Dayton3/Tracker/Dayton Kitchen’s Greatest Hits

Humans are not created sick (sinful).

They are created with free will and have a choice.

Sadly, virtually all choose...poorly...

Regrettable, but it does make even more significant those of us who make the wise, correct choice.

And there's the circular argument that drives people up the wall. You have "free will" to choose God, yet you'll get punished if you don't.

That's the logic behind the Rumspringa in the Amish community when teens come of age and can explore the modern world before choosing to commit to the Amish life or be forced to cut ties with the community if they leave. It's not a bloody choice, it's emotional manipulation.

Where's the logic in that?

Who decides the correct choice?

"Poorly", is a human value judgement.
A human that eats poop is a freak, but it's perfectly natural for a dung beetle.
A human that devours their young is a monster, but it's perfectly natural for certain types of insects.
Human inbreeding is looked down on, but dogs and cats do it all the time.
All these creatures were allegedly made by God.
Why all the different standards?
Sounds made up to me.

You know humans are not "animals" even though they are mammals and thus part of the animal kingdom.

Isn't that the way with most choices in life? Virtually all in fact?

Humans aren't animals even though they're animals.
Um.....
Huh....

We've already established throughout your posting history that you are not a true Christian (perhaps best exemplified in this very thread).

?
Isn't that an example of a "no true Scotsman" argument of your part?

mam·mal
ˈmaməl/
noun
plural noun: mammals

1. a warm-blooded vertebrate animal of a class that is distinguished by the possession of hair or fur, the secretion of milk by females for the nourishment of the young, and (typically) the birth of live young.

But I'm not flying airplanes into buildings over my belief that Jesus is alive and that he changed my life by helping me to get over the fundamentalist religion I grew up with. My faith leads me to do humanitarian work and to pray for others.

So my question is still valid: Why is it "common courtesy" to defer to someone's firm conviction that they are of whatever gender they believe themselves to be, when the physical evidence points to the opposite conclusion, but not to defer to someone's firm conviction that they have correctly identified what they have experienced on a spiritual level, especially as there is no physical proof that that isn't the case? It's easy to say that "It's bad when it causes them to harm others" (which is perfectly true), but that works both ways: No matter what your beliefs, if you hurt others because of them, you are in the wrong whether your beliefs are true or not. But if accepting the beliefs of those who aren't doing you any harm is expected as a matter of common decency as long as they aren't hurting you in one case, why is it not common decency in the other case?

It seems to me that you are others are basically arguing, "I should be polite only when I think the person is right, but it is perfectly acceptable to insult them in whatever way suits me when I think their beliefs are inherently wrong." Which is a pretty blatant double standard.

And my answer to that will always be "the Shwartz is in YOU Lonestar! It's in you!".

Very few Christians I know hold to such beliefs. So few, in fact, that this is a pretty blatant straw-man fallacy.

What is interesting is that when Dayton and I argue that that isn't what the Bible is saying, you and others are the ones arguing that it is. IOW, you have to force the Bible into your one, narrow, litteralist, Indo-European-mindset-oriented interpretation, in order to discredit it. That, again, is almost the textbook definition of a straw-man fallacy.

I disagree.

I don't think God punishes anyone for not choosing him. I think that if a parent tells a child not to touch the hot iron and the child disobeys and burns his hand doing it, the burn is not a "punishment."

So, things like the slaughter of the Midianites, that was a metaphor for...what?
They really all sat at a big platinum dipped marble table, and ate bags and bags of Halloween candy?
Sorry, some things in the Bible are what they are.
In fact, most things.
Only the parables and revelation get a little sneaky, and revelation interprets itself, there's an angel right there narrating it.

Parents don't put the rules in opposition to desire.
For it to be analogous to what God does, the hot iron would also be coated with chocolate, and chocolate frosting, and rainbow sprinkles, with cartoon arrows leading the way to it.

It's not a metaphor. It's God's way of showing that people are violent. The Midianites invaded Israel and got smacked down for it. Is that really such a bad thing?

Oh, yes they do. In fact, they almost always do. What point is there in making rules to tell your kids they shouldn't do something, when they don't want to do it anyway?

But telling your kids they should smoke is very definitely putting rules in opposition to desire. It's just that, if they obey you, twenty or thirty years down the road they will be glad they did.

Even the babies, and the preteen girls that got sexually enslaved?
Wow, that's an evil fucking town.
Even the cities in Grand Theft Auto aren't that fucked up.
That's really something.

You've got to be kidding me!!
They treat it like a history book.
They don't believe in any science if it ain't in the Bible. Like the big bang, evolution etc.
Then they cherry pick a few quotes to lay down "judgement" on others. Mostly for having fun or when they denounce homosexuals before retiring to their dens to jack off to gay porn.

All right, they don't put the rules of EXISTENCE against desire.
Putting chocolate on a hot iron was the closest I could get, because no human has the power to hack reality to that extent.
God does.
God could make it so your testicles don't work until you say wedding vows.
God could give vaginas snapping teeth to prevent rape.
Or, alternatively, and hear me out, cuz this one might seem a little crazy....he could forgive his children for their nature, and leave them in peace.

Original sin, D. Don't you know your own religion's doctrine?

Sex is physical--one is either born male, female, or in rare cases both. Gender labels are not physical, they are a mix of cultural, social, and psychological factors. It may even be chemical, as with sexual orientation, but I don't know enough about the subject to speak to that (@Nova might be able to elaborate). You've no doubt encountered cultures with more than two genders during your humanitarian work, or at least different concepts of the two genders.

Admittedly, religious beliefs are similar to gender, in that religious beliefs are cultural, social, and psychological. But no one is denying you your identity as a Christian. No one is calling you a Zoroastrian, even though you identify as a Christian. Beyond that labeling, your comparison is again invalid.

Sit down. He's a science teacher.

You're probably a terrible Scotsman too.

Not so much a McDonald's quarter pounder up the kilt as a single McChicken nugget.

Don't know if you know anything about "my religion" but mine teaches that babies are born without sin and utterly innocent.

If God wanted unthinking, forced obedience he would've created robots.

But what good is love and obedience if it is forced?

Ever owned a dog, cat or other pet?

Do you want it to stay with you because it loves you (or what passes for love from an animal) or would you simply prefer it stays because its chain doesn't go any further?

Given the staggering size of the entire universe and the billions upon billions of planets scattered about the cosmos that exist both now and in the past, I can't see how God gives a shit whether we on this little rock masturbate over our neighbors hot wife, eat beef on Friday's or say "Jehovah". The whole idea of sin is just ludicrous.

Why do you people harp on this?

i guess you didn't know that the purpose of this was to extend protection to young women who were suddenly left with no males to protect them or provide from them in the future.