Arguing with True Believers
A Gay Chick-fil-A Employee Speaks Out »
A gay employee, writing anonymously over fears she’d be fired for speaking out, says she hopes her customers don’t choke on their nuggets—but one day will swallow their words.
Jay RandolphI agree, I love homosexuals as I do all people including my son, but I do not support their lifestyle or hate of other people
Mark Pursey
+Israel Pedroza She is afraid of being fired for speaking out, not for being gay. The reason people use the term homophobia is because there is unfortunately no word meaning “contempt for homosexuals”
+Jay Randolph Saying you love someone while condemning them is not love, merely passive-aggression. How will gay marriage or even the gay “lifestyle” hurt your marriage or your family?
Daniel Schmitt
Hardly, love the sinner, not the sin. Love the person, not necessarily what they do. Seems right to me.
Mark Pursey
So what do you love about gay people exactly? Do you want to hang out with them? Encourage them to find loving relationships? If there is no tangible evidence of your love for these sinners, then the love you speak of is a truly vacuous one.
Jay Randolph
If my son killed a lot of people; I would still love him, and do all I could for him. However I would not agree he was right, I would not buy guns or bullets for him . . and if I knew he was going to do it, I would do all I could to stop him and tell him how wrong he was
Mark Pursey
That’s because he is your son. It is natural to love one’s own family. It is patronizing to claim to love everybody including people you don’t know exist. It is especially obnoxious to claim to love gay people while condemning core aspects of their identity and denying them recognition as people capable of loving relationships.
Jay Randolph
God is love, and gives pure Love. When you have pure love, you understand it is an overflowing love and you must share your love. Everybody is the creation of God, and we love them as people, but when they do bad things, we do not support the bad behavior, but they are still people.
Mark Pursey
What will happen to the gays when they die without repenting their sinful gay behavior?
Jay Randolph
If they die before they turn away from their sinful life and accept Jesus, then they will go to hell with everyone else who has refused Jesus
Mark Pursey
Mmmmm. So loving of your God to damn unrepentant gays to Hell. Eternal, everlasting suffering as a penalty for choosing what to do with one’s own body parts in this short biological existence of ours. Everlasting suffering for choosing love and sex and the chance to be happy over a lifetime of miserable abstinence and loneliness. If you aren’t repulsed at the idea of a god who would look upon something as twisted as hell as the right place for unrepentant homos then I can not relate to you; I can only fear your creepy certainty and see you as an enabler of bigotry and intolerance, because you love a God who is apparently more cruel and vindictive than the worst sociopath who ever lived.
– read the rest –
This is a classic example of an atheist (me!) talking to an evangelical Christian, and a reminder that I probably shouldn’t even bother. How can you discuss anything rationally with someone who believes that none of the following points are open to debate (by which I mean, amenable to change with further evidence or argumentation):
- God exists.
- God is good by definition.
- God’s instructions for mankind are perfectly preserved within the pages of the Bible.
It’s one thing for someone to believe in something without any evidence to back it up, but when the thing they believe in appears to be a terrifying psychopath and the only feeling they can associate with this figment is “Love” it really freaks me out. At least in the olden days people were terrified of God. That made some sense, given just how terrifying He seemed to be. But love? LOVE? You love this guy no matter what he does because whatever-he-does-is-awesomely-great-by-definition-because-he’s-god?
I would hope that if the devout ever find themselves in Heaven by His side, they might look down at those writhing in the torments of Hell and say “Hey God/Jesus, don’t you think it’s a bit much to make them suffer endlessly like that?” I know I would, not being a sick freak who gets a kick out of watching people suffer. Unless Heaven is just another place you keep your goddamn mouth shut if you know what’s good for you.
If you wisely decide not to bother arguing on the points of faith, maybe the best you can hope for is turn their own doctrine against them. Unfortunately pointing out all the crazy shit that’s in Leviticus doesn’t seem to have shifted anyone’s position one iota on hot man-on-man action. As far as I know there is no master definition of marriage in the Bible as between one man and one woman (if there is please cite in the comments) but that doesn’t stop people constantly referring to the “biblical definition”. And not even the ten commandments reference homosexuality… which might be why conservative Christians are so batshit crazy about stopping the gay marriage plague– because it would mean gay sex is no longer necessarily adultery!
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Related posts: What is Hell like?, What is Heaven Like?
Oh. I should follow Mark on Google+. The more narrow-minded fundies in a thread like that, the better. Right?
Actually I find it easier to handle one at a time, but as hinted in my post, I’m thinking of reducing that number to zero.
Dude, seriously this is like arguing with people on IMDB. Just no point, it’s impossible!
Just tune out :) I had a funny experience this morning: a was listening to the radio and it was some american correspondent hacking off on obama. And then, after ten seconds of it, it stopped ..because my radio is stuck in some autoseek mode. At first I was annnoyed ” I was listening to that” …but then I realised I was gradually feeling better and better…and then I realised that listening to even those ten seconds had made me feel angry, and i was better off without it. Later on, same trip, someone had rung up Paul Holmes saying that his baby daughter predicted that Tangiriro would erupt..and was showing many signs of being a bad liar…and then silence……..and I was like ahh, what a relief. Sometimes you just need to tune out!
lol!