Mass shooting at Gay night club in Orlando

PedroMendez said:
Nobody denies, that the Christian dogma is incredible homophobic. So is the Islamic one. The difference is, that the Islamic one isn´t getting questioned and scrutinized in similar fashion. You can try to draw false equivalences all day long, but in the end of the day everyone with two eyes sees that the treatments of almost all minorities in the arab/muslim world is nothing but shameful.
If anyone would show similar enthusiasm to defend other equally intolerant ideologies, the same people who give Islam a pass, would shout "racist" and "bigot" all day long.

Any dogma that tells you that people are less valuable, because they don´t share you sexual orientation is simply disgusting and any decent person should reject it.
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Sort of like the way they guys criticising and scrutinising Islam are failing to mention other religions intolerances then?

Personally I think all religion has been corrupted beyond recognition by vested interests, Islam and Christianity, I'm not giving anything a pass, but whats sauce for the Prophet is sauce for the Jesus.

I find it interesting that people highlight Islamic intolerance and then claim other religions are whiter than white when it comes to tolerance of homosexuality, particularly when the most recognisable Christian lead on the planet was preaching his own brand of intolerance towards gay people a month or two ago.
 
Mockney said:
Of course, experience is the root of all true knowledge, etc etc. None of that, however, explains why we should be impressed, or even potentially reassured by a religious leader telling his flock that it's not okay to kill people. That should be self explanatory to everyone, religious people (supposedly) doubly so! It should be page one of every holy text going, if it isn't already.

The very fact we're being encouraged to view it positively, even though it contains the implication that gays are still sinful and wrong, only implies (if it implies anything) that the situation is potentially worse than imagined!

This killer didn't hate gay people because he hadn't been told not to kill them. He may very well have hated them (and by extension potentially himself) because he thought they were sinful and wrong.
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Personally I'm not sure. I think you may be reading a lot into it, this was clearly the topic of the day and the easy go to option as a religious leader is to say "You shouldn't kill people". It's not great and definitely not something crow about but given the certain public's imagination that a lot worse is said in Mosques, it could be worse I suppose.
 
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Red Defence said:
I seem to have only ever been taught the positive (good) things about Christianity. God loves everyone and we should too is probably how I'd summarise it.
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You seem to have been taught by, what some people would call cafeteria christians then.
 
FlawlessThaw said:
Definitely not a great example I agree. Unfortunately it's a bit difficult to jump from "Let's kill all the gays" to "Gays are our best friends" particularly for people who never meet any gay people or people outside of their own community on a day to day basis.

Fact of the matter is education and actually introducing people outside of their own cultural norms is the best way to get people out of that mindset. One of the reasons I actually like Owen Jones is that I've met older Muslim folk who would never have given gay people the time of day, actually start respecting gay people because of the way Jones would speak passionately about Palestinian causes. That is just a small example of a gay person actually opening a prejudiced person's viewpoint, we need more of that.
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Ive been following Owen Jones for a while: I also like his take on the world.

Growing up gay had obviously enabled him to understand oppression and discrimination, so he is far more empathetic to it. His fierce criticism of Zac Goldsmiths disgraceful London Mayoral Election campaign and his implicit support for Sadiq Khan was truly open minded thinking.

Along with Sadiq Khans support for LGBT rights, they make an interesting duo and its good they both have front row seats to influence opinion right now.
 
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Eyepopper said:
You seem to have been taught by, what some people would call cafeteria christians then.
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Exactly. In most parts of the U.S. (especially the educated parts), if a priest or preacher dusted off the "how to keep your slaves", "stone your new bride to death if you find out she wasn't a virgin" parts of the bible, the congregation would be mortified. They go along with the parts of the bible that suits their morality and chuck the other parts. In less educated parts of the country, those parts are taught to kids at a young age and it's scary as feck.
 
Thinking back to my first confession and what the chaplin thought us about would happen to us if we failed to confess our sins, at 8 years of age, is the stuff of horror films.

Of course 4 years later he was caught fiddling with kids.
 
2cents said:
Just like they routinely blow up mosques of Muslims they happen to disagree with, thus presunbly destroying every Qur'an in the place, an act for which they encourage their followers to riot and kill over.
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I'm not sure that reason or logic play a big part in the thinking of religious belief
Carolina Red said:
Did he skip the entire Old Testament then?
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People pick and choose the bits of religious texts they want to believe and given that they are virtually all directly contradictory of themselves and filled with ridiculous (yet often beautiful) fantastical imagery, occasional snippets of sensible allegory, some absolute truisms like killing people is broadly a bad thing masquerading as moral teachings and loads of bizarre, surreal and perverse nonsense that might have made sense if you were a middle eastern shepherd worshiping a sky god many centuries ago, but probably not even then that is for the best.

Someones beautiful, peaceful and loving version of Christianity or Islam is no more true, real or valid than someone else's vengeful, violent and intolerant version. Neither is a perversion of some true path. It's all subjective and people dictate their interpretation of religion.
 
Eyepopper said:
Sort of like the way they guys criticising and scrutinising Islam are failing to mention other religions intolerances then?

Personally I think all religion has been corrupted beyond recognition by vested interests, Islam and Christianity, I'm not giving anything a pass, but whats sauce for the Prophet is sauce for the Jesus.

I find it interesting that people highlight Islamic intolerance and then claim other religions are whiter than white when it comes to tolerance of homosexuality, particularly when the most recognisable Christian lead on the planet was preaching his own brand of intolerance towards gay people a month or two ago.
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dunno. maybe stop imagining things. When I´d criticise Christianity, I wouldn't always add "hey, but Islam also sucks". That would be absurd. The discussion is based on a specific case and would be over long time ago, if we could acknowledge, that Islam is a huge source of homophobia and bigotry. Sadly you are unwilling to do that. You have an incredible double standard when it comes to Islam. I just give up. That said, don´t wonder that right-wing parties all over Europe (and Trump in the USA) are so successful. When saying so little is already seen as controversial by the centre-left, these people will continue to be successful.
 
MarylandMUFan said:
Exactly. In most parts of the U.S. (especially the educated parts), if a priest or preacher dusted off the "how to keep your slaves", "stone your new bride to death if you find out she wasn't a virgin" parts of the bible, the congregation would be mortified. They go along with the parts of the bible that suits their morality and chuck the other parts. In less educated parts of the country, those parts are taught to kids at a young age and it's scary as feck.
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My thing about the churches that skip over it is this... If it is in the book, and the book ends up being true, then no matter how much they don't wanna talk about it, the happy all the time friendly God isn't so happy all the time friendly.

The worst thing I ever did for my religious belief was go to a college that required Old and New Testament classes. Came away with a completely different view of the book and ended up moving away from organized religion.
 
FlawlessThaw said:
Personally I'm not sure. I think you may be reading a lot into it, this was clearly the topic of the day and the easy go to option as a religious leader is to say "You shouldn't kill people". It's not great and definitely not something crow about but given the certain public's imagination that a lot worse is said in Mosques, it could be worse is I suppose.
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Oh I've no issue with the preacher. I can completely understand and respect why he was doing it. I was posting about it's use in this thread, and as a semi-defense of the flack rednev was getting for pointing out the contradiction in it.

It just seems a little like trying to have your cake and eat it. Play down the influence of religion in this case if you like*, but you can't try and promote something like that as a win for it, at the same time. It's still morally suspect, and raises more issues surrounding why he hated gays in the first place than it does about why he shot them.

If you want to have that argument you can't leave out the difficult, potentially controversial bits and just champion the easy, obvious ones. Again, he didn't shoot these people because he hadn't been told not to enough. This is presumably the "liberal cowardice" nev was rather crassly referring to.

...Is all.

* I don't think this is a hugely religious centric one myself fwiw
 
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Carolina Red said:
My thing about the churches that skip over it is this... If it is in the book, and the book ends up being true, then no matter how much they don't wanna talk about it, the happy all the time friendly God isn't so happy all the time friendly.

The worst thing I ever did for my religious belief was go to a college that required Old and New Testament classes. Came away with a completely different view of the book and ended up moving away from organized religion.
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I think that happens to a lot of people. Once they realize that parts of the book are not only false but downright insane, the house of cards comes crashing down.
 
Red Defence said:
The different preachers focused on what we needed to know to make us a better person, not a worse person. A perfect way to teach religion to all.
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You realize however that skipping over it doesn't make that God of the Old Testament not the God you are worshipping, right?

You can skip it all you want, but if you call yourself a Christian, that God that says kill the gays is the God you worship.
 
Carolina Red said:
You realize however that skipping over it doesn't make that God of the Old Testament not the God you are worshipping, right?

You can skip it all you want, but if you call yourself a Christian, that God that says kill the gays is the God you worship.
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The God I worship doesn't think like that. (Just because it's in the OT doesn't make it true).
 
I want a pragmatic approach to dealing with this, rather than one of that condemns those who are trying to deal with the extremes of it - regardless of the fact there are parts of their approach that are worthy of condemnation. You can go around being right or you can go around being helpful. I think in these cases criticising these preachers is the former and not the latter. If people spreading these clips are veering in to lauding them rather than simply reminding people of such preachings, I don't think that does damage that isn't more than offset by the good in promoting tolerance that I think spreading these clips does.

Acceptance is the ideal but tolerance really is preferable to the alternative and you don't achieve it without having a few unfortunate allies.
 
You also can't skip the bits about not wearing clothes woven of two materials being a sin, for some inexplicable reason. If you pick and choose bits, you must do so based on some external criteria to the religious text. If you accept some of the text as true on this basis, and some as not, how can you be sure which bits are true? If it is all true, and contradictory and unpalatable as a consequence, who needs the religion?

If the God of the Qu'ran and Bible is literally true as portrayed in those texts, it should be shunned and not worshiped.

...I'm out of here. I'm too emotional and way off topic.
 
Red Defence said:
The God I worship doesn't think like that. (Just because it's in the OT doesn't make it true).
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Which is great, because you're obviously not an awful person. However, if your God is a personal God, in what sense is that God the Christian God? Why is the OT not true but the NT is? I don't understand the reasoning. Not that you are obliged to explain yourself of course.
 
Fingeredmouse said:
...I'm out of here. I'm too emotional and way off topic.
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These threads are tricky. There are so many issues that impact on all of us in different ways. You'd be going wrong if you were able to be completely dispassionate, I reckon. It's a pain to find the right balance and post honestly without getting worked up.
 
Red Defence said:
The God I worship doesn't think like that. (Just because it's in the OT doesn't make it true).
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Well thank feck you choose to believe the nice bits and not the bits that tell you to kill gay people.

But just because you don't believe the nasty shit, that doesn't mean they're not there and that some people who share your faith do choose to believe them.

Same as with Islam.
 
Red Defence said:
The God I worship doesn't think like that. (Just because it's in the OT doesn't make it true).
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Funny how weird people are. The internet is like this because commenters never have to look anyone in the eye. Keep worshipping whatever God you like. I don't worship any god, but that doesnt make me right or wrong. Sorry to hear of the mindless murder in that gay nightclub, what a sad, destructive, bastard.
 
Fingeredmouse said:
Which is great, because you're obviously not an awful person. However, if your God is a personal God, in what sense is that God the Christian God? Why is the OT not true but the NT is? I don't understand the reasoning. Not that you are obliged to explain yourself of course.
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Religion is merely a personal belief system and we take out of the religious texts what we believe God to be like. That's if we stop and think about it.

If we don't stop and think about it, as some religious people don't and we take everything written at face value then we lose the larger message within the religion. We then become religious fanatics who can't live without constant recourse to a book who's words damage rather than heal society.

God is the Anglo-Saxon word for Good so I'll take it that my God didn't authorise much of the negative stuff in the bible.
 
Eyepopper said:
You seem to have been taught by, what some people would call cafeteria christians then.
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I was taught the Old and the New testament in detail, including Leviticus. I was taught to read the Old Testament as a historical reference point and the New Testament on what was promised even to the Gentiles. In fact, that's how I remember the church leanings for the past 30 years. Yes, we are told that immoral sex is not on, but never to hate the people.

I'm not sure about this cafetaria Christians, were you taught by the faith militants?
 
Eyepopper said:
Well thank feck you choose to believe the nice bits and not the bits that tell you to kill gay people.

But just because you don't believe the nasty shit, that doesn't mean they're not there and that some people who share your faith do choose to believe them.

Same as with Islam.
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There's nowhere in the bible that tells people to kill gay people.
 
That is absolutely not the etymology of the word God.

Old English god "supreme being, deity; the Christian God; image of a god; godlike person," from Proto-Germanic *guthan (source also of Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Dutch god, Old High German got, German Gott, Old Norse guð, Gothic guþ), from PIE *ghut- "that which is invoked" (source also of Old Church Slavonic zovo "to call," Sanskrit huta- "invoked," an epithet of Indra), from root *gheu(e)- "to call, invoke."

But some trace it to PIE *ghu-to- "poured," from root *gheu- "to pour, pour a libation" (source of Greek khein "to pour," also in the phrase khute gaia"poured earth," referring to a burial mound; see found (v.2)). "Given the Greek facts, the Germanic form may have referred in the first instance to the spirit immanent in a burial mound" [Watkins].
 
Adisa said:
There's nowhere in the bible that tells people to kill gay people.
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Leviticus 20:13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them
 
Adisa said:
There's nowhere in the bible that tells people to kill gay people.
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Really?

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
 
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