A perspective on why man must not sleep with man and why God hates that

I have recently come to the belief that anti homosexuality was a backlash to pagan cultures.

The Story of Gilgamesh, the oldest recorded legend, involves an intimate relationship between two men

Male on male rape was an act that the pagans took part in (eg sodom & gomorrah) and it makes sense that those less brutish, thoughful early jews who were afraid to be raped or even subdued by a dominant man would just make it the clearest indication of all in their scripture.

Im not sure how many of you have read this section that deals with man on man action

Time for some bible study!

Do not have intercourse with a woman during her monthly period because she is ritually unclean. Do not have intercourse with another man's wife; that would make you ritually unclean. Do not hand over any of your children to be used in the worship of the god Molech, because that would being disgrace on the name of Go, the Lord. No man is to have sexual relations with another man; God hates that. No man or woman is to have sexual relations with an animal; that perversion makes you ritually unclean.

This is taken straight from the good news bible.
Leviticus 18, 19-23

Homosexual relations are not even ritually unclean! God JUST HATES IT!!

wow i love the bible

it gets taken so far! and out of context!

check this out, a bit further on, leviticus 19, 26-28

Do not eat any meat with blood still in it. Do not practice any kind of magic. Do not cut the hair on the sides of your head or trim your beard or tatto yourselves or cut gashes in your boidy to mourn for the dead. I am the LORD.



These are som very central notions of the jewish and christian faiths and depending on the strength of the faith, these are taken with different degrees of seriousness.

Basically though, these practices are merely practices of pagans and barbarians.

All this passage is saying is 'dont be a barbarian!'

but its read as if God has some specific issue with those practices in and of themselves.

Whoever this God fellow is, whether real, alien, or a character of some prolific philosophers, he was speaking to people who did not have a doctrine of practices that they could rely on and spread everywhere to steer people into social order. Scriptures like Leviticus represent ancient codes of behavior that can be taught to people, indoctrinated, even, merely to avoid situations that are associated with social disorder at the time.

The harsh penalties in leviticus reflect the general method of law at the time.

Death penalty is a normal function of human behavior.. it has likely spurred human evolution incredibly. Think about it this way, by killing people who do not conform to social order, you naturally, or artificially, select a breed of people that can adapt to whatever the social order is at the time. Sometimes the laws are just arbitrary and only have to be good on the whole to have a beneficial effect on the community (whereas strict justice is a concept that comes later when smart wealthy people realise that they could potentially be killed for their crimes, which is a consequence that cannot be bought-out-of).

The jews happened to have a rather good set of laws and this allowed them to prosper, and coexist with Romans, for example. The strict sexual and marriage laws ensured very carefully that parents of offspring could be identified and to prevent rogue males from spreading their seed into the socially respectable families. That is their function, it is not that God has some 'problem' or moral crisis with the notions of intermaritual sex.

All of the food practices that define a lot of Jewish life, in Leviticus 11, seem very reasonable:

Do not eat camels, rock badgers, or rabbits. Do not eat pigs. Only eat seafood with fins.
Do not eat a heap of birds
Do not eat winged insects
Moles, rats, mice and lizards are unclean
If any of these unclean corpses ends up on any thing or in any pot, that thing must be destroyed or discarded.


These are taken as important laws given by God almighty to Moses for his people before they entered their new land (Canaan).

This is essentially a survival guide for a NEW CIVILISATION. These people were on an exodus from a culture that they considered confused and abominable.

The writings/laws that moses shared with people were like a text/stories that could be picked up/learned by travelling people moving into a new land in order to survive and maintain peace.

They are not meant to have a higher meaning - they are meant for people who have no direction and need some general guidelines to direct their basal notions of eating, human relations, trade practices, appropriate rituals, farming practices, capital punishment, etc.

A lot of those animals that I mentioned are very broad categories.. but you may notice that it generally includes:

shellfish
Rodents
Birds that kill rodents
poisonous or blood sucking insects


And then also camels, 'rock badgers' (no idea) seagulls, lizards


basically though these are all animals that indeed you would want to stay away from if you do not have very good sanitary practices.

Nowadays we can make sure food is clean, usually

Shellfish are pretty notorious for causing stomash discomfort and illness

and rodents of course are the bane of human existance.

killing rodent-killing birds and camels might just be an unfunctional practice to perform.

The jews make special precaution to drain the blood from meat.. but I think it is taking a very old law too far.. I think the original idea was to simply not eat meat that is pouring with blood, which would have probably been a common pagan practice that led to illness.


Leviticus 11 45

I am the Lord who brought you out of Egypt so that I could be your God.



Seems like God saved Moses' people because he saw them to be orderly enough and found them suitable to 'save' and thus have them as his own little colony of people, who would obey him. I mean thats the whole point of being a Lord isnt it? You make decisions over the land and the people serve you and worship you because you sustain (if you are a good lord) the order in their land.

So as he saves the people, who must leave all of their civilisation behind (though they did not have much power in egypt id imagine), he needs to give them orders for how to live, and it is assumed that this order will allow them to live and survive and be a testament to the Lord that saved them.

And in light of this, anti homosexuality seems clearly a means of avoiding a practice that was associated with paganism and with men being infatuated with other men's ideas.

But more realistically it seems like it was added into the bible at a later date.. it doesnt really follow the format of any of the text around it. If you trully believe in the bible then YOU BETTER HATE GAYS because it is the only sexual practice that God outright hates without a reason

 

This seems to be the whole point of your long post and it is inaccurate.

The Bible merely says that you should not engage in homosexual acts.

As for hating the people who engage in such acts, the Bible says nothing about hating them. In fact one should share God’s Love with all, in spite of what they may have done in the past, in fact in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 the Bible points out that some of the original members of the Christian Congregation had formerly committed homosexual acts.

As for God hating homosexual acts without a reason, I’m sure God has a reason, it just may not be clear to you.

 

Religion is bullshit, as is god in the sense of an actual being.
nuff said

 

And what was this suppose to accomplish?

Am I to give up my religion and become more like you?

If you don’t mind, I’ll keep my religion and try to remain civil when speaking to others.

 

Telling people to "leave "sanctuary"" is civil?
Man i hate people like you
Old and dumb
Keep holdin us back man
Worthless

 

I read a few of his comments relating to leaving. He seemed civil enough. If those are the rules...those are the rules.

Lol. I imagine it is more HUMAN nature. Regardless of your faith.
What does god have to say about Lesbians?

 

curious .. Holding "US" (who is us)back..
holding what back??

 

Actually it was civil, in fact it was a friendly gesture.

Please read the Forum Guidelines for Sanctuary, which says that Sanctuary is only for Christians.

One can be banned for ignoring forum guidelines.

I personally have written no guidelines but I try to follow them.

Perhaps you also should read the general guidelines for Hip Forums.

I believe they also say something about personal attacks.

PS Once again do you really think saying things like what you’ve written in your post is really going to persuade anyone to stop believing in God?

 

Thanx.

For what it’s worth; the Bible does say at Romans 1:26-27 “… females changed the natural use of themselves into one contrary to nature; … receiving in themselves the full recompense, which was due for their error.”

 

Im lost

 

Saying rules are rules is the reason sexism has been so prevalent in human history, it's the reason racism existed (or any bias for that matter), and it's the reason our country is the way it is now (in a shit hole, and going deeper).
Us meaning humanity as a whole.
Religion has always been a means of control.
A way for the few to get their way through the many.

 

Actually, saying "rules are rules" has had very little to do with the things you mention.
In fact just picking one, say; "the reason our country is the way it is now" really has more to do with breaking the rules than saying "rules are rules".

Although religion has been used be some unscrupulous men, true religion was never intended as such.

 

"True religion"
Christianity is just a rip off other religions (paganism)
the only thing I could ever see as a "true religion" is actual Hinduism. Not icon worship, but believing in the concept of Brahman. The ultimate reality. Something in-expressable through words or images. Meditating to accomplish a sense of enlightenment. Christianity makes me sick.
OK man rules allowed corporations to fuck people.
Many rules were set in place for a small number of people's personal gain.
Breaking certain rules did fuck shit up (pyramid scheme).
But so much of what you say is just outright wrong.

 

First. if you say that Christianity is just a rip off of other religions, you have no idea what Christianity really is. Also talking about contradictory religions, Hinduism?

Second, perhaps some rules allowed corporations to make mess of things but their disregard for the rules also helped to make a mess of things but saying; “rules are rules” had very little, if anything to do with it.

 

I really think he means to say roman catholic .. but ahh,...:toetap05:

 

I'm not saying Hinduism doesn't have it's faults
Just as every religion does (I'm not a part of any of them)
But it becomes perverse over time
Why?
Greed

 

And my point with the rules are rules thing is that is what people say when they dislike a rule, but are unwilling to try and change it.
If you see something is wrong do something about it.
Don't just say that's the way it is, because as anyone can see that just leads to things getting worse.

 

it's because of the aids

 

I studied Eastern Religions for awhile Hinduism just had too many contradiction for me to suspend my believe for and fairly quickly moved to Buddhism, Zen actually. But I eventually moved on, going back to the Bible and Christianity, mainly because they do not seem to have the contradictions that the other religions I’ve looked into seem to have.

And I agree that many religions have been corrupted by greed but I believe that there is one religion that has remained uncorrupted.

 

We were both tired last night and in the light of day, I agree with what you say, only I believe that what you say is not so absolute.

I believe that some things that are wrong are just not my job to fix or are perhaps just not important enough to bother with in a world with much bigger fish to fry and I don’t feel that letting some things slide always leads to things getting worse.