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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Frumple]

... caitlyn who? *starts reading article*

Ah. Olympic, current pop... thing, and apparently publicly transitioning? Never heard of 'em, before or after the name change, but those first bits explain why. First I've heard of... whatever's going on regarding that.

Will... kinda' say it's a little distasteful the author says be compassionate and understanding and then insists on using the wrong name for most of the article

Wrong pronoun I could see due to personal beliefs (though it's still a bit of a jackass thing to do :V), but if the critter's changed their name they've changed their name, and it's time to update your method of address. Insisting otherwise is a pretty clear demonstration of lack of... well, what the author is ostensibly proposing.

[Arx]

Biblically, there is no justification for transphobia. The 'correct' Christian approach to the whole gender revolution is, as I understand it, also the popular liberal approach. It interests me that the author refers to 'sin-broken'ness, but doesn't mention why this is sinful or a 'disorder'.

So yeah, I think the author is more right than many people but is still failing in many respects. Particularly in the respect of watching their tongue, alas.

[ggamer]

Biblically, there is no justification for transphobia. The 'correct' Christian approach to the whole gender revolution is, as I understand it, also the popular liberal approach. It interests me that the author refers to 'sin-broken'ness, but doesn't mention why this is sinful or a 'disorder'.

So yeah, I think the author is more right than many people but is still failing in many respects. Particularly in the respect of watching their tongue, alas.

I'll agree with the pronouns, that was a bit wierd

IIRC the argument used by most christians (or at least John Piper) is that god created man and woman as a purposeful duality, and that transgendered peeps fly in the face of that. He quotes a few verses, but they're rather vague and I don't feel very comfortable with him using them like that.

[Arx]

Well, my response to that is that God made trangender people too, and He made them like that, citing "For I formed you in your mother's womb" as appropriate. I actually went on a research spree a while beack trying to see if there is anything about transsexuality in the Bible.

[Rolan7]

This is a well-crafted piece of evangelical doublethink.  They emphasize respect, empathy, and humility, but show almost none.

Speaking truth is itself a form of love, even if a person doesn’t receive it as such initially. But “in love” also means speaking with great respect, empathy, and appropriate humility. And it means a willingness to love strugglers with deeds (such as hospitality), not just words (1 John 3:18).

Respect, empathy, and humility.  This sounds nice, but where is the respect when they don't use her new name or pronoun?  They don't even accept that she's Christian:

Jenner professes to be a Christian. Whatever that means, he at least may have potential openness to biblical truth. Let us pray that the truth of the gospel will set him free (John 8:32), knowing how much Jesus loves to redeem and restore sin-broken people.

They're speaking like she's a confused child who needs prayer, not an adult to be debated.  They emphasize sharing their "truth" with her and other "broken" transgendered people.  This is the opposite of humility and respect.  In the last paragraph they finally have a little "humility": (emphasis added)

That is precisely why Jesus came: to deliver people like Bruce Jenner and us from our domains of sinful darkness (Colossians 1:13) and our failing, disordered bodies, and give us glorious, powerful, disorder-free resurrection bodies (1 Corinthians 15:42–44).

But only in the "we're all sinners" sense.  They still claim to know the truth (and they still want to stop HER sins now instead of relying on Jesus).  If it were only calling for prayer, that would be kinda humble.  But instead it tips its hand:

Growing in our understanding of the nature of transgender and sexual-orientation disorders is necessary so that we don’t hold ignorant assumptions and say erroneous and insensitive things to people. And it would be wise for us to anticipate the possibility of discovering someday that our child, grandchild, cousin, nephew, niece, friend, co-worker, or possibly a parent is enduring such a struggle. If that should happen, we want to be safe people for them to talk to.

IE, a main reason for understanding and being nice to transgender people is so they'll come to us for answers.  So we can fix them.  Because we know the truth.  This is evangelism 101:  Destroy their self-esteem (while being compassionate), then humbly offer salvation.  It works so well!

Here's how it would look with actual respect, empathy, and humility:
"Caitlyn Jenner (formerly Bruce Jenner) is a transgendered Christian.  We think that being transgendered is wrong in God's eyes.  We hope and pray that God will reveal the truth on the issue to Caitlyn and to us, so we all can avoid doing wrong."

I think most Christians actually feel that way about sin, they just aren't the loud ones...

[TD1]

The bible does seem to be based around straight men and women, though.

They speak of prostitutes as people, but I don't recall a similar thing on transgenders.

Of course, given this was written in a time when I very much doubt people often said "I am a man in a girl's body" or vice versa, I suppose that would be why. I doubt Jesus knew much about transgender people.

[wierd]

They wouldnt have had the surgical skills to perform the body mod, but the "Mental status" was almost certainly there.

Look at the South-Asian concept of "Third Gender".
(Specifically in India.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_%28South_Asia%29

The identity has been recognized since antiquity.

[scrdest]

They wouldnt have had the surgical skills to perform the body mod, but the "Mental status" was almost certainly there.

Look at the South-Asian concept of "Third Gender".
(Specifically in India.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_%28South_Asia%29

The identity has been recognized since antiquity.

In India. Doesn't mean it was recognized by cultures elsewhere. Like, say, ancient Middle East.

[wierd]

You are making a faulted presumption.

"Not culturally accepted == NOT THERE!"

No no no.  There almost certainly WERE people who were third gender, just as there most certainly WERE people who were homosexual. That they had to hide their actual status due to social pressure is another thing entirely.  Since they existed, I am quite sure that the culture of the period had words to describe such people, even if they were pejorative.

[scrdest]

You are making a faulted presumption.

"Not culturally accepted == NOT THERE!"

No no no.  There almost certainly WERE people who were third gender, just as there most certainly WERE people who were homosexual. That they had to hide their actual status due to social pressure is another thing entirely.  Since they existed, I am quite sure that the culture of the period had words to describe such people, even if they were pejorative.

Considering they hid their actual status, they didn't need to have words for them. Transgender, at least, because homosexuality was overtly practiced at least in Rome, if not other neighboring countries... which, you know, being an occupant and all, were possibly in some quantity present in there.

Plus, you don't need to have one single word to describe things. When something is rare enough, using 'guy attracted to guys' is more linguistically economic than making up a new word to act as a macro for the phrase.

[Loud Whispers]

Berlin making a triple Church that caters to all three Abrahamic faiths

The new world monoreligion rises

[TempAcc]

Transgender people were present in both ancient Rome and Greece, specialy since some clerical orders consisted basically of men wearing women's clothes (NSFW), but rarely/never the contrary. Androgynous young males were specialy valued, and Catamites were a thing :v
Of course, there wasn't any transgender related surgery going on, but there was some measure of gender bending going around.

I remember reading an ancient Roman account of a general sugesting that legionaires should be encouraged to let their beard and body hair grow so they'd look less attractive to their fellow soldiers, or something.

[origamiscienceguy]

A survey for everyone: Do you believe that the biblical events/people listed below happened in history?

-Jesus
-Abraham
-The Flood
-Moses

Feel free to give an explanation if you wish.

[Arcvasti]

Berlin making a triple Church that caters to all three Abrahamic faiths

The new world monoreligion rises

Is this a new thing? I thought there was a church like that in Jerusalem somewhere. Encouraging religious unity[Or at least "not stabbing each otherness"] is sort of nice though.

A survey for everyone: Do you believe that the biblical events/people listed below happened in history?

-Jesus
-Abraham
-The Flood
-Moses

Feel free to give an explanation if you wish.

In descending order of plausibility:

Jesus, while basically all of the details are somewhat contested, totally lived, was a religious leader and then got crucified. We've got decent evidence of that.

Moses is iffier. I don't actually know as much about how well cited they are, but I'd say they're still quite a bit more plausible then all the below entries because their life was described in Exodus, which seems to describe actual historic events[Plus some stuff about plagues and sea parting which is of somewhat more dubious origins].

Abraham is hella far removed from the present day. Thus, possibility of error is pretty high. To top that, its entirely possible that they are, at least partially, a symbolic character. I wouldn't rule out their existence, but I don't have a terribly large amount of confidence in it either.

The Flood... The Flood, if I remember correctly, was pretty conclusively debunked a while back, although it might have been a smaller, regional event. I'd say its either metaphor/symbolism or an exaggeration of the flooding of a certain area.

[Descan]

Jesus, while basically all of the details are somewhat contested, totally lived, was a religious leader and then got crucified. We've got decent evidence of that.

You know, a lot of people say that, and a lot of people say the antithesis, and yet I've never seen much evidence either way about it.

Also, I don't know if I'd say Exodus describes historical events...