He believed this because God already promised him many offspring via his son, and God does not lie.
You mean like the Koran?
Yes, years ago, when I worked in a psych hospital, we did get a few of these.
The idea that if someone is normal in most aspects of their life, than they are normal in all, is often advanced to justify homosexuality. Surely you must understand the problem with this. People who commit suicide, rapists, shoplifters, etc., may all have normal family lives and careers.
My personal belief about the immorality of homosexuality would not cause me to seek to change any present laws. I am not politically active, except for voting.
“THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT EVOLUTION”
BTG No. 160a April 2002
by John D. Morris, Ph.D.*
? Copyright 2004 Institute for Creation Research. All Rights Reserved.
“O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:” (I Timothy 6:20).
Recently I had the privilege of addressing a gathering of state legislators and other influential political individuals. These gifted men and women are typically highly educated, most having been taught evolution and an evolutionary worldview extensively and exclusively. Now, they have the power to establish educational guidelines and societal norms. Sponsors of the banquet requested a talk both informative and evangelistic. What can one say in 45 minutes to a gathering of influential leaders that will make a difference? I don’t pretend to know what would be best, but perhaps you would be interested in what I did say. My talk was entitled, “Three Things You May Not Know about the Theory of Evolution.” I was speaking only from notes, but a summary of the talk, with a few alterations, appears below.
Introduction
I started with definitions for clarity. There is much misunderstanding of important words today, and some purposefully misuse words to confuse students and hide their true intentions.
Science has to do with careful observations in the present. Unlike true science, both evolution and creation are, at best, historical reconstructions of the unobserved past since no one can empirically observe either. In reality they are complete worldviews, ways to interpret all observations in the present, and a basis for all of life’s decisions. In previous years, “science” was understood to mean “the search for truth,” but many now limit that to a search for naturalistic explanations, even if that search leads to hopeless conclusions.
Evolution implies “descent from a common ancestor” with all of life related, consisting of modified forms of very different things, such as a person descending from a fish. Evolution does not mean merely “change,” for all things change with time. For clarity we must restrict this term to meaningful change, especially the descent of new types of organisms from earlier, different ones.
Creation denotes abrupt appearance of basic categories of life without any basic type having descended from some other category, and with no extensive change once the category appears. Lack of change is known as stasis. Fish have always been fish, ever since they first appeared, and dogs have always been dogs. Fish and dogs and all else may have varied a little, but did not come from a common ancestor.
The term microevolution is sometimes used for small, horizontal changes that are readily observed (such as the various breeds of dog), while macroevolution implies large vertical changes (fish to dog) that have never been observed. These big changes constitute evolution as Darwin used the term and as the general public understands it.
Horizontal Variation: YES
Vertical Evolution: NO
Furthermore, evolution, as understood by all leading evolutionists, textbook writers, and theoreticians, utilizes only natural processes, like mutation and natural selection. To leading evolutionists, only unguided random forces have been involved with no supernatural input allowed.
Following are three important points about real evolution?significant changes-the origin of new categories of life from older different ones. Even if one is highly educated about evolution, he may not know these things, but this knowledge is essential if intelligent decisions are to be made.
I. Evolution didn’t happen.
A. Random forces cannot account for life.
The design we see in living things is far too complex, too designed, too engineered to be the result of mere undirected, random forces. Even the simplest thing we could call “living” is vastly more complex than a super computer and super computers don’t happen by chance. Every cell is composed of many constituent parts, each one marvelously designed and necessary for the whole. Without any one of its parts, the cell could not live. All of it is organized and energized by the magnificent DNA code, an encyclopedia of information which, even though modern scientists can’t read it, it is read and obeyed by the cell. Surely some things need a Designer/Author.
B. Evolution (i.e., macroevolution) doesn’t happen in the present.
If it ever happened in the past it seems to have stopped. Maybe environmental conditions don’t change much, or selective pressures are too little, but everyone knows that real macroevolution is not and cannot be observed today.
Mutations, random changes in the DNA information code, are observed, but never do these “birth defects” add any innovative and beneficial genes to the DNA. Instead, mutations are either repaired by the marvelous mechanisms elsewhere in the DNA, or are neutral, harmful, or fatal to the organisms.
Likewise, natural selection occurs all around us, but this only chooses from among the variety that already exists, it can’t create anything new. Evolutionists may talk of actual selection as if it had a mind of its own and does the work of evolution on purpose, but it is inanimate and unthinking, impotent to bring about more than micro-evolutionary changes.
C. Evolution didn’t happen in the past.
When we look at the record of life in the past, we see no conclusive evidence that any basic category arose from some other category either. We see that some categories have gone extinct, like the dinosaurs, but the rest fit into the same categories that we see today. We see dogs in great variety, even some extinct varieties, but no half dog/half something else. Evolutionists have a few transitional forms that are commonly mentioned, but if evolution and descent from common ancestors really occurred we should see multiplied thousands of transitional forms. We do not see them.
The most famous living evolutionary spokesman, Dr. Stephen J. Gould, paleontologist at Harvard University, has made a career out of pointing out to his colleagues that the fossil record shows abrupt appearance and stasis. He is no friend of creation and yet as an honest scientist he must acknowledge this now well-known fact. He proposed the concept of “punctuated equilibrium” to account for the fossils in which life usually is in equilibrium, or stasis, and doesn’t change at all. When a category of life encounters a sudden environmental shift, it changes rapidly into a different stable form, so rapidly in fact that it leaves no fossils. How convenient. Evolution goes too slow to see in the present, but it went so fast in the past it left no evidence. Gould is arguing from lack of evidence!
But lack of transitional forms is exactly what should be the case if creation is true. The fossil record supports abrupt creation of basic kinds much better than either slow or fast evolution.
D. Evolution can’t happen at all.
The basic laws of science are firmly opposed to evolution, especially The Second Law of Thermodynamics which insists that all real processes yield less organization and information in their products than in the original. This basic law leads to de-volution, not evolution. The presence of abundant external energy has never, as far as science has observed, produced beneficial mutations or added information to the genome as evolutionists claim. Instead, an abundance of incoming energy will hasten the deterioration of living things, especially the DNA. It will not bring about their evolution. Evolution is against the Law!
Evolution doesn’t happen, didn’t happen and can’t happen, and is fully unable to account for the design that we see.
We’ve all heard the claim that “evolution is science and creation is religion.” This oft-repeated mantra originated with the testimony of Dr. Michael Ruse at the 1980 Arkansas creation trial. The presiding judge, known for his prior bias toward evolution, entered it into his formal opinion, and this flag has been waved by evolutionists ever since. But Dr. Ruse, an expert on the nature of science and scientific theory has recently admitted that he was wrong-that “evolution is promulgated by its practitioners as . . . a religion, a full-fledged alternative to Christianity. . . . Evolution is a religion.” Which brings us to point two.
II. Evolution is a complete worldview.
Evolution is the religion of naturalism, the antithesis of supernaturalism. It purports to answer all the “big” questions of life. “Who am I?” “Where did I come from?” “Where am I going?” “What’s the meaning of all this?” Claiming that science equals naturalism excludes a Creator from science by definition. Even if that Creator exists and has been active, such a notion is unscientific. This religion of naturalism, that we are merely the result of blind random forces is logically compatible only with atheism. It has resulted in life without accountability to a Creator and has led to a licentious society full of great heartache, for evolution thinking underpins racism, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, promiscuity, divorce, suicide, Social Darwinism, etc. While science and technology have accomplished great things, often by evolution believers, the concept of evolution itself has lead to nothing useful.
III. The religion of evolution is the opposite of Christianity.
Evolution can be summed up by the phrase “survival of the fittest” and the extinction of the unfit. The death of the majority allows the few with beneficial mutations to continue. The strong thrive at the expense of the weak and helpless. The only things that matter are survival and reproduction. Evolution starts with small beginnings and over time, with volumes of bloodshed and disease, arrives at man. As Darwin concluded in the last paragraph of Origin of Species, death, carnivorous activity and extinction produced man.
Christianity poses a very different picture. It starts with a mighty Creator who created a “very good” (Genesis 1:31) universe, one in which was no pain, suffering, or death. He recreated His image in man, and graciously supplied his every need, including personal fellowship with Him. This perfection was rejected by man, and now all of man’s domain suffers the “wages of sin” (Romans 6:23), deteriorating and dying under the effect and penalty of sin. All things had been placed under Adam’s stewardship, and now all suffer under his penalty. Plants wither, animals die, people suffer and die. Even inanimate things deteriorate. The moon’s orbit decays. The sun uses up its fuel. The entire creation suffers (Romans 8:22).
Today we see extinction and survival of the fittest, but these are not creative processes, they are reminders to us to return to our Creator for His gracious solution to our sin penalty, for He graciously sent His Son to die as our sacrifice. The most fit of all, died for the unfit. He gives us eternal life as a free gift of His grace.
Contrast these concepts with survival of the fittest and struggle for existence, and you will see them as opposites. While evolution offers nothing but struggle and ultimate elimination, Christianity offers everlasting life free from every struggle and death.
Both evolution and Christianity are complete worldviews. Of the two, creation is better supported by scientific observation, and it alone makes sense out of life and eternity.
There’s a whole thread discussing the gay marriage issue that was started a while ago – it lays out the various sides pretty well. Maybe I’ll call it up so we don’t have to have all the same conversations all over again…
