Apologies to BK. You were right about gay marriages.

[Thoth]

Truth in advertising.

[giblets]

You can't keep your argument straight.

And my argument is simple. Sodomy and homosexuality are immoral acts according to Christians. People who accept either are not Christians.

You quoted Wesley who acknowledges that sodomy is condemned as a sin in scripture. Ergo, your argument has zero merit.

Here's what I was responding to:

The quote is from 1 Corinthians 6:9, which in the greek:

oute pornoi, oute eidwlolatrai, oute moichoi, oute malakoi, oute arsenokoitai...

"not fornicators, not idolators, not adulterers, not catamites, not sodomites."

The reason religious tolerance is confused is because they don't understand that they are talking about catchers and pitchers. That is why they have catamites and sodomites as a pair.

Your THEORY is that "malakoi" and "arsenokoitai" were put next to one another intentionally, so their meanings must be related. I considered this particular argument to be pure speculation.

Again, I was never arguing that someone can't interpret the Bible to say that homosexuality is sinful. I was arguing that this isn't the only way the Bible can be interpreted, so someone can accept homosexuality and still be Christian.

[Asher]

End of thread discussion. Mods can close the thread now.

My music video was better. Discuss.

Yours was uncomfortably gay. Even for me.

[Ben Kenobi]

Here's what I was responding to.

You are defending your own position. You haven't done a thing to attack mine. You are addressing one of my rebuttals to your position, which you have failed to show.

You want to attack mine, you need to start addressing some of the other citations in scripture, including Romans, which I've already mentioned.

You've pinned all your hopes on one word, while neglecting everything else. Why on earth do you think you've done anything to attack my position? You've done nothing.

Your THEORY is that "malakoi" and "arsenokoitai" were put next to one another intentionally, so their meanings must be related. I considered this particular argument to be pure speculation.

No, it's not my theory. Again, it is how the King James renders the text, which is the first major English bible. It's not 'pure speculation', the King James renders this as 'catamites' and 'sodomites'. You don't believe me? Open up King James to this passage, it's right there.

Again, I was never arguing that someone can't interpret the Bible to say that homosexuality is sinful. I was arguing that this isn't the only way the Bible can be interpreted, so someone can accept homosexuality and still be Christian.

And your position is wrong. How do you deal with Romans 1? You've ignored the entire question. Your entire argument rests on the speculation (there's that word again), that arsenkotai doesn't mean homosexual, and yet you quote biblical scholars who say just that, that it does mean sodomites.

What am I to think when you ignore your own evidence to press your theory?

Here's a question for you Gribbler.

Where does Christ say that homosexuality is virtuous? That it is to be included in Christian Marriage?

[giblets]

Romans 1 has its own translation issues... if anyone reading this thread is interested, they can read this:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibc3.htm

Any translation of the bible will, to some extent, reflect the opinions of the person translating it.

But hey, you can't do anything that Jesus didn't explicitly say was okay, even if Jesus never condemned it. No driving cars or using the internet, because Jesus never said it was virtuous and to be included in the Christian way of life.

[MrFun]

My music video was better. Discuss.

Yours was uncomfortably gay. Even for me.

**** you very much.

[loinburger]

Toxoplasma's final hosts are cats, but to get there it must first infect the cats' food, esp rats - rats pick up the toxoplasma eggs in dirt and garbage, and the eggs then hatch into larvae which infect cats when the rats are eaten. To speed up this process, toxoplasma will disable the rats' fear of cats. When placed in a maze, uninfected rats will steer clear of the smell of cat urine; infected rats will gladly scrounge for food in areas containing cat urine, and even seem to show a slight preference to the areas containing cat urine.

Toxoplasma goes out of its way not to kill its intermediate host (e.g. rats) - it stimulates the macrophages in the intermediate host, which attack the toxoplasma and force them into protective cysts. This is why toxoplasma is so dangerous to pregnant women - fetuses do not have their own macrophages, and they cannot use their mother's macrophages because they would identify the fetus as a foreign body and attack it. Thus the toxoplasma enter the fetus, run rampant when they're not checked by macrophages, and kill the fetus.

[giblets]

Toxoplasma: God's abortifacient

[loinburger]

There's another parasite whose final host is birds and whose intermediate host is snails, problem being that the target birds eat bugs, not snails. The parasite compels snails to approach birds (something the snail wouldn't ordinarily do) and then emerges on the snails eye stalks, doing a little "look at me I'm a bug" dance to trick birds into biting off the snails' eye stalks + dancing parasites (thinking that they are bugs).

[loinburger]

If you want to see pictures of people having their faces melted off, then do a google image search for "espundia." This disease is caused by a parasite transmitted by sand fly bites. (There are several different species of the parasite, some of which merely cause a few scabs and some of which annihilate the host's immune system.)

The parasites that cause malaria and sleeping sickness both use a similar evasion technique - the malaria parasite uses protein hooks to latch onto blood vessels (this prevents the parasite from being carried to the spleen where it would be destroyed), and the sleeping sickness parasite has a protein cover. Both of these proteins can be recognized by the immune system, so the parasite avoids destruction by changing the protein from time to time. The protein's structure is determined by a single gene, and this gene is the same in all of the parasites in an infection (because the parasites reproduce asexually - this should please BK); after enough generations pass the gene is sufficiently weakened that the bottom is simply lopped off, and a new protein replaces the old one. If this protein replacement were random then either the immune system would fight off the infection or the host would quickly die, but because all of the parasites use the same protein the immune system isn't overwhelmed (so the host lives, which is a good thing for the parasite), but it also can't fight off the infection because by the time it has learned to recognize the new protein hook/sheath the parasite has lopped off the bottom of the gene once again. Thus malaria and sleeping sickness infections go through cycles of remission and resurgence, with the remission occurring as the immune system recognizes the new protein and the resurgence occurring when the parasites change the protein again.

[Imran Siddiqui]

And God works through people.

He also calls us to judge wisely.

When God works through people, he actually chooses those who can convincingly persuade. Not some crazy judgmental yahoo with a sign (or in this case a forum account). And He also tells us not be judgmental and let those who are without sin cast stones.

[Ben Kenobi]

When God works through people, he actually chooses those who can convincingly persuade.

Just the opposite. He chooses the lowly. Those without influence because they are far better at seeing people as they truly are, not as they would want themselves to appear.

Not some crazy judgmental yahoo with a sign (or in this case a forum account). And He also tells us not be judgmental and let those who are without sin cast stones.

That's true. But for those who call themselves Christians, we are most certainly called to judge them by his standards.

[Ben Kenobi]

Any translation of the bible will, to some extent, reflect the opinions of the person translating it.

This is true, which is why I think it's significant that a translation that shares very little of my theology also shares my opinion on these matters.

But hey, you can't do anything that Jesus didn't explicitly say was okay, even if Jesus never condemned it. No driving cars or using the internet, because Jesus never said it was virtuous and to be included in the Christian way of life.

You've made a categorical error. Marriage isn't the same as driving a car, or using the internet. Christ talks about marriage, and you would think if he were changing the law to let sodomy in, that he would say something about how sodomites shall be blessed in marriage.

Instead, he says that the ideal of marriage is Adam and Eve.

So, it's your call. I wasn't always a Christian Gribbler, and I find his words here compelling. You keep handwaving about divorce, but you miss the point that Christ is referring to, how marriage ought to be, what is the Christian concept of marriage? And gay marriage is a perversion of his teachings.

[Al B. Sure!]

Jesus drank alcohol. Isn't that a sin?

Edit: forgot Ben's a catholic now.

[Ben Kenobi]

I personally think he was rather fond of wine.