The religious stood together today outside of Chick-Fil-A’s nationwide.
More, in fact, at one time than we’ve ever seen waiting for a chance to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or stand up for social outcasts whom society has marginalized… like the entire homosexual community.
You know, things Jesus actually told his followers to do.
Irony is a bitch.
Here’s a simple question: How can scholars “revise” the Bible, throw in a new term that reflects a contemporary movement within the church or society, then go on believing it reflects the original, unchanging and perfect word of God? Sounds a bit suspect, yet this has occurred within Christendom numerous times, and one major instance within living memory is what I’d like to draw our attention to now.
Before the Revised Standard Version of the Bible was released in late early 50′s, the word “homosexual” didn’t occur in any English translation (and to contrast, the King James goes back to the 17th century). The curious might ask how this came to be, and the answer is simple: There is no Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic word for “homosexual”.*
It does make one wonder, with stacks of different English versions of God’s eternal word, many with the word “new” right in their description, how does anyone have the audacity to insist God’s word is in any way static? (To say nothing of the fact that no one in the Bible spoke or wrote in English to begin with.) Continue reading…
When a Christian makes any claim about sexual relationships by appealing to the Bible or to their view of nature as proof that their idea of sexuality is the right one, what we’re really dealing with boils down to the Naturalistic Fallacy. In Part I of this series, we’ve already seen that myriad sexual expressions and gender identities exist in Nature. If a person believes God created all these things, then the 15 all-female species of Whiptail Lizard that reproduce asexually must have been part of His plan.
By extension, the religious must concede either that being a lesbian is alright, or that … I don’t know, Satan is misleading small reptiles into lives of sin. Which seems more likely?
Now let’s take a second look at scripture and see if we can get to the bottom of Jesus’ own sexual identity with all this information fresh in our minds.
Genesis 1:27:
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them. Continue reading…
In Genesis, the Bible says that God created man in his image. This is one reason why we’ve been told God is a man, even though the movie Dogma offers a very compelling and equally plausible possibility. Genesis also says, “Male and female, he created them.”
Christians would have you believe a number of things based on these and a handful of other Biblical proclamations, such as the wrongness gay marriage in particular, homosexuality in general and, by extension, any other form of transgender or intersex “lifestyle choice”. It should go without saying that anyone touting such a belief should be able to easily recall the day they chose their own gender and sexual orientation, if only we would stop and ask.
As further proof of the immutable gender binary, Christians often point to the animal kingdom and say, “They’re all male and female, just like the Bible says, so being gay isn’t natural.”
This is called the Naturalistic Fallacy, and is therefore a non-starter for anyone well versed in debate, and I could leave it there and expect you to simply believe me. However, in researching this piece I learned some truly fascinating things about sexuality in Nature, and juxtaposing this knowledge against all these silly conservative “traditional” ideas about love and marriage will, in my opinion, be as entertaining as it will be jaw-dropping. Besides, asking you to take my word for it on faith would be to miss the point.
First of all, not all animals are male and female. The known species that reproduce asexually as a rule, or who can reproduce asexually when necessary, compose quite a long list. This includes many snails, sharks, and insects. The Komodo Dragon can reproduce this way, as well as the female Greenfly, which clone themselves every twenty minutes or so. (And isn’t its very unnaturalness one of the main conservative arguments against cloning research in the US?) Continue reading…
In virtually all discussions concerning religion lately, including the religion in which I was raised and even served as a minister for a number of years, I tend to raise two basic points:
Admittedly, the latter applies more to revealed religions, mainly monotheisms like Judaism, Christianity and Islam and less to, say, Scientology or Pastafarianism.
Regarding Christianity specifically, as Thomas Paine made clear in his timeless, The Age of Reason, I agree that the Bible proves itself to be almost certainly fictitious by its own internal evidence. (I think there probably isn’t a god or gods for other reasons, discussed elsewhere. Let’s not confuse the two.)
So with a subtle literary nod to Bertrand Russel, I’d like to explain why I am not a Christian. Continue reading…
(The following editorial was contributed by 21 year old writer and atheist, Camille Richoux. Camille is currently a senior Biological Anthropology major at the University of Arkansas, where she is also President of Occam’s Razors, the campus’ Secular Student Alliance.)
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It was something like this...
I recently had a conversation with a Christian acquaintance over the subject of feminism. She attempted to explain that ‘true’ feminism, from a Christian perspective, meant understanding the purpose given to you by God. The word ‘feminazi’ was dropped and I admittedly became irate. She asserted that “women deserve better than abortion, abortion isn’t a choice,” and then my brain exploded out of the back of my head.
I live in a country where my basic dignity is being constantly attacked. From attempts to legislate contraception to whether I should have to carry a stillborn to full-term, I feel like I have suddenly been dropped onto a roller-coaster and don’t know when the damn ride is going to end. Is outright insanity some new fad? Continue reading…
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