As a mod you need to support more dumbassery, otherwise the dumbasses will take their ball and go home and this will be an echo chamber of reason. And we will all go mad.
And the atheists among us will find a way to prevent deformed children from being born, without abortion, and it will somehow be bad!*
*This is a deliberate misreading of Paul’s overly terse response to my post. It’s not a completely unreasonable one, but, though I think his inability to interpret blatant sarcasm is a bad sign, the wrong one.
May I mark you down as “Yes, but?”
thanks, I came in to say pretty much this. Well put.
I don’t know what that means.
Again, “Yes, but.”
Meaning that what I said was true but it does not matter that it is true as there is a greater truth or something.
In any case, it is time for Jeopardy!
Lysenkoism was the pinnacle of modern scientific thought in the day, Reagan was non-religious and you can’t think of any examples of Christians who don’t respect all life (they’re all against the death penalty I suppose)
You’re not exactly in touch with reality are you?
Yes, it snapped.
Well it is possible Ronald Reagan was both a good Christian and a good American in that he never much let the former impact on the latter.
But as I said, it is time for Jeopardy!
Very little of what you have said in this thread is true.
AKA “I cannot defend what I said, so look over there!”
I can honestly only think of two explanations for all this-
Somebody has gained access to his account. I do not mean this as a joke.
He has decided to get himself banned.
None of these monsters were scientists. It is insulting and wrongheaded that you seem to be blaming science, which is just a rational way of understanding the world, for their deeply flawed values.
I agree. None of this sounds like the person who used to be Paul_in_Saudi. When did he change his name? Did he move to the US or where? Maybe this is just another person with a different name? Or he’s been kidnapped by aliens.
Perhaps as a martyr. The best martyrdoms happen in the pit. I mean, it’s super easy to flame out in a place like great debates. But here, without all the rules? Magnificent. You’ve got to burn twice as bright.
What’s your definition of “the fairly far-off past”? Last Friday?
“The past decade has witnessed a sharp increase in violent sectarian or religious tensions. These range from Islamic extremists waging global jihad* and power struggles between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the Middle East to the persecution of Rohingya in Myanmar and outbreaks of violence between Christians and Muslims across Africa. According to Pew, in 2018 more than a quarter of the world’s countries experienced a high incidence of hostilities motivated by religious hatred, mob violence related to religion, terrorism, and harassment of women for violating religious codes.”
Probably not. Unlike you, Churchill did not attempt to demonize science as a whole, but rather was noting that evil people had perverted science to serve their purposes.
*including the 100,000 or so deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan in this century caused by the Taliban.
I liked Paul_in_Qatar best of all, I think.
Since Paul is imploding, I’m gonna be pedantic on atheism. It’s not commonly used to mean simply, “Lacking a belief in religion,” any more than “bald” is used to mean simply “lacking hair.” If you see me eating an apple and say, “Ooh, I like bald apples!” I’ll think you’re getting at something kinky, because apples aren’t bald. Nobody ever calls an apple bald, and if you did, people would think you’re weird.
Clouds aren’t bald. Rivers (with very rare exceptions) aren’t bald. Toothpicks aren’t bald. Mountains can be bald, if they’re lacking the forest cover that other mountains have.
Bald doesn’t mean “lacking hair.” It means “lacking hair* in the places that hair* is typically found.”
Atheism means essentially the same thing: it’s applied to an entity capable of considering the existence of gods who has not formed a belief in gods. Atheism is the considered and reflective absence of a belief in any god.
People will call babies “bald,” because sometimes babies do have hair. Nobody outside of a pedantic argument ever calls a baby “atheist.”
So when folks say that atheism is a belief, they’re not right–but they’re not entirely missing the mark either.
Thus endeth my pedantry.
*or forest if you’re talking about mountains
Well at least you’re being blatant about trolling now.
Yeah, even in the Pit you’re not allowed to be a full-on troll.
You said, and I quote: “Were you concerned they might pray for you?” That’s obviously mocking someone saying they were scared of what they might do. It’s like saying “why are you scared of dogs? What are they gonna do, lick you to death?”
And, again, there was no bigotry. I will admit there has been some bigotry against Christians here in the past, but the post you replied to contained no such thing. It was just a guy talking about how he was afraid of how bigoted Christians have treated him in decades past if he had revealed he was not straight. Not all Christians—just the bigoted ones. The reality is that many who called themselves Christians very much tried to hurt LGBT people. A lot of “Christianity” has been caught up in “machoism” and forcing people to conform.
This is a part of Christian history that many of us are trying to improve upon. But denying our past does not accomplish this. Ignoring those who tell us of how bad things were, let alone mocking them, does not help us become better.
And, yes, I say “us,” because, in theory, Christians are the body of Christ. We’re not acting merely as ourselves, but as Jesus’s representatives on Earth. We are supposed to be the “light of the world,” trying to improve the darkness. And, to do that, we must remove the darkness within ourselves. And, yes, we ultimately need God’s help to do this.
The way you responded came across like when some white people who cry racism when someone talks about how black people still face racism today. They’re uncomfortable discussing it, so they want to act like it’s the other person being unreasonable.
But we as Christians have to face the truth, even when it makes us uncomfortable. Jesus was not one to defend a comforting lie. When we do so, it starts to make it seem like maybe everything else we believe is just a comforting lie we tell ourselves.
A poster was expressing some of the hardship they faced being LGBT in a world that didn’t accept him. And, yes, many of those who wouldn’t accept him were Christian. It does not make sense to belittle his concerns given what history shows.
If he were bashing Christianity, I could see getting upset. But he wasn’t. That’s why you come off as having a chip on your shoulder.
Well, that at the very defensive, snarky responses in this thread.