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[Lord Shonus]

I'm more bothered by the broad swaths of popular Christian belief that are based on either relatively creative translation or bizarre misinterpretations. For instance, how anyone can get "don't masturbate" out of the story of Onan is beyond me; that's like saying that the moral of Goldilocks and the Three Bears is to not eat porridge. Add to this any proscription on premarital sex; premarital sex within a long-term committed relationship between adults isn't a question anybody back then even really had to consider, since marriage was much younger and courtship worked differently, and any prohibition based on the word "fornication" can be argued to be about something fairly different in the first place.

I can explain exactly how this came about. Early in the Christian era, the Church became dominated by an Last Times sect that believed that the End of Days was just around the corner. The leader of this group, before his conversion, was an extreme hedonist (from what I've read, he made Hefner and Flynt look like prudes). Saddled with massive guilt over his previous excesses, and believing that humanity needed to purify itself so as to be ready when Christ showed up (the concept of the Rapture wouldn't be around for more than a millenium and a half at this point, in case you're confused), so he issued edicts against virtually everything pleasurable, especially non-procreative sex. (This is the root of ALL Christian homophobia. Prior to this edict, gay relationships were as accepted as any other, based on the records I've read. Because gay sex had no reproductive function, it came under heavier fire than the heterosexual variety.) After a few centuries, as the Last Days sect loast influence, most of the edicts were overruled, but the sexual ones remained.

[Pwnzerfaust]

I've never understood just why people see sex as a taboo or a bad thing or something disgusting to be hidden away and discussed in hushed tones. Sex is a wonderful, natural thing. It's silly to see it as somehow dirty.

[devek]

I've never understood just why people see sex as a taboo or a bad thing or something disgusting to be hidden away and discussed in hushed tones. Sex is a wonderful, natural thing. It's silly to see it as somehow dirty.

Obviously, but at the same time it isn't hard to see why living a life ran by lust as a bad thing either. Even as an atheist I recently had to shun a friend because I got tired of dealing with is problems, problems of his own creation, problems specifically caused by his penis controlling his life I like ice cream, but I wouldn't lose a job over it.

I think religion would be more effective if it taught people to control and balance their desires, not eliminate them.

[quinnr]

If I can do that, I have forced them to say that gay sex is tempting hehe.

Your evilness is amazing. You are an awesome person.

I've never understood just why people see sex as a taboo or a bad thing or something disgusting to be hidden away and discussed in hushed tones. Sex is a wonderful, natural thing. It's silly to see it as somehow dirty.

Obviously, but at the same time it isn't hard to see why living a life ran by lust as a bad thing either. Even as an atheist I recently had to shun a friend because I got tired of dealing with is problems, problems of his own creation, problems specifically caused by his penis controlling his life I like ice cream, but I wouldn't lose a job over it.

I think religion would be more effective if it taught people to control and balance their desires, not eliminate them.

Just because a life being run by lust would likely end up badly, doesn't mean that the whole topic has to be taboo.

[Cthulhu]

If I can do that, I have forced them to say that gay sex is tempting hehe.

And make yourself look dumb in the same step.  Vanilla ice cream is white, chalk is white, vanilla ice cream tastes good, chalk tastes good.

[devek]

Well you know Cthulhu, the whole reason I started this thread was to improve my technique for making bigots question their own sexuality. My method has proven itself to be pretty damn effective, but if you have any ideas I will try them out. I live in Oklahoma, so there isn't a shortage of people for me to fuck with.

[Leafsnail]

And make yourself look dumb in the same step.  Vanilla ice cream is white, chalk is white, vanilla ice cream tastes good, chalk tastes good.

This is actually a subtley different argument - the person said that sins are tempting, and that homosexuality is a sin.  If I said that chalk is vanilla ice cream and that vanilla ice cream tastes good, "chalk tastes good" would be a perfectly valid conclusion to draw from it.

It is pedantic, though, since the person could mean that some or most sins are tempting (not necessarily all of them).  Or they could mean that all sins are tempting to different people, which would make "homosexuality is tempting" a valid but rather misleading inference to draw from their statements.