I’ve decided to take a break on posting in the Great Debates forum for a little while and maybe visit some of the other forums. I’ll be around to read what’s being posted, though. Bye for now.
I can understand that. Do consider that many of us who do sincerely believe in Jesus Christ our Lord have thought through the stances we take on a number of issues and come to conclusions differing from the comments on which you’ve been challenged here and there. And also that sometimes taking a particular line of Scripture out of context makes it seem to say something quite different than it actually does, and occasionally the exact opposite. My favorite (because humorous and extreme) example of this is Psalm 14:1b…
Yes, that is in the Bible! But in context, you find that what the Psalmist is saying is “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”
Have a good time browsing, and come back prepared to discuss your views, defend them (or maybe change them, where they’re not a matter of challenge to your faith). A lot of us will be praying for you, me in particular.
Take all the time you need His4ever
Stick around, enjoy all the other forums and hope to see you back here soon.
Thanks for the encouragement. I have discussed and defended but no one accepts my defense. I’m always wrong and they’re always right. Can’t win… oh well. My beliefs aren’t likely to change. I’m beginning to think that’s a requirement here. I choose to accept the Bible for what it says, not pick and tear it apart, wish they’d accept that. Sorry, I said I wasn’t going to post any more for awhile. Just wanted to answer your kind encouragement.
Dreamer just went up five points in my estimation, for “sticking around”. 
takes a licking and keeps on posting
oh wait that doesn’t rhyme
His4ever, I understand that your feelings are hurt because people disagreed with you, some of them quite rudely. But hey, life is like that. I get the feeling that your life is very sheltered, that you live in a place where you’re surrounded by people who agree with you, and this is your first experience with the kind of gloves-off “oh, yeah?” disagreement that unfortunately is quite common in the real world.
But ya know, the lesson to be learned here, I think, is that you can’t expect to convince people of your “rightness” and their “wrongness” every time. Are you saying that you’ve won every argument on religion in real life that you’ve ever gotten into?
And–nobody’s asking you to change your beliefs. We’re just asking you to defend them. What we are asking you to change is the “facts” you evidently have on file concerning other religions, especially Mormonism. Since some of these “facts” are incorrect, and since this is a website devoted to Fighting Ignorance, we naturally would like you to change them.
Sorry, but you probably can’t persuade us that Mormonism is a heretical “they’re all gonna burn in HELL!” cult, any more than we can persuade you that it isn’t. But you shouldn’t interpret this as a personal rejection of you as a poster, or as dislike. 'Kay?
I typed out a really long reply and the server ate it.
In essence H4E; Don’t take it personally, the general tone of this board is skeptical, there’s nothing actually wrong about that. Skeptics pick and tear; it’s what they do.
Nobody wants to destroy your faith in God, at least I hope there’s nobody here that does, the weight of numbers in the few threads you’ve visited has not done you any favours.
Bless you, take your time, lurk a bit, but please do come back.
just don’t try to change your username, trust me…
His4ever,
As an interested lurker on the Great Debates religion threads, I just want to throw you a little more encouragement.
You’ve defended your beliefs against difficult responses and even attacks, always coming back with grace and respectful discourse. You haven’t been able to answer all of the skeptics questions, in part because many of them are unanswerable. Sometimes the only thing you can say is, “this is what I believe.” When it’s something you understand through faith, and not through cold logic, there is little more that can be said.
I’m glad you’ve been here and having your beliefs challenged. I think that seeing different views is always helpful, even if (or perhaps particularly when) they aggressively push you to focus what it is you believe and why. Though some others will never understand or accept your views, the battle on the boards is frequently for the lurkers, who may see something in your message.
I, for one, have a significantly different religious viewpoint from you, and disagree with your positions on some social issues. But I respect that you hold and defend your views here, and do it politely and firmly in a challenging environment.
Go forth and explore the breadth of the boards. It’s a great place, where you’ll meet all sorts of people with interests in just about every subject of human endeavor. Great Debates can be overwhelming, particularly when you are asked to defend yourself at every turn. By all means, take a break, let it all sink in, and come back to join the fray when you’re ready. I hope that through the process you and I and the rest of the boardmembers will learn from each other.
His4Ever-listen to DDG, honey. She’s never wrong.
[Moderator Hat ON]
Moving this to MPSIMS, since it is not a debate.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
She came on here, spread lies, ignorant mistruths and hateful bigotry about gays, Catholics, Mormons, Muslims and others, then dodged questions, ignored others, and only ever “responded” by posting the same discredited Bible verses over and over again. And you call that “defending her beliefs”? Well then I pray that all baptists and fundies learn to defend their beliefs as well… because then that entire pseudo-Christian movement will be gone within a generation.
She’s been unable to answer any of us because she is totally uninformed about that which she posts, refuses to respond to questions or apply hard thought to her positions, and was working from a base that was composed entirely of lies. She was wrong about everything she posted on, so no wonder she couldn’t answer the questions she deservedly recieved… she had no truth to fall back on, so her position crumbled under the lightest of attacks, as all fundamentalist positions do.
Sometimes the only thing you can say is, “this is what I believe.”
Especially when you “understand” things 100% wrong, don’t know the first thing about gays, gay Christians (there are millions of them), Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, and others. When you have no facts, all you can go on is faith. You’re still wrong, though.
Kirk
And yet, you presume to know everything about her. You’ve got it all figured out.
She said, “They have a right to believe as they want, for myself I just don’t share some of these beliefs.” It seems that she allows for far more tolerance than you do.
Facts in the hands of hateful angry people are worthless — nothing more than dangerous things. I’ll take her faith, her sincere search for truth over your meaningless facts any day.
His4ever, I admit you and I disagree on issues of doctrine, but, then again, we do come from different backgrounds. One of the things I love about this board is the diversity of opinion and the chance to see things in a new light, even if there are some positions I cannot accept, even while I respect them.
You’ve less than 100 posts here. Stick around, check out other forums, be careful in the BBQ Pit (although Black Knight’s current rant is a work of art!), and don’t give up on us heathens yet.
CJ
Kirkland1244,
Due to forum restrictions, I can’t fairly express what I think of your responses here and in the threads that His4ever has participated in. I can only say that in those threads she has responded to challenges respectfully and you have not.
The one bit of your post here that I will agree with is that she has posted some “ignorant mistruths.” Since the mission of this board is exposing and eradicating ignorance, I don’t think this to be a bad thing. For instance, with regard to Mormon beliefs and practices, she posted what she understood, and importantly, when challenged, where she got her information. This engendered a nice discussion of the relative value and accuracy of different books examining LDS history and practice. I hope that she will take that discussion as an opportunity to obtain more balanced views on other faiths.
You claim that she defended herself by posting “the same discredited bible verses.” Though I agree that many of those verses should not be interpreted in the way she does, she’s more than entitled to have and advocate her own interpretations. More important, she’s entitled to base her faith on whatever she wants, regardless of your view that certain passages, or certain scriptures as a whole, are “discredited.”
Kirkland, you may not agree with her views (I don’t) or find them repellent. However, you’ve failed in your obligation to deal respectfully with those of differing views in Great Debates. It’s the wide variety of viewpoints that makes Great Debates great.
For you to shout down her deeply held views because you don’t agree with them does not advance the cause of fighting ignorance. In fact, it is the same sort of intolerance that you wrongly accuse His4ever of having.
Perhaps it would be wise for you to consider a break as well.
I hope you come back, too. I am a Christian (who disagrees with a lot of your beliefs) who has enjoyed your calm defense of your faith. I don’t have the courage or the debating skill to jump into Great Debates and I always admire those who do. Don’t give up!
Well, I’m glad you’re just taking a break from GD and not from the SDMB. We need as many different kinds of people around here as we can get, to keep this the informative, exciting and entertaining Mulligan stew that it is. I disagree with you on a lot of things, but if you visit other forums and threads, I’m sure we’ll find we agree on a lot, too.
**
Where did I say that?
I know a lot about her, because I’ve been dealing with pseudo-Christians like her on the Net for years. They never change, they never learn. I used to rip my hair out trying to explain things to them, to get them to understand that they were trafficing in lies about, in those days, Catholicism. I would spend hours writing detailed responses to the nonsense they would publish, I would be patient, I would even repeat myself in order to be clear. Again and again and again.
If you don’t believe me, ask Polycarp.
Do they learn? No. Will they admit they’re wrong? No. They’re blinded by a religious “faith” that is evil to its core, and based on bigotry and found on falsehoods.
In the end, when they can’t win, when they see that the world is NOT buying the same putrid lies they’re always trying to spread, be it about Catholicism, Mormonism, Islam (a very recent popular target) or gays, they turn and run. Sometimes they play the martyr, as we see here. “Oh, woe is me, poor servant of God, put upon by these heathens!”
They slink away, and then come back a few days/weeks later, and post the same tired “arguments” that aren’t arguments backed up by the same false “facts” that aren’t facts.
Watch. That’s exactly what she’ll do.
How very nice for her. If she just held beliefs, that’d be one thing. But people like her act on thier lie-based beliefs, and cause pain and suffering for millions of gay people across the country. These are the people who work against laws protecting gays from discrimination, who work for “pro-family” legislation that is actually a codification of anti-gay rhetoric, who go around spreading the lies that all people choose to be gay, that gay men are all promiscuous, etc, so on and so forth.
If this were merely an acadmeic consideration, that would be one thing. But its not. People like her are a direct threat to, if not my life (which many could potentially be), then assuredly the quality of my life, and whether or not I continue to be treated like a second-class citizen in this country, which is what she and her clan of pals work day and night to ensure.
You don’t see me working on legislation that gives the police the right to burst into fundamentalists’ homes and arrest them for having sex. You don’t see me working for laws that would bar fundamentalists from being teachers in public schools. You don’t see me passing “defense of marriage” laws that bar fundamentalists from binding their lives legally to that of the person they love. You don’t see me trying to horde the 300+ special rights that come with marriage and trying to deny them to all fundamentalists.
Oh, but I’m free to believe whatever I want. How reassuring. I can be fired from my job simply for being gay, thanks to the efforts of the people H4E supports. Thanks to laws passed by people like her, I’ll probably never be able to marry. And even if I did go to Vermont and get a civil union, in many states, those most congested with people like H4E, I could be arrested for what for a straight couple would be considered “the marital act.” But gee, as I’m treated like less of a person, I’m free to believe whatever I want. Wow. How giving and loving of her. And you. Thanks.
If she rebukes the facts, then she will never find the truth. And the truth, being right, is the most important thing in the world. I could care less what you think of me. I have plenty of friends. So you go ahead and coddle with fundies and dirty yourself with their lies.
I’ll cling to the truth and the facts, and in the end, that gives me the high ground.
Being right is more important than playing nice with those who, if given half the chance, would probably as soon stone you to death (remember, all that Leviticus carp is literal, natch) as look at you.
Kirk
If by “respond” you mean “posted a subsequent message,” then maybe. But if you mean “respond” to entail “answered the charges, questions and accusations that were posted in response to her intial messages,” then you are wrong.
All she did was repeat herself. Any question that was more than she could find the answer to in a Chick tract she skipped over and never acknowledged.
If the past is any predictor of the future, from my extensive engagement with fundies on a similar issue (Catholicism) I can tell you with a great deal of certainty that she will not. People cling to Fundamentalism because they have a shallow faith that must be propped up with absolute certainty. They’re afraid to use their judgement, and so vulgarize the Bible by treating it like a 20th Century legal document. It’s a reactionary “faith” that is anti-intellectual and anti-critical to its core.
I’ve dealt with hundreds of people like her in the past. Here’s their pattern:
- Post lies.
- Ignore the responses, and keep reposting the same lies over and over again.
- Start whining and playing the martyr because people won’t let you post your lies unchallenged.
- Make a dramatic exit.
- Come back a few weeks or days later, and start posting the same lies again.
Just watch. This is what will happen.
At least, going by my extensive experience.
Yeah, well, lets see how you react someday, if you are ever rendered a second class person, and you’re supposed to sit their and play nice with the very people who work day and night to make sure you stay there. This is not an academic exercise for me. This is my life, and people like her have the potential to ruin it or end it.
There is nothing wrong with being intolerant of those who advocate evil (discrimination) based on lies (H4E’s “facts” about all the groups she spits on regularly). Is it wrong to be intolerant of racists? No. Is it wrong to be intolerant of anti-Semites? No. Is it wrong to be intolerant of those who fight to keep gays treated like dirt, to destroy the faith of Mormons, Catholics and Muslims and to pervert the Bible from an instructional tool into a blunt weapon? Absolutely not.
Kirk
Kirk-Are you sure you have enough paint for your brush?
Hear, hear! Well said.