I can't get religious gay people!

[oakpope]

you at least have the intelligence to recognize that your faith is not backed by evidence.

Have I read my posts ? I said there was no evidence ! And there is none of the contrary.

If you can't prove A and yon can't prove non-A, then you don't know if A is true or false. You just don't know. My faith doesn't come from logic or science.

Does logic or science are capable of answering this : why are you born ? (not how, how you are born is pretty clear, but I talk of 'why'). Does logic or science inform us what happens after death ? They answer what happens to the body, alright. But have you got proof there is only that ? No I have not a single proof that there is something else either. But it is my faith that there is.

 

[marqau]

I remember waiting for an hour for two trannies friends to do their makeup and get dressed (in Saris), then waiting for another 15 minutes because they had to pray before we could go out. They are fairly devout Moslems from Bangladesh. Any contradiction? No. Obviously not to them.

It is funny that many non-religious people see religion as more inflexible than religious people. They ask fundamentalist questions and then complain when they get fundamentalist answers.

One of those two guys (very good classical Indian dancer) and a few other mainly Moslem and Hindu guys (more than half dressed as girls) put on a play that was performed in the Metropolitan Community Church. A gay Christian church just down the road from here.

I am a Buddhist, but of all the Christians and Moslem friends I have, those that I consider to be most religious in a non-superficial way are gay.

Religion is about spiritual growth, maturity, self-realisation. Non-religious people seem to think it is all about making assertions about reality. They ask stupid questions like "what is the proof that God exists?" rather than "What is the purpose of belief in God?".

I don't believe that it is any accident that many truly religious people are gay.

I guess that many of us on this forum were confused about our sexuality when growing up. In spite of the contradictions between our biological sexuality and our main role models and expectations of society, we came to the realisation after all that we are gay. We made one big step towards realising who we are. We have a head start.

But if you don't think that is a step on the path of spiritual growth or self-realisation and if you don't think that has got anything to do with the purpose of religion, then you have no idea what religion is.

 

[Yuki Sohma]

How do you deal with the guilt?
How could you accept yourself like that?
How do you trust someone who made you to be born with "that sin"?

Actually very good points you make.

When dealing with "Sexual Pleasures" & "Religion" I find your questions difficult to answer without some very deep soul searching and self-analyzation of my personal same-gender attraction features and their relationship to my spiritual dealings.

My question is "does anyone know if any of the major belief systems such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Agnosticism, Atheism, Chinese Traditional Religion, Primal-indigenous, African Traditional & Diasporic, Sikhism, Juche Ideology, Spiritism, Baha'i, Jainism, Shinto, Cao Dai, Zoroastrianism, Tenrikyo, Neo-Paganism, Unitarian-Universalism, Rastafarianism & Scientology that don't deal negatively with same-gender sexual pleasures including masturbation?"

Interesting thoughts for me to entertain as I go get my haircut & do some shopping .

For you "c" my personal Philosophy remains that "When in Doubt get a haircut & do some shopping.... "

 

[bort138]

Have I read my posts ? I said there was no evidence ! And there is none of the contrary.

If you can't prove A and yon can't prove non-A, then you don't know if A is true or false. You just don't know. My faith doesn't come from logic or science.

Does logic or science are capable of answering this : why are you born ? (not how, how you are born is pretty clear, but I talk of 'why'). Does logic or science inform us what happens after death ? They answer what happens to the body, alright. But have you got proof there is only that ? No I have not a single proof that there is something else either. But it is my faith that there is.

To assume that something must be true because it cannot be proven false is an argument from ignorance. It is okay to admit that some questions in life are unknowable and can never be answered.

 

[bankside]

It is funny that many non-religious people see religion as more inflexible than religious people. They ask fundamentalist questions and then complain when they get fundamentalist answers.

I think that comes from Protestantism actually. Smaller and more cohesive than Catholicism, and motivated by concrete theological disagreements, it could get away with being doctrinaire. Catholicism, in contrast, may have been a big target for discontents, but it was a slippery one; a shifting big tent with internal divisions and as many ideas of what it means to be a catholic as there were bishops. Messy. Occasionally sloppy. Occasionally pragmatic. Moribund with inertia and a need to at least publicly acknowledge the pope. But because of its relative vastness, it was difficult pin down when it comes to actually conducting the theological debate sought by the Protestants.

Following a millennium of Catholic stagnation, Protestantism was sharp, focussed, easily explained. The primary criterion for adherence was a willingness to consider that this central messy compromising authority of the papacy might be wrong. It required asking for specifics.

In that regard, I consider Protestantism a gateway drug for Atheism. It left a cultural imprint of questioning authority which permitted the achievements of the enlightenment and all that has followed.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFsD4SqBbKY[/ame]

And with a nod to an old story retold by Hitchens, I'm readily able to declare that I'm a protestant atheist. To me, purposes don't matter in the least; discussing the purpose of something is the stupid endeavour while it's not settled whether there even is such a thing. Even more so when there are good reasons to believe it's been made up.

I think you describe a few salient features. I also think your analysis is an extension of all I find to be meaningless in the catholic variety of atheism; the relativism, the anti positivism. Catholic atheism gave us a legacy not of the enlightenment, but of things like homeopathy, and sociology, and "new age" and postmodernist deconstructionism, and "spiritual journeys" and "self-actualization" and even all the sorts of things that were so successfully lampooned in the Sokal Affair.

"Meaning" and "self realisation" are just the kinds of trifling details that fall into place once you know what's actually going on in the universe.

So I do accept the notion of atheism being somehow fundamentalist, at least protestant atheism. And at least the fundamentalists agree on the importance of the questions, if not the answers or the methodology to reach them. But unless you'd like to dismiss all of protestantism as being non-religious, then you don't have a monopoly on defining what religion is.

Finally, I think it will be interesting to see if Wahabbism gives rise to its own strain of atheism. I suspect it will, and I suspect it will more closely resemble the protestant atheism of northern european origin rather than the relativist sort from the south.

Religion is about spiritual growth, maturity, self-realisation. Non-religious people seem to think it is all about making assertions about reality. They ask stupid questions like "what is the proof that God exists?" rather than "What is the purpose of belief in God?".

I don't believe that it is any accident that many truly religious people are gay.

I guess that many of us on this forum were confused about our sexuality when growing up. In spite of the contradictions between our biological sexuality and our main role models and expectations of society, we came to the realisation after all that we are gay. We made one big step towards realising who we are. We have a head start.

But if you don't think that is a step on the path of spiritual growth or self-realisation and if you don't think that has got anything to do with the purpose of religion, then you have no idea what religion is.

 

[oakpope]

To assume that something must be true because it cannot be proven false is an argument from ignorance. It is okay to admit that some questions in life are unknowable and can never be answered.

I agree, but the answers can come from spirituality if not from science.

 

[oakpope]

It left a cultural imprint of questioning authority which permitted the achievements of the enlightenment and all that has followed.

The century of enlightenment is best known for the French philosophers of this century , and France was very Catholic at this moment. So I beg to differ with your assessment.

I cite wikipedia :

An Age of Enlightenment (or simply the Enlightenment or Age of Reason) was a cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe, in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted science and intellectual interchange and opposed superstition, intolerance and abuses in church and state. Originating about 1650 to 1700, it was sparked by philosophers Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), John Locke (1632–1704), Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), physicist Isaac Newton (1643–1727), and historian Voltaire (1694–1778). The wide distribution of the printing press, invented in Europe in 1440, made possible the rapid dispersion of knowledge and ideas which precipitated the Enlightenment. Ruling princes often endorsed and fostered figures and even attempted to apply their ideas of government in what was known as Enlightened Despotism. The Enlightenment flourished until about 1790–1800, after which the emphasis on reason gave way to Romanticism's emphasis on emotion and a Counter-Enlightenment gained force.

In France, Enlightenment was based in the salons and culminated in the great Encyclopédie (1751–72) edited by Denis Diderot (1713–1784) with contributions by hundreds of leading philosophes (intellectuals) such as Voltaire (1694–1778), Rousseau (1712–1778) and Montesquieu (1689–1755). Some 25,000 copies of the 35 volume set were sold, half of them outside France. The new intellectual forces spread to urban centres across Europe, notably England, Scotland, the German states, the Netherlands, Russia, Italy, Austria, and Spain, then jumped the Atlantic into the European colonies, where it influenced Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, among many others, and played a major role in the American Revolution. The political ideals influenced the American Declaration of Independence, the United States Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and the Polish–Lithuanian Constitution of May 3, 1791.

 

[marqau]

My question is "does anyone know if any of the major belief systems such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Agnosticism, Atheism, Chinese Traditional Religion, Primal-indigenous, African Traditional & Diasporic, Sikhism, Juche Ideology, Spiritism, Baha'i, Jainism, Shinto, Cao Dai, Zoroastrianism, Tenrikyo, Neo-Paganism, Unitarian-Universalism, Rastafarianism & Scientology that don't deal negatively with same-gender sexual pleasures including masturbation?"

I guess all of them some times and none of them other times. What is important is not abstract academic "belief systems" but actual personal believers. In all of these traditions it is likely that there are gay and lesbian people who see no contradiction between their faith and their sexuality. And the adult rate of masturbators excluding celibate monks and priests is probably 99.9%. (100% for celibate monks and priests ).

Sure, some interpreters of religious traditions are anti-gay, anti-sex etc.. These are not actually religious people though. They are simply gangs of hate criminals and sexual perverts and should be treated as such.

Anyway, what did you buy?

 

[youfiad]

Have I read my posts ? I said there was no evidence ! And there is none of the contrary.

If you can't prove A and yon can't prove non-A, then you don't know if A is true or false. You just don't know. My faith doesn't come from logic or science.

Does logic or science are capable of answering this : why are you born ? (not how, how you are born is pretty clear, but I talk of 'why'). Does logic or science inform us what happens after death ? They answer what happens to the body, alright. But have you got proof there is only that ? No I have not a single proof that there is something else either. But it is my faith that there is.

Ohh I know. I didn't say what I really meant to say in my post as it was 7 AM and I had just gotten off of work doing the night shift ; my brain wasn't working. Je suis navre monsieur! Pardonnez-moi :-(

But yes, I think science can explain why we are born. There have been many scientists who have retraced the chemical events for billions of years. Granted, there is no way to "prove this" in a scientific way. But scientists have been able to remake, in a lab, the chemical reactions that lead to the basic biological molecules that we are still made of, using simply the gases present in the early earth atmosphere and electricity. Science does not address what happens after death because that question is an impossible question to answer because it is untestable because we technically don't know from an external point of view what death is. There would be too many assumptions for it to be science. But the lack of any evidence doesn't constitute a good reason to believe in the converse. If that's what you want to believe, then it's your right to believe it, but the best thing to do is to be humble, which you have demonstrated that you do, which I like in Christians and other religious folk.

Es tu vraiment un francais? J'ai passe un an en france (Paris) etudiant a l'institut catholique de paris bien que je ne sois pas croyant J'allais revenir faire un tour cet ete, mais ca aurait coute beaucoup trop cher pour un mec de mon age.

If you're not really French, I appologize for the French rant!

 

[bankside]

…Un français qui ôse croire qu'on ne connaît rien du Siècle des lumières selon ce qu'il écrit…

Et même dans sa propre citation on voit que c'était pour réagir contre la religion. Pour certains, afin de l'améliorer, pour d'autres, pour s'en débarrasser. L'idée de vivre sans religion et que la vie reste belle nous vient de cette époque.

 

[youfiad]

…Un français qui ôse croire qu'on ne connaît rien du Siècle des lumières selon ce qu'il écrit…

Et même dans sa propre citation on voit que c'était pour réagir contre la religion. Pour certains, afin de l'améliorer, pour d'autres, pour s'en débarrasser. L'idée de vivre sans religion et que la vie reste belle nous vient de cette époque.

Je suis du meme avis de vivre sans religion parce que c'est une moyenne de controler les gens quand elle est integrees dans un systeme politique, ce qui est le cas de la plupart des pays du monde, meme les pays laique comme la france et les USA. Il y a peu de pays qui ont vraiment laique. A cause de la religion, les enants gays souffrent par leurs parents, leurs systeme judiciaire. Dans beaucoup de pays, la religions limite ce que l'on peut dire et si on dit qqch au contraire, on est massacres.. Si tu n as jamais ete victime de la religion, tu ne vois pas comment ca peut faire du mal.

 

[figjam]

Je suis du meme avis de vivre sans religion parce que c'est une moyenne de controler les gens quand elle est integrees dans un systeme politique, ce qui est le cas de la plupart des pays du monde, meme les pays laique comme la france et les USA. Il y a peu de pays qui ont vraiment laique. A cause de la religion, les enants gays souffrent par leurs parents, leurs systeme judiciaire. Dans beaucoup de pays, la religions limite ce que l'on peut dire et si on dit qqch au contraire, on est massacres.. Si tu n as jamais ete victime de la religion, tu ne vois pas comment ca peut faire du mal.

Un français ?

 

[marqau]

In that regard, I consider Protestantism a gateway drug for Atheism. It left a cultural imprint of questioning authority which permitted the achievements of the enlightenment and all that has followed.

I think it is too simplistic to say that the reformation caused the enlightenment. I'm mainly going from what I read in Roger Osborn's book from a few years ago which is very good (http://www.librarything.com/work/101967).

The reformation was more about politics than theology but there is no doubting that protestant theological issues were important in the rise of Capitalism. In my experience, most protestants today ignore or are unaware of the main theological differences, for example its anti-free will theology, and are actually closer to Catholicism (other than in a few fairly extreme cults).

It did however spawn great thinkers like Kant who's thinking aimed to resolve some theological quandaries but let the cat out of the bag and led to the post-modernist thinking slowly seeping into popular culture these days.

Then it is the challenge of post-modernism, its devaluation of logic, evidence and "facts" in favour of context, beliefs and reactions that has brought about the modern cult of reactionary fundamentalist atheism characterised by Hawkins, Dennett, Hitchins etc.. But from what I have read by Hawkins and Dennett, they both seem to miss the point in a most fundamental way, just as one of the "upset" posters above has.

Religious faith is not mainly about making assertions about reality. Questions of proof, evidence and science are therefor not relevant. Faith is a choice to believe in something without depending on reason or evidence for a spiritual (you may prefer psychotherapeutic) purpose.

There is a new book (which I have not read) "Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion" by Alain de Botton (http://www.librarything.com/work/11370617)
which I believe challenges some of the distortions of popular atheism in this respect.

 

[oakpope]

…Un français qui ôse croire qu'on ne connaît rien du Siècle des lumières selon ce qu'il écrit…

Et même dans sa propre citation on voit que c'était pour réagir contre la religion. Pour certains, afin de l'améliorer, pour d'autres, pour s'en débarrasser. L'idée de vivre sans religion et que la vie reste belle nous vient de cette époque.

Je n'ai pas dit que vous ne connaissiez rien du Siècle des lumières,
c'est vous, monsieur, qui pensiez que l'âge des lumières provenait du protestantisme. Mon lien me servait d'exemple pour vous montrer que ce n'était pas vrai et que d'un pays catholique comme la France l'âge des lumières est aussi apparu. Cela était mon seul but.

Et monsieur, si vous voulez parler en français, ce dont je vous sais gré, ose ne prend pas d'accent circonflexe.

Et lisez donc Pascal, en plus des Encyclopédistes cela vous fera le plus grand bien.

Bien cordialement.

Traduction google :

I did not say that you knew nothing of the Enlightenment,
it is you, sir, who thought the age of enlightenment came from Protestantism. I used my link as an example to show you that this was not true and that from a Catholic country like France Age of Enlightenment also appeared. That was my only goal.

And sir, if you speak French, which I am grateful to you, 'ose' has no caret.

And please read Pascal, in addition to the Encyclopedists, this will do you good.

Sincerely.

 

[maxpowr9]

Outside of staying religious to appease parents or other family member to keep the bankroll, I see no other valid reason to do so.

 

[oakpope]

Es tu vraiment un francais? J'ai passe un an en france (Paris) etudiant a l'institut catholique de paris bien que je ne sois pas croyant J'allais revenir faire un tour cet ete, mais ca aurait coute beaucoup trop cher pour un mec de mon age.

If you're not really French, I appologize for the French rant!

It was my point, science can't answer all questions, and religion can answer some, but not in a scientific way. I don't want to confront them, but to take from them the best to try and understand the why and the how of the universe and of human kind.

Oui je suis bien français On aurait pu se voir à Paris sans problème. Si tu passes par là un jour fais moi signe qu'on boive un verre

(english : yes I'm french and I'll be glad to meet you if you come to Paris someday)

 

[figjam]

Well, Christianity - as a basic belief system - is more flexible than one would assume based on what you hear from televangelists. Few people say the mass in Latin anymore, few insist on women wearing hats, and so forth. And reading up on the early days of the Church is both fascinating (to me anyway) and quite informative, as everybody tried to figure out "what it all meant". It wasn't as clear cut as anybody seems to make it out to be.

I know several gay Christians, and they've managed to reconcile both aspects of their life. Their main issue is dealing with people on one side trying to convince them that they have to give up the other.

>>>How do you trust someone who made you to be born with "that sin"? Someone whom even no one have seen or know whether he does exist or not. I can't imagine how anyone would live with that for a long term!...I'm not judging any of you and I respect your choices and support your right to take them...

Yeah, sort of not believing that last bit.

Lex

Well said...

 

[oakpope]

Je suis du meme avis de vivre sans religion parce que c'est une moyenne de controler les gens quand elle est integrees dans un systeme politique, ce qui est le cas de la plupart des pays du monde, meme les pays laique comme la france et les USA. Il y a peu de pays qui ont vraiment laique. A cause de la religion, les enants gays souffrent par leurs parents, leurs systeme judiciaire. Dans beaucoup de pays, la religions limite ce que l'on peut dire et si on dit qqch au contraire, on est massacres.. Si tu n as jamais ete victime de la religion, tu ne vois pas comment ca peut faire du mal.

Don't mistake churches with religions please. Power corrupt, and religion has been used and misused by people to take control. That has nothing to do with the validity of the real teachings of religions.

Some scientists cheat and publish false results in order to be financed. Does that make all scientists cheaters and science a falsehood ? I don't think so.

 

[figjam]

Outside of staying religious to appease parents or other family member to keep the bankroll, I see no other valid reason to do so.

long walk to freedom to be had...

 

[oakpope]

I think it is too simplistic to say that the reformation caused the enlightenment. I'm mainly going from what I read in Roger Osborn's book from a few years ago which is very good (http://www.librarything.com/work/101967).
[...]
There is a new book (which I have not read) "Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion" by Alain de Botton (http://www.librarything.com/work/11370617)
which I believe challenges some of the distortions of popular atheism in this respect.

Sir, I fully agree with you and thank you for your references.