How did things get this bad?

[kurious_kathy]

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You'd figgure god could do better than starting fires to get his indignation expressed. After all he once flooded the world and took out two cities in one fiery blast. The California fires seem lame and half-hearted.

And I though he was a loving and forgiving god? Why does he punish then? Doesn't the very act of sin or evil living supposed to bring it' own punishments?

And Isn't his judgement reserved for after we die?

I have to whole heartedly disagree with you there. There was this child in my neigborhood who I knew practicaly from his birth. You could tell from a very young age that he was not a "manly" child. When I last ran into him he was living with his "life partner".
That's the thing about free speech. The law says you are free to speak it, but nowhere in the law does say anyone has to listen to it.

This is an example of fearmongering and bad logic. Making gay marriage legal does not mean that it will become illeagal to speak out against it or that the church has to allow gay marriage. I don't think any pastor has been put in jail for speaking out against gay marriages or homosexuality even in the states where gay marriages are legal.
Isn't bearing false wittness a sin in god''s eyes Kathy?
You are not out and out lieing but you are alluding to something that will never happen inorder to induce fear and sympathy. Sorry that kind of swollop will not fly here.

I have strong opinions that's true, but I am concerned about our nation and the souls of men. I still stand on love what is good and hate what is evil. If I see something is evil I will speak up about it. People want to turn a blind eye and it's not good. There have been pastors arrested and I'm sure we will see more of them. I will have to research their names and locations but I will and then I will get back to you.

And if God orignally created us to be Holy and have fellowship with him doesn't it make sense that he would have to judge sin? He is Holy and we aren't, it's only through Christ's holiness that anyone has a chance of being forgiven and set free. After all there truly is no condemnation for those who are in Christ! I'm not perfect but I do know the one that is!!

 

[Elizabeth I]

I am a Texas girl and I am appauled at KK's spelling. It's too horrible to contenplaint and should be condemnded.

Check out his spiritual leader Jermiah White sometime,

And after that you could check out his spiritual leader Jeremiah Wright. Could you at least spell your ignorance correctly?

To me that seems pretty empty and meaningless.

As empty as a fundamentalist's head? How can you be so proud of being an ignorant bigot? Do you understand that ignorance and bigotry combined are the cause of most of the trouble and misery in the world, past, present, and to come?

No, you don't.

I'd be more than ashamed if I'd murdered someone. Do the police know about this, Kathy?

Spit take - water on the screen! That's what I get for reading this during lunch.

 

[wolfgirl]

I see you're still here, kk, but you don't seem to want to answer any of the numerous people who have pointed out that there have been fires in California long before there was gay marriage there. And that there are fires in many other states, too. And that those fires kill innocent people who have nothing to do with the gay marriage laws (a really cool god could just kill the actual people responsible for passing the law rather than setting a whole state on fire).

 

[uruk]

And as for who I killed? I am post abortive. I thought I got out of breaking the killing commandment until I had to deal with that lie I bought when I had my abortion. I was 16 and not ready to be a mom and I thought it was just a glob of tissue, now I see I was wrong. Now the Lord has forgiven me and healed me from that tragedy and I have hope of meeting my aborted baby in heaven. I believe now what the Bible teaches that life begins at conception, but then I was totally clueless. Anyways my abortion was one of the big things that caused me to be on anti depressants/ and liquor for years until God intervened and turned my ife around. It's been 4 years now without anti depressants or liquor and I am grateful for it. This was not by my own strength either, Jesus delivered me from a life of addiction. When I got on meth that last year it was way bad! Lot's of people still struggeling with that one. I was one God saved, it could very well have killed me like it has so many other people.

Well it is very good to see that you got out of that self-destructive lifestyle and depression. Just be sure that you are not replacing one type of addiction with another. Anything taken to extremes can be just as self-destructive as drugs and depression. Remember the verse about "inheriting the wind".

I have had a few friends who also went on a religeous bender to get away from the depression, drugs and prostitution. They went through periods of backsliding and religeous ferver. I saw some of those friends fall to the ultimate depths and a few who still ride the holy roller coaster. Some of them finally broke the chain and found an equilibrium that worked for them. They keep away from the "sin" but then niether are they hell fire and brimstone.

Just remember that just becuse you went holy roller doesn't mean that all the temptations and "evil thoughts" go away. It is a constant struggle to keep yourself on the straight and narrow. My mother (who is deeply religeous) calls it her "cross to bear" for all of her weaknesses.


As for me, I am a strong agnostic and living a very good, fullfilling life. I have a wonderful wife, a good job that I look forward to going to in the morning and I want for nothing.(except for maybe a home theater)
I do no illegal drugs or drink or smoke nor do I engage in promescuity. (Does pornography count?)
I'm more than a bit on the pudgy side though, I guess that's my "heavy" cross to bear.

I don't go to church nor am I a member of any religeon, although I have been known to pray to Joe Pesci on an occasion or two. So when I die and if there is a pearly gate I guess I might have some 'esplainin' to do but so far god has not been knocking on my door. (Mormons don't count!)

I'd say this cold and indifferent universe has been very good to me. I consider myself to be very, very lucky.

 

[AkuManiMani]

How did things get this bad?

Humans have always been lemmings with over-sized brains, as far as I can tell.

 

[CurtC]

When I first read KK's post, I thought I read that she "applauded" the same-sex marriage thing in California. It wasn't until later when someone replied, that I noticed she was "appauled."

Well, remember that Moses was angry and broke the first set of commandments. Then God sent him up for a replacement set that makes no mention of murder. So perhaps Kathy seared a kid in its mothers milk.

The Bible clearly says that when God carved the second set of stone tablets, they said the same thing as the first time. And those, which are the only ones the Bible refers to as "The Ten Commandments," are the ones that include thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk. The ten that are usually referred to in modern times, including the prohibition against coveting your neighbor's wife's ass or whatever, are really just ten of the "other" 603 commandments in the Old Testament.

 

[MCH]

How exactly did things get this bad?

For what it's worth, I've lived through quite a lot of British elections, and listened in on many American ones. It's not got worse, it's just that you are seeing a bad side of it; the tribal/blind fundamentalist faith is nothing new in politics, after all it's largely about morals and what people believe quite deeply are right and wrong. Sometimes this is expressed quite scarily; just mention "Margaret Thatcher" here in certain company and see what amazing reactions you get.

America is not worse - on the contrary, it's relative openness in both freedom of expression and platforms to speak on make them far far better than most in the world. That very openness also exposes the extremes, but it's not right to assume these extremes (so much better reported than boring normal views - for example the existence of this thread) are any more normal than in other places.

Again, FWIW I come from the opposite end of the rather simplistic left-right political spectrum to you (but am certainly not like your family!) and I am used to avoiding certain subjects with some of my naive tree-hugging hippy intellectually chall-... ahem... my left-leaning relations.

 

[TheLoneBedouin]

Humans have always been lemmings with over-sized brains, as far as I can tell.

 

[godless dave]

For what it's worth, I've lived through quite a lot of British elections, and listened in on many American ones. It's not got worse, it's just that you are seeing a bad side of it; the tribal/blind fundamentalist faith is nothing new in politics, after all it's largely about morals and what people believe quite deeply are right and wrong. Sometimes this is expressed quite scarily; just mention "Margaret Thatcher" here in certain company and see what amazing reactions you get.

Good point, bad example. Brits have very good reasons for hating Margaret Thatcher, not made-up ones like she was brought up a Muslim and has a distant cousin who recruits suicide bombers at abortion clinics.

But take a look at the National Party in Britain, or the far-right party in Austria, or Baader-Meinhof sympathizers in Germany, or Slobodan Milosevic's fans in Serbia. Whipping people up with lies and appealing to their bigotry and fear is by no means a uniquely American phenomenon.

 

[westprog]

If you don't know him or his family, how do you have any way of knowing it's a huge step?

If he's still seeing his relations and talking to them, then it's a big step to stop. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's the wrong thing to do, but it isn't something to be casually decided.

 

[Tanstaafl]

I have strong opinions that's true, but I am concerned about our nation and the souls of men. I still stand on love what is good and hate what is evil. If I see something is evil I will speak up about it. People want to turn a blind eye and it's not good. There have been pastors arrested and I'm sure we will see more of them. I will have to research their names and locations but I will and then I will get back to you.

I have an alternate theory.

I think you identify those you hate, then convince yourself they're evil to justify your hate.

 

[Darth Rotor]

So you DON'T endorse John McCain, then? After all, he committed the "sexual sin" of adultery,

Aye, and likely fornication as well . . .

and then put aside his first wife for the less broken model he's using now.

Not quite, my friend, unless you have evidence that he doesn't love Cindy more than her beer distributorship.

What evidence do you have that he does not love his wife? Your use of the word "using" is what triggered this response.

In other news, I note that KK is able to recruit a new fan club each time she drops in to post her personal style of prose on these forums.

Some things never change.

 

[gentlehorse]

Jesus was the only one that could make a sacrifice that was pleasing to God for us. He never sinned that's why death could not keep him. The penalty of sin is death, but Jesus never sinned so he was resurrected. I know my redeemer lives, he has proven himself to me and millions of other believers.
I know it does take faith to receive this message, I just hope there are some here on JREF capable of having faith. What is a life without faith?To me that seems pretty empty and meaningless. So many try to say this life is all there is, but that is simply just not true. People are living souls that go on forever, either one place or the other. This would be a good time to take this warning about hell seriously as God is not mocked! And maybe for some I seem a bit overpowering, but I do have authority through Christ to speak truth into others lives!

An eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, infinitely kind and loving god is pleased by the torture and death of the physical incarnation of himself...

Throughout the course of history, there have been scores of god stories, each one as unbelievable as the next. This wise, empathetic, loving god in whom you believe would knowingly put us in the position to choose to believe in the correct unbelievable story or suffer eternal torture. He would do so, having known for eternity that many of us will be incapable of believing, and would torture us for eternity, regardless. In short, he made some of us for the sole purpose of being tortured forever, simply because we are exactly as he made us: incapable of believing an unbelievable story... I couldn't believe if I tried, Kathy. Even if I were to say "I believe", I can't see how this might fool an eternal, all-knowing god. The god in whom you believe has known how I would react to this story since before the beginning of time. And still, I must suffer forever. Your message is one I am simply incapable of receiving.

 

[Hokulele]

When I first read KK's post, I thought I read that she "applauded" the same-sex marriage thing in California. It wasn't until later when someone replied, that I noticed she was "appauled."

Considering there is some evidence that St. Paul was gay, that is actually funnier than it should be.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

He loves us so much he gave his son to die for our sins.

The Fall is one of the things I really don't like about Christianity. It stems from a time when punishment from serious crimes were passed on from parents to offspring, so that if I, for example, robbed a whole bunch of people and got caught, not only I would get punished - any children I might have would be, too, along with perhaps their kids. The fact that these kids shouldn't be punished because they are innocent slipped the minds of these people - remember, this was 3000 years ago, when morals were drastically different from now.

A way to redeem for your crime, however, was to sacrifice a goat, hence the term scapegoat. You'd take a goat and send it into the desert where it would die of thirst and heat. This killing of an innocent goat somehow made the guilty less so.

Kathy might subscribe to 3000 years old morals and be impressed with God's ridiculous punishment of every human being for the crime of a pair of them (the theft of a n unnamed forbidden fruit) , and His punishment of an innocent party to set things straight. I, however, am not.

seek God with all your heart. He is the one who rewards us when we do.

There's not an ounce of evidence that God-fearing people are 'rewarded' by God in any way whatsoever.

Why do you think there is so much aids now? That looks like God's judgment to me but I guess everyone has to decide themselves.

So God is a terrorist who has unleashed a viral weapon of mass destruction with a horrific lack of precision (funny how it doesn't only affect gay people, eh, Kathy) that's so far killed millions of people? Yahweh makes Usama look like a rebellious little seven year old sometimes.

But then again, it's God. He's above His own supremely important rules and can murder, cheat, have butt sex, take His own name in vain, lie, eat pork chops and do drugs all He wants, 'cause it ain't Sin when God does it.

California wildfires: you don't think climate change plays a part, Kathy? You guys (God of the gap people) remind me of primitive native tribes sometimes. Thunder? God. White people arriving with huge black sailing ship? Gods in a gigantic black raven with white wings. Spaniards with guns? Gods with magic thunder weapons. Drought? Clearly we haven't been sacrificing enough corn and dancing enough rain dances. Wildfires near major cities? Punishment from our deity. We must change our sinful ways.

I know it does take faith to receive this message

Which is just another way to say you've got no evidence and that we just have to take your word for it, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. Sorry, not gonna happen.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Considering there is some evidence that St. Paul was gay, that is actually funnier than it should be.

Was he the disciple that Jesus "loved the best"? Or was that someone else?

 

[Hokulele]

Was he the disciple that Jesus "loved the best"? Or was that someone else?

That was John.



(Or was it in the john? No, that was the senator. Never mind.)

 

[wolfgirl]

California wildfires: you don't think climate change plays a part, Kathy? You guys (God of the gap people) remind me of primitive native tribes sometimes. Thunder? God. White people arriving with huge black sailing ship? Gods in a gigantic black raven with white wings. Spaniards with guns? Gods with magic thunder weapons. Drought? Clearly we haven't been sacrificing enough corn and dancing enough rain dances. Wildfires near major cities? Punishment from our deity. We must change our sinful ways.

It absolutely amazes me how absolutely backwards people can be, without even seeing that they're being that way. You're right, it's no different from people explaining thunder when they didn't know better. Once they learned the real explanation, though, they no longer needed a god as an explanation. Yet there are people who, in this day and age, still think wildfires are caused by an angry god. It's sad, really.

 

[godless dave]

No, this year's California wildfires were caused by an angry God. Last year's California wildfires were caused naturally. You atheists sure are blind!

 

[Ladewig]

No, this year's California wildfires were caused by an angry God. Last year's California wildfires were caused naturally. You atheists sure are blind!

That's silly. Both this year's and last year's were caused by an angry God. He knew the Californians were going to support the homosexual agenda, so it was fair to start punishing people in advance of their actual sin. There is precedent: when God flooded the earth He killed a lot of babies, but those babies were going to grow up to be wicked people so it was alright to drown them. [/fundamentalist apologist]