Way to Go VP Mike Pence!!!

I think he's talking about you.

Let’s suppose hell does exist. We have prisons supposedly for people who break the law/ do immoral things. Why wouldn’t a loving god believe that some people deserve to go to hell? Yes he may be loving, but that doesn’t mean that you should never be punished. My mom was a loving mom, went out of her way to help others in need, was a Christian and didn’t judge people by race or sexual orientation. She was a better person than I’ll ever be. She even voted for Obama despite being a life long Republican. Yet she still believed people who do wrong ought to be punished. She even let me sit in jail when my stepbrother was graduating college and knew it was important to me to be there, but she did it because she knew that I deserved to be punished for what I had done. She could have bailed me out, the bail was not outrageously high, but she wanted to teach me a lesson. Why should a loving god do differently?

Just a reminder that VP Pence fuck horses.

It is!

You get out of jail eventually, Hell is eternal. Have you actually tried to imagine the concept of eternity? It’s actually terrifying. Hell would only make sense if you got out at some point because you have more than enough time to understand why you were wrong. In fact some early books that didn’t go into the Bible state that’s exactly what happens. I believe it’s the book of Timothy, which came close to replacing the Revelations of John. People in Heaven saw the people in Hell suffering and felt pity. Jesus told them that when they were finally clean of their sins they’d be allowed into Heaven. God couldn’t let them in with their sin and it was the only way to cleanse it after you die.

Well, I was kind of getting to that. Clearly there are books that didn’t make the cut. I brought this up in a thread a while back and I think it was in Timothy that basically said that before ascending to heaven, Jesus went to hell and assured everyone that eventually they’d be let out. That’s of course if you believe such a thing.

That being said, should hell exist, I don’t believe it’s eternal. But that’s just my opinion.

And yes, I’ve often tried to imagine what eternity feels like.

The whole concept of Hell seems like a desire to see the people who disagreed with suffer endlessly, the most vicious "told you so" a person can imagine. I find it very telling that it only becomes a thing in the New Testament. Jewish people don't even believe in Hell.

True, IIRC, they also didn’t have a concept of the devil either. Look, I’m no expert, I’m just going off of things I’ve heard over the years.

In Job, the Devil there is really just an angel who makes a bet with God. Even "devil" comes from a word for adversary, it being the supreme being of evil didn't really emerge until around the time Revelation was written. Then he got retconned as the serpent in the garden of Eden and various other references.

I never thought it made sense in the first place. Satan was an angel and angels don't have free will, so how could he rebel unless God wanted him to.

No, it's not.

No, in point of fact that's not how it works. Not all anti-gay outfits get that label, there are criteria.

I shouldn't waste my time picking apart this absolute bullshit but...here we are.

1. just as much if not more evil has been perpetrated in the name of religion - within each and every religion - than good. Just as many and likely more are made into hateful, judgmental, callous, legalistic, fucktard Pharisees who exploit the faithful for wealth and power or even just out of sheer malice. FRC being a case in point. EVEN IF the American Evangelical brand of Christianity is a reasonable facsimile of The Truth (TM) that group of people has fucked and fucked over considerably more people than it has helped.
And there's no objective reason to assume they are even right about what they believe or that there is any saving grace to their doctrines.

2. being CoC you of all people know this best - there can be only one. According to your own denominational doctrine only CoC is saved from hell, everyone else is doing it wrong and won't make the cut. Therefore by your own doctrine VASTLY more people have "religion" but are still going to hell, than those who are not. Thus you defeat your own point. Laying aside the CoC exclusionary doctrine, there's a multitude of competing claims about how one "gets saved" - whichever one you think is true, you immediately agree that there are more people who are religious but not saved than there are who are both religious and saved.

Bullshit.

Also, not chosen. To be celibate or fake being straight is a choice (made out of fear of those "better people" you imagine - but the actual orientation is not. (I mean you CAN choose to like buttsecks - tops in prison choose to fuck ass rather than hand - but that's not choosing to be gay, just choosing to fuck)

The advantage?

If nothing else, being able to live a happy life with someone you love rather than living in fear of...people like you.

which is because Dayton, like Pence and Tony Perkins and everyone else at that hellspawn convention is a hateful sonofabitch...just more latently so.

I don't know enough about the organization VP Pence spoke at to make an informed decision either way. That said, it saddens me that homosexuality has become the sin du jour that the modern evangelical movement has hung its hat on. I don't even like to talk about the subject unless there's a context for it. The truth is that sin is sin, is sin in the eyes of a Holy God and, VP Pence, there's a lot of sin in DC.

you're saying you would be none of those things but for religion?

I have a friend who, until 10 years or so ago took it as a given that homosexuality was a sin, then she met a really good friend who was a lesbian and was challenged to look into it further. She's an obsessive researcher and as a result she's published a book on the subject, is close to finishing another, and is one of the leaders of something called The Reformation Project which is a group of evangelicals, straight and otherwise, challenging evangelical churches to seek the truth rather than cling to tradition.

She travels the country giving five hour seminars about the research she's conducted and what she found about the actual history of the church as it relates to same sex relationships and - lets just say that the mythology that the church has always condemned them doesn't bear scrutiny, and there's a lot of linguistic and textual problems with the translations of the passages upon which modern evangelicals have based their crusade. That seminar is on youtube, in two very long videos.

No.

It's consistent with your VERSION of "Christianity" which, objectively, looks nothing like Christ and very much like the Pharisees he railed against.

Do you agree with Mike Pence that homosexuals should undergo conversion therapy?

indeed it is not even (just my opinion) something to give a shit about. If you had to list all the problems facing the US ranked in order of importance, sexual preference among consenting adults would be very far down the list.

nothing against god punishing people I guess. But eternal suffering? I would even buy suffering for as many years as you spent on this earth. And as for your mom teaching you a lesson through punishment, I have nothing against that. That's very much what punishment is for. But if the world has ended there will be no more opportunity for the person being punished in hell to apply any "life lessons" because there is no more "life" as we know it - just eternal hell or heaven for all eternity. So at that point the punishment becomes revenge, does it not? Not very loving to me. Maybe that's why god doesn't want humans to seek revenge against his fellow man - we are stealing god's thunder because no human cruelty can match that of god's cruelty.

Homosexuality is observed in over 1500 different animal species
Only humans practice religions

QED-religion is an unnatural act.

Yes, because I’m sure a cow can understand the concept of religion.

Why even ask?

I think Dayton should undergo conversion therapy. It might be nice if he were Christian.

Actually, it turns out that felines are religious as well. Even more remarkable, they all follow the same religion. They're all Catlicks!

probably not.

however, you're dodging the point that religion is a man made construct whereas no matter your species, the desire to stick your dick in who or whatever is an evolutionary constant.

I would think they were all Bast-tards?

You simple must know that even in Christianity that is subject to doctrinal dispute.

One of my cats is a Jew - matter-of-fact he's a Meowschwitz survivor!