The U.S. as Post-Christian Nation

Yes, I know Sodom and Gomorrah was in Genesis. It's just that when religionists make the argument that "homosexuality is a sin," they try to hyperfocus on S&G in the hope that the other side won't bring up Leviticus. When you combine the two, it gets interesting.

But again there's that tendency to hyperfocus, and ignore the fact that it was not homosexuality qua homosexuality that was anathema, but taking sex by force from unwilling victims.

The crime is not sex, but rape. And one wonders if the "young men" would have been allowed to go merrily on their way the next morning, or if they'd have been murdered to cover up the crime. And if the two "young men" had been "young women," would this even get a mention? Something to ponder.

If you're using food as an analogy for sex, you're essentially suggesting homosexuals should starve themselves to death.

This is just the kind of thing that makes people scratch their heads when they're trying to discuss stuff with you, g. You make a bogus statement and, when called on the inaccuracy of it, try to throw it off on someone else as if you were just trying to analyze them. I'm not buying it.

hyperfocusing? Seems like you're mixing stories inappropriately, if anything.

The sin of homosexuality was specifically mentioned in the context of S&G but it obviously wasn't the only one. If you'll read the story (in Genesis) the angels were, indeed, threatened with homosexual attack. But, if you'll read that account in context, the destruction of the area had already been decreed before that account was given. So, obviously, there may have been more going on than just widespread homosexuality as the "crime".

The dietary laws were given specifically to a people who were called to be set aside to God in every aspect of their behavior. They really don't seem to be applicable to people who live under the new covenant. There really is no comparison to the "big 10" or to sins that are specifically mentioned as being applicable to members of that new covenant (and sexual purity is most certainly one of those.)

If it were just "rape", then the offer of young women for rape would've been taken up by the crowd. Again, you've gotta read the account for yourself. The crowd didn't want just any old rape, they wanted homosexual rape. That pretty much shoots your defense of the crowd right out of the water, doesn't it?

Before you wander off down another detour, yes, this is another example of the "heroes" of the Bible acting in a less than virtuous manner. But, stick to the immediate topic here and we'll get to that in another discussion. This monstrosity has already gone plenty far off-topic.

Didn't think you could answer a straight question.

Are you willing for me to give an honest answer to your question yet, or does it still have to be a simple "yes" or "no"?

​

And I’m not buying your attempt to make it look as if I thought the S&G story was in Leviticus. So how many angels are dancing on the head of your pin?

In a tribal society on the edge of a wilderness where having multiple children is a necessity, obviously anyone having sex for any other reason would be looked on askance.

Humans making human rules for other humans.

And as I said before, the dietary and clothing laws make you guys twitchy, so you try to change the subject. Not buying that, either.

I’ve read it, but I’ve probably read a different version than whatever your flavor of Christianity finds acceptable, so the words may not be the same, and then we’d get back to quibbling over “religion” versus “sect.”

Call me crazy, but rape is wrong, and your side’s repeated attempt to shift focus to “It’s cos they were teh gay” is boring.

How do you know Lot's daughters weren't fugly? The fact that a few chapters later they find it necessary to get the old man drunk and have sex with him says something about the nature of a dysfunctional family, though I'm not sure where to begin with that one.

Maybe if the mob took him up on his offer they'd be obliged to pay some sort of dowry/restitution for having raped his daughters? If the Ugly Sisters got pregnant, would the mob be saddled with group paternity? We'd need to know the customs in that time and place to answer those.

The "young men" were strangers. No chance of getting them pregnant, and they could always be dumped in the desert afterwards with "If you want to live, you'll keep quiet about this."

Extrapolations, but you can't disprove them from this distance.

You need to be clearer. Even Aristotle, that unredeemed pagan, preached “moderation in all things.”

But if you’re using food as a metaphor for sex, you’re already in trouble. Speak clearly.

Simple question: Did God make homosexuals the way they are? Or are you of the “it’s a choice” camp? Because if it’s the latter, we’re done here. If the former, then we might still have some grounds for discussion.

Bump

It's not my "attempt". It's a direct quote unless you've gone back and edited something.

Humans making excuses for doing what they want, perhaps? C'mon now. What's more likely? When men can have sex at least every day without any reduction in their ability to sire children, what does that do to your theory about male homosexual sex being frowned on? It's far, far more likely that an outside force put that restriction on human behavior than people put that restriction on each other.

And isn't it cute how you start insultingly lumping everybody into the same bucket when you can't make a decent argument? I told you why the dietary and clothing laws don't apply to Christians yet you still want to make them the issue. Sounds to me look you're the one getting desperate.

True. Rape is wrong. That's why I said what I did about the offer of the women to be raped being wrong, too. I didn't defend that at all.

Wow. Next you'll be offering the defense that the angels were dressing in miniskirts and "asking for it". You really are pathetic when you're losing, you know that?

I'll admit that the whole nature of families and child-bearing at that time seems kind of messed up. Especially by today's standards. I don't have an explanation of that, just some speculation.

and...

You're still overthinking the food question

The US as defined by the Constitution is and always has intended to have been secular at least in its government.

Sort of like I have never understood nor will I ever understand people who are freaked out by the idea of the US not being a Christian nation or who insist that it is.

I really didn't intend to come across as freaked out by the prospect. Originally just to discuss the fact that things have or at least seemed to have changed. If things have changed, though, libs have to start taking real ownership of the problems that exist and, in fact, have gotten worse over the last 40-50 years.

What problems have gotten worse over the past 40-50 years, and do they outweigh the numerous things that have got better?

It's a reasonable question given that it's one of the few topics that hasn't been addressed in this thread. Obviously given that you are coming from a conservative political viewpoint you will see things that have politically become more liberal as being "worse" but what I'm wondering is what of those things you see as being the departures from Christianity (being that is the subject of this thread)

I'm not trolling or haven't looked either, it's 1.30am and I am trying to get to sleep so in an effort to bore myself to sleep I reread the entire thread...here are what your posts have covered:

Sodom and Gommorah
Whether Catholics can be Christian
Divorce and relation to gay marriage
The ability of people who don't share your faith to judge it
Discussion of the origins of the Catholic Church
The religious denomination of George Bush
The religious beliefs of the American founding fathers
How much the religious beliefs of a president should actually affect his secular fulfillment of that role
Religious beliefs of Jimmy Carter and how his presidency represented a surprise departure from his churches values
How current presidents are increasingly saying they believe in one thing while doing another
That politicians with "strong Biblically-based Christian values" have no chance

It is an important question given that you say that libs have to take responsibility for things that have gotten worse, which in the context of this thread obviously implies it is liberals who are leading the charge away from a Christian nation while conservatives are pulling back towards it (or at least charging away less quickly).

Here's the quote:

Two separate thoughts here. One, it says in Leviticus 18:22: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is an abomination."

That's right in there with the shellfish, the pork, and the two different fabrics.

The third sentence in my quote, RE: Sodom and Gomorrah, is a separate thought about Genesis 18.

I didn't realize I had to quote chapter and verse in order for you to follow my thought process.

Hope that helps.

Again, the Levitical laws are dealing primarily with the Israelites as God's chosen people. The 10 commandments (and others) are there as well as a reiteration of their importance. But the dietary and others that make up what is commonly referred to as the "Law" are specific to the Jews of the time. You wanted to continue to lump everything together and I wouldn't let you. Fair enough?

As Christians today, we are descendants of Judaism but are not Jews and not bound to those decrees. As I've already said a couple of times, there are things that are specifically mentioned in both the OT and the NT as being prohibited to Jews and Christians alike.

To paraphrase you... I didn't realize I had to say it, say it again, and say it again for you to follow along.

Hope that helps.

Well, I could say that's damn convenient, but I'll give you a chance to quote where Jesus says, "Hey, forget Leviticus, mmkay? No longer applicable. But everything else in the Old Law is," because that's not in my New Testament.

Meanwhile, let's bump this:

I think we can expect that Async will do what he always does when the conversation gets uncomfortable for him, i.e., just walks away and pretends it never happened...

I was just rubbing my forehead thinking, "here we go again." I thought we were winding down having covered a lot of this already and having to go over it again means that either a) I'm once again confirming how unclear I can be or b) no one's really reading these things.

Some things have gotten worse - and some have stabilized maybe but some have certainly gotten worse than the beginning of this time frame (or maybe 1940's-1950's if you'll cut me some slack on the time frame)

Teen pregnancy

Drug use

Divorce rates

Crime

Public Education

Government accountability (waste, size of bureaucracy versus efficiency of work done)

Just a few off the top of my head...

All general topics and all worthy of very in-depth discussions of their own but, you asked...

You could say that but it's pretty darned meaningless. Not to say seemingly random as well.

Jesus did say he didn't come to do away with the law but to fulfill it. To me, that means that the technicalities of the law weren't necessary to meet its true intent BUT, there were grand themes that couldn't be ignored. The Levitical laws were deemed important enough to be included to show what kind of nitpicky stuff was being done away with. Hey. I'm grateful. Lesson learned. But along with the summation of the law (love God, love your neighbor as yourself), we're given some other things in the NT as a reminder that we're not given total free run of the planet. Hey. I understand that, too. Still grateful.

Want some concrete examples? Look up where Jesus and the disciples healed people on the Sabbath. Look up where they gathered grain on the Sabbath. He hung around "unclean" people. Note that these were the unclean according to Levitical laws. You can't have it both ways here, g. I believe Him when he say he came to fulfill the law and that those particulars didn't apply any longer. If people want to choose to bind themselves to those laws that's their business. Jesus didn't require it for His church.

^So would it be fair to say he cherry-picked from the Old Law in order to have more appeal to the younger generation of his day?

Damn dirty hippie...

Where's that dickynoo brrrooompht smilie?

All the stats I have seen say that US teen pregnancy rates peaked in the 1950's and then again in the early 1990's and are actually at historically low rates now. It's probably not down to increased abortions either as estimates of abortion rates before they were legally available are roughly the same as nowadays. So in regards to using it to show the effects of how Christian a nation is I'll say this one is irrelevant.

Probably has increased, and while there are many other factors I will admit that among people I know the more religious are less likely to use drugs.

Increased but it is hard to get statistics on the important question which is how many happy marriages that would have previously stayed together now end in divorce. From my perspective it is better for someone to be now able to get out of an abusive relationship that they would have historically been trapped in.

Statistics I would be interested in seeing if they existed would be how the divorce rate has changed in Christian couples from 1950 to present versus the rate change in the overall population. I will for the moment give you this though as an example of something changing due to a society becoming less convervative. As I have said though whether or not it is an example of marital stability becoming worse overall is debatable.

Increased in some areas, decreased in others. It is also hard to compare statistics over long periods of time due to differences in factors such as the reporting rate for crime. Since I can't debunk it though I will give you this one.

Another thing that has got worse in some areas, better in others. It is hard to see though how those changes have anything to do with religion.

Will give you this one, although I can't see how it is an example of Christian influence diminishing.

Thanks for the list.

As a counterpoint I would bring up the vast legal progress that has been made in regards to the rights of homosexuals. I'm not talking about things like homosexual marriage here but rather the erosion of laws designed to target people purely for being gay. Regardless of religious views on the issue I'm pretty sure that you are the type of person who doesn't think the government should be prosecuting people for the crime of being gay or engaging in homosexual activities.

Progress made on the societal status of women.

The end of legal segregation between races and the increased societal shunning of racism.

I am not going to make any attempt to say how I think decreased or increased religious influence has played a role in things that have gotten better. These are just counterpoints that demonstrate you cannot say all things that have gotten worse are a result of lessened Christian influence without also implying that things that have gotten better have done so as a result of lessened Christian influence.

I don't see why us getting worse either way has anything to do with religion, in fact I think that our modern interpretation of Christianity is very different from the one that early Christians would have recognized. If you were to look at old cathederals in Europe from the middle ages, there were thousands of images of demons and devils and so on. They were keenly aware of the evil in the world. We have a much more positive take on religion -- we don't have a fear and loathing of evil, and a lot of people seem to see Jesus as a cosmic Santa Claus or their best drinking buddy -- this isn't how Christianity was originally concieved.

But we are declining in so many ways. We have an absolute problem with saying that anything is wrong or bad. I don't suggest that we need to be supremist, but it's like we can't even say "Hey our ways are pretty good", or "I get that you believe that human sacrifice is the way to feed the sun-god, but human sacrifice is just plain wrong". In other worlds, self confidence. We don't really call a spade a spade in any real sense -- in fact, most of our terminology is designed to hide or sugar-coat the reality of our situations. It's not Jihad, it's terrorism as though it's the same kind as North Ireland (they went out of the way to avoid civilian causualties BTW). It's not debt its a deficit, as though it's a problem on paper and we'll never have to pay it back.

As far as crime, well, google "ruins of Detroit" and tell me that this is a sign of a healthy society. It's the same in most major cities -- entire sections are inhabited by people only because they can't afford to live elsewhere. Gangs and drugs are commonplace, and these gangs can essentially run large sections of the city. As far as our education system -- don't make me laugh. We're near the bottom in math and science "reading proficiency" means a sixth grade level -- and people can graduate from many schools functionally illiterate. This is not a healthy society by any stretch of the imagination.

I don't fault Christianity either way -- it's not Christianity that's falling, it's the West.

Are you willing for me to give an honest answer to your question yet, or does it still have to be a simple "yes" or "no"?

[/quote]

How can one reply when one is not even married?

The only valid comparison between your question and mine would be if you were not religious, in which case you could simply say so and therefore this discussion would be concluded.

But if it will please you, let us proceed on the hypothesis that I am married to Silk Spectre.

In that case I would therefore answer that I did once accidentally deprive her of oxygen, then corrected the situation and apologized.

In that moment, I did stop asphyxiating my wife, so to speak.

I hope this answer eases your defensiveness. To me, I must confess it seems quite irrational. I truly am not out to harm you in any way. I am simply curious as to your opinion of the standing of the Roman Catholic church, and why.

However, I am learning that humans are often incapable of discussing religion irrationally.

For example, I have traveled to Afghanistan on a number of occasions and have asked radical Muslims why they persist in their violence. They demonstrated a similar defensiveness, often punctuated by rocket fire and much use of assault weapons.

I simply do not understand why God, if he exists, would cause such emotion in those who claim to follow him.

In any event, I shall withdraw the question. This forum suffers from enough senseless emotion. I will seek reasonable discussion elsewhere.

I do about Christianity.

People don't seem to appreciate it for some reason.

Ah, well....

Fuck off. The way to go out of the way to avoid civilian causalities is to not set off bombs in civilian locations.