Things Learned from LGBTQ+ Discussions

[Trapped]

Originally Posted by awareness

Thanks for your response.

I'm not sure about that. I like to think God is righteous, but then I read the Bible. It looks to me like authors of the books of the Bible mischaracterize God. The book of Job comes to mind. How about this verse :

Jdg 1:19 And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.

If that verse is true, God doesn't have a chance against our weapons.

awareness, you are like a magician who whips out the most unexpected verses and conclusions. I chuckled the whole time reading through Judges 1. Most of the Bible commentaries on verse 19 (biblehub.com pulls a bunch of them together on one page) explain the iron chariot failure as a lack of belief on the part of Judah. They saw the iron chariots, their faith wavered, and thus couldn't drive them out. The commentaries reference other verses but I don't have time to go down those paths.

Originally Posted by awareness

That's not quite accurate. True, if God causes it he can't judge it. But what does God cause?

The Bible is confusing. Example, it says thou shalt not kill. But then God tells the Israelite's to go into the promised land and kill everything that breathes. And there's a verse like this one :

Psa 137:9 Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!

This is not in my wheelhouse, but again, the commentaries explain that this same thing was done by the Babylonians to Jewish children, and now divine retribution is occurring. This (admittedly horrible) thing was prophesied to happen in the future, and thus the expression of happiness at carrying out a prophecy.

Do I claim to understand? Nope.

And frankly, I'd rather pretend the book of Job doesn't exist. Every time I read it I kinda want to quietly whistle as I sidestep away from God, but, the reality is, just like my "God alone can kill someone and it's not murder" explanation to SL, the same applies with Job. God alone has the right to do what He wants with His creation. Do I like it? Not in cases like Job, no. Does it drive me to my knees in recognition of His might? Yep.

Originally Posted by awareness

You are right. God is not needed to determine right and wrong. We have laws, and courts, to determine that.

That's not quite what I meant. I meant, you can hold a predeterministic view and excise God from the picture and essentially end up with the same worldview. If you presupposed a creator God as opposed to a "all this came from nothing" view, then that God is the basis of right and wrong, He gave us a conscience, we have the moral law written on our hearts.

Originally Posted by awareness

Thanks ... maybe ... i guess.

I think the question on this thread is, does God cause homosexuality? I don't know. Are some people born gay? I think so. There's evidence of it, now that we know genetics and hormones have something to do with it. Does God cause it? I guess it depends on how involved He is. Is God involved at conception, development, and birth? According to the Bible, God controls the womb. That's pretty involved.

If that's true, and some are born gay -- even animals -- then God causes it. And I think we all agree that if God causes it, then He can't judge it.

Does this mean that I'm an atheist determinist? BTW, that's the first time I've heard that term. Are there theistic determinist's? Please help this idiot learn.

We can ask this same question about known birth defects. Did God cause that guy Nick Vujicic to be born without arms and legs? If there is going to be the genetic argument for homosexuality, then I personally think it is reasonable to assume something like environmental factors (say the increasing level of discarded medications in the groundwater, or whatever) have had an effect on some portions of the population at a genetic level. Genetic abnormalities, or normalities if you want to argue for it, don't always have to be caused by God. There's plenty of other influences on this earth; maybe we just haven't found the link yet.

Which is still why I say homosexual PEOPLE are not abominations, BEING homosexual is not a sin, it's JUST the sexual act that is the problem.

There are indeed theistic determinists, it's called "theological determinism", although the explanations frequently admit there are inherent problems with the perspective.

The phrase I used for atheists was atheistic materialist, which is saying the same thing as "atheistic determinism" but the word materialism is usually used. Basically atheist materialists believe that the material world is all there is, everything is grounded in the physical, atoms, molecules, etc and there are no immaterial realities, and so everything is just a matter of physics. Our thoughts, actions, behaviors, etc are all just physical neurons firing, we are pre-wired, and thus don't have free will. The problem with this perspective is, as I tried to explain, if we are all just wet robots wired to behave certain ways without any free will, then consequences for our actions become meaningless, and we have no grounds to punish a murderer because he didn't choose to murder, he was just wired to. But we all inherently know that murderers (outright, not defensive, etc) should receive retribution.