Desmond Tutu: I’d pick hell over an anti-gay heaven

You must confuse me with somebody else. Just like Tutu I do believe in Christ asking for no evidence whatsoever. I love the Lord, our God, with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my mind. That’s why I don’t believe for a second that God is a bigoted homophobe. And I fear you may find that ignorance is indeed no excuse when it turns out that God was one of those homosexuals you hated so much (Matthew 25:31-46). So maybe you should start taking the second of the greatest commands the Lord gave us seriously.

 

Well, when this "Gawd" of yours tells me for himself that Tutu is wrong, then I'll consider it. Until then, as far as I'm concerned you're just like the nutjobs on the subway who claim to speak for him. Which is to say completely lacking credibility of any kind.

 

No one is condemning homosexuals. The only thing condemned is not recognizing that homosexual sex is a sin. After all people cannot pick and choose what is sinful and what is not according to their own desires and preferences.

 

If you consider yourself so worthy as for anyone to prove something to you, never the less God, then you're in for an awful fall from your world of maniacal delusions.

 

There is no such thing as sin. Only lessons, learned or not. Regardless, most homosexuals are caused by people who have spent the past 5 lives as one gender incarnating as the opposite.

 

When you say my lesbian friend and her girlfriend are sinful, you do condemn them, period. And the grounds on which you declare homosexuality a sin are rather shaky. You'll find that more often than not people - already in Biblical times - confuse what's sinful with what's against social convention. With changing social conventions Christians have stopped regarding loads of things as sin that some Bible passages tell us are sin, whereas other things that we would regard as sin are depicted as utterly normal in the Bible. Thankfully in the two greatest commands the Lord gave us you'll find a timeless guide under which to judge what's sinful and what isn't. Two people of the same sex loving each other don't hurt anybody, people who shower them with hatred - in South Africa often up to the point where homosexuals are raped and killed - do. As humankind progresses we ought to get better at loving our neighbour as we love ourselves. On optimistic days I feel that all in all we do and I trust that just as we eventually got rid of slavery (not regarded as sinful in Biblical times) we'll eventually rid our societies from homophobia.

 

There are many versions of CHristian dogma. Most are long dead, being killed off by the Roman Catholic Church, as heretics, but several are still active. They do not all use the bible. Some view the bible as heretical, in that it was created by simply picking and choosing different books that best fit the religious and political views of the people putting the book together.

I myself follow Christ's moral and ethical teachings, without necessarily getting involved in the spiritual aspects.

Personally, I am interventionary evolutionist. I believe that god myths are misinterpreted encounters with aliens, and that our primitive ancestors, being unable to comprehend the technology of these aliens viewed them as gods. This would likely explain why many of the stories from several different religious that never coexisted in the same time and place have similarities, because they are telling the same story from different witnesses.

 

Which was speaking of Christ and his crucifiction.

Nice try at diversion though.

 

I don't buy the idea of space aliens (visiting Earth).

Regarding the Bible stories, the point is not to get hung up on whether they are true or even make sense but to think about the point that they are examining. That point is what does a person have to do to be "saved"? And the main point of just about all religions is what does a person have to do to become a zombie and gain eternal life in heaven, paradise, Valhalla, or in the happy hunting grounds. The Sadducees didn't believe in zombies but almost everyone else does. The Bible and the Koran differ on the best way to become a zombie and to gain eternal life but they are both zombie-based religions.

 

I was raised Lutheran and went to a Lutheran school until high school.

That school made me an agnostic, I could not hold the cognitive dissonance required to maintain belief in the way they did.

 

How many of Jesus' moral and ethical teachings can you list without looking them up?

 

99% of the bible is allegory. And not just the stories about Noah, but even well known "historical figures".

For example, there is not any mention of King David outside the bible. No Tomb, no documents, nothing. The bible is the only place where he is ever mentioned, leaving many to feel that King David was allegory. The bible even states that Goliath was kissed by a man named Elhanan. I've heard some who believe that Elhanan was a real king who David was based on and that the stories were supposed to make him look better.

 

If you would be perfect, sell all of your possessions and give the money to the poor.

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

let he who is without sin cast the first stone (Do not judge others, unless you are prepared to be judged yourself)

Turn the other cheek, which I believe is not literally about allowing someone to do harm to you, but about not taking vengeance on someone who does.


Those are the four ones I think are most important.




Then there are the many allegorical stories he told, such as the good samaritan, which about how all people have both good and evil and how people who are viewed as good in general and be evil and how people viewed by society as bad can be good.

 

The purpose of the Noah story is to show that a person can do such a major work that it not only save himself but his family and even the whole world itself.

The purpose of the Job story is to show that if a person maintains his faith when all appears to be lost that he will rewarded with more than he lost. No one in the Bible had more faith than Job.

The David story shows that even if you have been selected for great things that you can fail to live up to the standard over time. When that happens will you be able to redeem yourself? David started out great. He soon became a piece of crud. Was he able to save himself?

You may want to read Sirach chapters 44-50 for a brief rundown on the main characters. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Sirach 44-50&version=CEB

 

The story of Job is stupid. Satan makes god a challenge by saying "I bet if you let me hurt this guy he doesn't like you anymore", and god said, "ok, kill his family and make him suffer worse that anyone ever has and we'll see."

It's a story about god abusing his power to prove a point.

 

I'll bet that you have a lot of stuff.

Do you pray for good things for your enemies everyday or do you pray that they will suffer misfortunes?

"Let death take my enemies by surprise; let them go down alive to the grave."Psalm 55:15
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"O God, break the teeth in their mouths." Psalm 58:6
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"May they be blotted out of the book of life and not be listed with the righteous." Psalm 69:28
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"May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow."Psalm 109:9

Paul said that believers should judge other believers and to kick them to the curb if they don't measure up. After all bad company corrupts good habits.

Jesus allowed himself to be beaten and crucified. That's an awesome example of turning the other cheek since he could have easily prevented it based on his previous miracles.

BTW, Jesus was accused of being a Samaritan himself so the story of the good Samaritan could have been a little self PR. He could have used a Gentile if he had wanted to really prove a point. But then Jews were prejudiced against Gentiles and didn't have anything to do with them if they could help it.

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Paul contridicted the teachings of Christ enough to make me not care what he thought. His teachings is what I mean when I say that the bible was put together randomly by people who were picking and chooseing books that met their views. Many Early Christian believed that Paul was a spy send by the priests.

and no I don't have a lot of stuff, I pretty much live week by week, but I give whatever i can spare to charity.


And I pray that those who make themselves my enemies will see that fighting is meaningless and we should all just spoke a bowl and mellow out.

 

That's one way of looking at the Job story. However, all of the stories examine the question of what does a person have to do in order to be "saved." Consequently the Job story presents a major examination of the issue of the power of faith and how it will save you if you don't lose it when things get really rough.

Sure, it was "unfair" that Job's first family and workers were killed. But things like that happen everyday to countless people. How many times have you seen it happen and people become angry and bitter toward God because their kids and spouses were brutally murdered or their homes were destroyed in some kind of disaster? When those things happened to Job he retained his faith although others urged him to curse God and die. When the story ends Job's losses had been restored and he had twice as much as he had before. He had a new family and he grew to an old age of 140 years with 4 generations at his side.

If a mass murderer killed your family and you lost everything you owned this weekend would you fall into despair and curse God or would you lean on your faith through the dark days until you could smile and love again?

Bad luck and assorted misfortunes will come to us all. Will we survive them or will we simply give up and die? That's what the Job story is about.

 

Well, there you go. Go with those false beliefs if that suits you, sounds like an illusion (fantasy) to me.

 

Paul created the Jesus character to be the head of his newly created religion. Paul's disciples put their own spin on the Jesus character based upon what Paul had told them and what was going on in the real world at that time with the Romans. So the Gospel writers included a lot of political events that the main rebel leaders did as part of the religious character's persona. That's where the contradictions come in.

The main contradictions involve the question of what does a person have to do to be "saved" in order to become a zombie and to gain eternal life. The Gospel writers couldn't reach a consensus so they were all over the place. In one paragraph they said it was by works and then in the next one they claimed it was by faith. They then threw in entitlement. Then they added it all together. At other times they claimed that simply saying the name of Jesus was sufficient. It's been 2,000 years and people are still arguing about it.

Hang in there. Your fortunes could improve overnight.

 

You think that Jesus was a homosexual? Are you serious? What part of those verses makes you think that Jesus was a homosexual? Explain in detail.

 

People have to work out their salvation with fear and trembling.

 

Paul did not create anything. There were hundreds and hundreds of different churches, most of them condemned Paul as evil. It was not until the Catholics came about and chose to name the writings of Paul as scripture that he became a central figure of Christianity in general.

His main contridictions were about the old testament. Paul wanted the bible to be his writings only and wanted the entire Torah thrown out and named heretical.

 

You're spot on. If Christians don't like parts of Christianity, then the solution is to... not be a Christian anymore. You can't just ignore the doctrine.

The problem is, there isn't a single person on the planet who accepts Christianity at face value, simply because they'd have to go absolutely up the wall.

 

Then perhaps you should do some research.