re: Same sex marriages

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My gay cousin refers to his partner as his husband, which makes me think my cousin is always on the bottom.

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A lot of the married figs call each other "husband." So, two husbands. Who gives a frick. Just keep that shite to yourselves and don't force it on my kid as "normal" or virtuous, and I don't really care. What two consenting adults choose to do with each other privately that doesn't affect me or others, I don't really give a frick.

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Something on TV maybe?

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Fozzie Bear.

I was born in 1970, so the Muppet Show was a favorite.

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Somehow you translated that into the need to ask me if I am a member of NAMBLA.

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I think you understand perfectly what I've said, though you will not admit it and keep hiding behind acting like you don't.

I also think if you truly don't understand the point you are pretending to not understand, you are the fricking moron, not me.

But hey, I'll try one more time.

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I said my rule of thumb is "if you are old enough to fight and die for your country ..."

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Great. Why am I supposed to care about your rule of thumb when it appeals to no one or nothing of a higher authority than yourself?

If someone else's rule of thumb is, "If there's grass on the field, it's game time," who are you to tell them they are wrong?

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And that is just absolutely fricking stupid.

If you believe in a God, then you must understand that he created you that way.

If you don't believe in a god, then you understand it is animal instinct.
Sometimes, it seems like about 90% of the Bible is God (or his alleged representatives) telling humans NOT to do things that He apparently designed them TO do.

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Oh, good grief, neither one of y'all are that stupid, are you?

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It wasn't legalization of same sex marriage.

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No, that wasn't all of it.

Graphically teaching children as young as 2nd and 3rd grade in public schools about gay sex was a big part of it too.

Did you ever hear about any of that happening—any of the stuff you posted about or what I just posted—before the federal government celebrated gay marriage?

I didn't.

In fact, seems to me it all started soon after that happened.

You might say that was just a coincidence. If you're as stupid as you keep saying other people are you might say that.

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Because you said that all Biblical "scholars" agree that homosexuality is wrong and therefore same-sex marriages should not be recognized.

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Actually no one said that.

What I said in response to you making the claim that the Bible was unreliable due to people disagreeing about what certain things meant is that there is no confusion about the issue we're discussing now.

That I am not aware of any reputable biblical scholar who agrees with the recent attempts to claim that when the Bible says that homosexuality is wrong, it has been mistranslated.

There was no, "Therefore" statement after that. You made that up.

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But that is simply not the case.

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Yeah, it is the case. Find me a reputable scholar who thinks those passages have been mistranslated and I will concede. As of now I am arguing in good faith that I am not aware of a single one, and I have looked.

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Every Christian denomination is in disagreement with every other Christian denomination over one thing or another

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Which is exactly why i specifically said, "there are some things that are open to interpretation and that people reasonably disagree on, but this isn't one of them," which then led to the statement you quoted above.

Surely you're not going to argue that if a group disagrees over some things, their opinions are invalid for everything, are you?

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And there would be no need for multiple English translations of the "original" manuscripts.

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Sure there would.

Greek is a very different language, and the context of the Biblical culture is also very different from what we experience today.

Some translations have the goal of translating word for word. That's useful for comparing which words are used in multiple places, for example. I have an interlinear Bible that has the Hebrew and Greek alongside the word-for-word English translated words, but it is completely literal. Meaning that it follows the syntax and sentence structure literally, and the Greek sentence structure and syntax is quite different from English, and ancient Hebrew even more so.

For example, everybody is pretty much familiar with John 3:16. Here's a literal translation Koine Greek to English: "so For loved God the world, so as the Son of Him, the only begotten, He gave, that everyone believing into Him may not perish, but have life everlasting."

Not so bad, right? Imagine it being read in Yoda's voice and it's not so hard to understand. Most of the time.

But let's look at ancient Hebrew, where the syntax dictates that the most important idea goes first, no matter where it falls in the sequence of events or ideas.

Here's Genesis 3: "Jehovah had made which field the beast of above every cunning the And serpent shall you eat not God said has (it is) that so woman the to he And said God garden the of trees the of Fruit the serpent to the woman said."

If you are fluent in ancient Hebrew, that makes sense. if you are translating it for people who are not, you have to make some choices.

So most translations don't attempt word for word translations, they attempt to account for what the words really meant when context and culture are taken into context. More about the ideas than the actual words. Some do attempt to reflect the actual words, but as we would speak them in English.

It isn't about which one is "right," because given the differences in language and culture there is no such thing. It's about what the translation is trying to accomplish for the reader, and serious Christians know this and usually use several different translations to get the benefit of several different approaches. I use four different translations myself.

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I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall.

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I feel like I'm watching some arrogant kid who thinks he's smarter than everyone else, but he's not smart enough to realize that he's losing every exchange.

Which gets uncomfortable after a while. The secondary embarrassment sets in.

I may or may not come back to the thread, as it is clear that you will not address the actual point. For now I am going to take a nap.

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The Bible is the defined authority. The different version and translations do not change what the Bible teaches fundamentally, so those aren't issues. The denominations and interpretations are just highlighting disagreements that Christians have about what the Bible means, not the authority it has.

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You are kidding me, right? There is at least one thread per week in this forum where Catholics are claiming to be the one true church with an infallible pope. To which a bunch of Protestants fire back that the Catholics are heretical because they "pray to Mary and the saints".

And then the Calvinists start arguing with the Baptists, and so on.

So when you say "The Bible is the defined authority", which Bible are you referring to? The Catholic one, or the multitude of others?

Are you, as a Calvinist, willing to state that the Catholic Bible is the defining authority?

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We definitely think it's icky and weird, but that's also because we've been culturally oriented away from that type of practice, mostly due to the influence of Christianity in the West.

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So you are OK with siblings marrying and procreating?

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You are kidding me, right? There is at least one thread per week in this forum where Catholics are claiming to be the one true church with an infallible pope. To which a bunch of Protestants fire back that the Catholics are heretical because they "pray to Mary and the saints".

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Yep, because Catholics only see the Bible as one authority, not the only infallible authority. This discussion is about the Bible, not the Catholic Magisterium and Pope.

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And then the Calvinists start arguing with the Baptists, and so on.

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Again, disagreements about what the authority teaches doesn't mean the authority isn't actually the authority.

Like I said about the US Constitution: people disagree what it says and means when it comes to liberties. The differences about the 1st and 2nd amendments in particular have been heated for a long time, but having disagreements doesn't mean that the Constitution isn't authoritative.

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So when you say "The Bible is the defined authority", which Bible are you referring to? The Catholic one, or the multitude of others?

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The Protestant Bible. I, with most of the early Church from what we can tell, believe that there are canonical books that are authoritative beyond what is useful for teaching the Church. There are essentially two tiers of "scripture" referred to by the ECFs but the canon lists are different from what they would describe otherwise. That's more of a conversation about what is God's word or not, but it doesn't really matter so much in terms of disagreements with Catholics, because even if I accepted the Apocryphal (Deuterocanon), I still wouldn't come to the same conclusion that Rome does on much of its dogmas, because their teachings were derived mostly from oral tradition and changes over time rather than from the Scriptures, themselves.

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Are you, as a Calvinist, willing to state that the Catholic Bible is the defining authority?

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Nope, but I don't need to in this discussion.