Is the cake maker only making cakes for the Virgin Mary and her son? Because everybody is a sinner.
But, again, I dont see why “that is a sin, dont do it yourself” turns into “be an asshole to sinners” as a religious commandment.
- I think that if that baker is without sin, he or she should cast the first stone.
or - If the baker can only make cakes for sinless people, maybe he or she is in the wrong business.
Indeed. Part of the issue for many people is that the civil world has gradually stopped enforcing provisions that coincided with religious teaching – so now adulterers, the divorced, sodomites, usurers, nonbelievers, people who want to drink on the Sabbath, can do their thing without legal repercussions and even in many cases without social stigma and you can’t even say in public that they’re wicked without being called rude. “And that is just WRONG, Mildred!”
I’ve wondered why no well trained Fundie ever responds pointing to their justification in the passage in Acts where the Apostles rule that converts to the new faith do NOT have to follow the Levitical prohibitions, except those having to do with “fornication, idolatry and blood.” I expect in a Sorkin script it would be just “Fundie SCHOOLED by Enlightened Liberal President” but I seldom see it in any other venue either.
Eh, who can understand them…
The OP mentions 1 Corinthians 6:9, but it’s worth quoting what Paul says in the previous chapter, 1 Corinthians 5.
Paul clearly states that what he is saying applies only to believers within the church, not to non-believers. He couldn’t possibly be more clear about this (NIV, my italics):
-
9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.
11 But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.
12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?
13 God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”
He states 100% clearly that they are not to judge people who are sexually immoral, etc. outside the church. God will judge them. And if someone is immoral inside the church, then expel them. That’s all.
Believers are expected to refrain from immoral behaviour, but as for immoral non-believers “you would have to leave this world” if you didn’t want to associate with them.
For Christians today to ignore this is clearly bigotry.
I’m pretty sure those words are in the Bible…but so are the words others use to justify their words and actions.
It just isn’t as clear cut as you wish it to be.
There are many contradictory things in the Bible, and people pick and choose individual verses to apply. That’s why it’s bigotry.
But Paul’s overall intent is perfectly clear. What he is saying applies only to people within the Christian community.
As we say in the Church of the SubGenius, “The difference between Hell and Heaven is which end of the pitchfork you’re on!”
In a purely spiritual and moral sense, nothing else matters.
As for politics, the SubG political ideology is, “Patriopsychotic Anarcho-Materialism: Every Yard a Kingdom, Every Child and Dog a Serf!”
“Well, I get slandered
Libeled
I hear words I’d never hear in the Bible
Just tryin’ to keep my customers satisfied
Satisfied!”
So, what I said applies to other people? I’m sorry, but you are choosing what parts of the Bible to emphasize in just the same way others do.
Not sure where you get that.
No, I’m trying to get the overall picture. I’m saying the opposite, that you can’t select some parts, and ignore other parts.
Everyone who acts like an asshole has a reason for acting like an asshole. They believe that it’s okay to act like an asshole, and that belief has some rationale.
Am I supposed to accept their rationale if it’s supernatural?
Nope. Religious belief isn’t some “get out of asshole free” card. Someone who sincerely believes God told them to act like an asshole, and who follows through, is acting like an asshole. Their reasons for it don’t especially matter.
Does the OP plan to come back and address any of the responses?
Part of those people in the OP’s contention that must be considered is that those people the OP mentions don’t understand the Bible, they understand what a pastor says about what the Bible says. And that comes from human tradition. (In short the bible’s story about this, we were all enemies of God, all sinners, and all under the same sentence of death, reconciled by the cross we are set free of that sentence. So they are no more sinful then us, by condemning them they are condemning themselves.)
So besides not understanding the book they claim to follow, they have been manipulated and controlled by another (btw that book basically states that this will happen if you don’t know the scriptures).
These people have been enslaved by evil to do evil things, that really is the general category which bigotry falls under. In this case thinking oneself and one’s class superior to another. I guess it’s also just hating another group but not feeling superior, but by any actions against this group you are creating then superiority.
So yes they are bigots.
See, that might be important if you’re a believer in the Book itself. But for those who don’t, this isn’t an important distinction at all. There’s nothing about adherence to an ancient book that makes a religion more legitimate or defensible to me compared to adherence to a charismatic living leader’s edicts.
If Alice is a jerk to gay people because she’s carefully read Leviticus in the original Hebrew, and Bob is a jerk to gay people because his pastor told him to be, and Cornannon is a jerk to gay people because he’s part of a modern Asutra white power group that hates teh gays, and Donte is a jerk to gay people because he’s just a jerk in general, it doesn’t matter. None of them get any more or less of a pass for being a jerk to gay people.
What if we take the word “religious” out of the thread title—when is it bigotry to live according to one’s sincere beliefs, whether or not they are “religious” beliefs?
Supposing it were legal, would you refuse to bake a cake for a wedding between two children, or between a 50-year-old and a 13-year-old?
I guess what I’m asking about, and what the OP may have been asking about, is situations where what looks like bigotry to one person looks like “standing up for what’s right” to another person, based on that person’s sincerely held beliefs.
When you’re operating a business open to the public, you’re operating under a business license, issued by the government and with certain benefits and strictures. One of those is you operate under the law, not your personal feelings or beliefs. You can’t sell wine to a minor because you believe it to be harmless. You can’t refuse to serve a minority person because you’re a white supremacist.
It’s almost like the content of the belief matters.
I swear, some people get so caught up in pluralism that it seems like they forget that there’s a difference between objecting to child-rape and objecting to same-sex marriage.
So it’s only bigotry if you hold, or act on, wrong beliefs.
I kind of want to agree, but I also kind of want to say, “But isn’t that itself a matter of belief: which beliefs are wrong, or bigoted, and which aren’t?”
Absofuckinglutely. Politician A tries to make it illegal for two men to get married in North Carolina. Politician B tries to make it illegal for a 50-year-old to marry a 14-year-old in North Carolina. I call politician A a bigot and politician B not a bigot.
If you don’t put in some element of “the belief is fucked up” in your definition of “bigotry”, the term becomes a joke.
(And this example isn’t hypothetical. Remember that register of deeds in Ohio or wherever, who refused to marry SS couples? My local register of deeds is on a public mission to change our laws in NC, because we’ve become a destination state for child weddings, and rapists from other states are traveling here with their teenage victims to marry them and thereby legalize raping them.)
It’s beliefs all the way down. That’s okay, that’s inevitable. We don’t self-examine and suddenly find some bedrock unassailable truth upon which everything is built, some truth that’s clearly not a belief.
Everything we believe is a belief. That doesn’t mean I can’t hold beliefs about which beliefs are bigotry. Sure, maybe I’m wrong; but that’s no reason to experience paralysis.
In your bizarre hypothetical world where such a thing is not condemned by society, then you live in a world where such a thing is not condemned by society. Therefore, you choosing to condemn something that society does not is a form of bigotry.
In the world that we live in, here and now, we understand that there is a difference between a union between two consenting adults and child rape. If someone were to say that they didn’t see a difference, then that would be a form of bigotry.
Right, and that is how people justify bigotry, by claiming that they are the ones who know the real truth, and that they are the ones that are standing up for what’s right in opposition to the rest of society’s beliefs.
You think that child marriage or child brides is wrong, then work to change your fantasy society to be more in line with the reality that we live in. Don’t just claim that everyone else is wrong, and that you are the one that is right. That’s being an asshole. (And a bigot.)
If it comes down to it that your beliefs are not compatible with those of the society that you live in, you are welcome to be a martyr to your cause, just keep in mind that in order to be a martyr, you have to accept that you will face punishment from the society you live in.