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So does the value of a person depend on what that person does? Or is the value of a person based on the fact that a person's a person, no matter how small?

And regarding the other thing, what in the world are you talking about?

Let's just say that we have a church here which bought out one of civic centers or something. The pastor (or reverend or whatever) has his own personal helicoptor. And so on and so forth...

Religion (however you want to define it) should be- and is to me- a very personal thing. You have to think of God as if he were your friend. In that sort of thinking, you say, "Hey, everybody, let's go over to Gods house this weekend for a big BBQ!". If you go to a church with less than a hundred people going with you, this would be the same sort of idea. However, the way the "church" in this episode looked, it was more like... "Hey, let's go see God at Madison Square Garden" or something, you know?

Your relationship with God should be as personal as possible. If the pastor (or whatever you want to call him) is supposedly your messanger through God, then you should have as close to a personal relationship with him as possible. This is hard to do with so many people.

What I mean when I say things like "mass produced" is that instead shoving everyone into a giant room and saying whatever the guy on stage is saying, there should be a more personal approach to it. If nothing else, they should break down into smaller "churches" which each have a leader... You know, there has to come a point where one guy (again, the "pastor" or whatever you want to call him) says "Okay, this is too many people to handle at once" and then you kind of split off. And what I mean, in the same note, when I say about it being like a "used car salesman pitch" is just that he's up there, saying his little speech, doing his little song and dance... But how do you know that's not all he's doing? It's a lot easier to go to a church filled with more people and just kind of get lost in the crowd... To just kind of sit there and be along for the ride and go through the motions without really feeling what you're supposed to be feeling and understanding about it all. In a smaller setting, it'd be much easier to ask questions afterwards, discuss things and just be more involved in the church on a much more personal way. I mean, if one of the families there were to have a party or something, could they really invite the entire congregation? I doubt it. But it should be that way, which is just a better reason to limit the size.

To step off of religion for a minute, just look at the public school system. Having 30+ kids per class room really puts a strain on both teachers and students. I view church the exact same way. The more people you have, the more likely you are to just get lost in the shuffle. Sure, you can get by sitting in the back and averaging a C, but really, with God, you shouldn't be settling for that. You should be aiming for straight A's.

And I just didn't like that the preacher man said to go out and spread the word or something to that effect, like he was trying to convert others, almost like a cult. I guess that's his used car salesman pitch. Everyone on television late at night is trying to sell you something. You go by and see commercials for lawyers... Infomericals for who knows what... And then on Sunday morning you find the show that's a church broadcast and looks relatively the same.

Jesus was a rebel. Jesus took the word to the streets. He found the people who would otherwise not find church, and most likely otherwise not find God. He didn't cater to the crowds that went to see bands like Third Day and you could barely tell the difference between the size of the crowd at the show and the church. I'm not saying if you go to church you shouldn't listen to music, but there's just this whole genre of music called "Christian rock" which they try to get you to buy into, and buying into it all you're really doing is trying to convince yourself of something which does not exist inside of you.

They sit in a big ampitheater with thousands of other people, listening to the man speak but not really understanding him. They go to concerts of bands like Third Day because they think it will make God happy (I think God would much rather prefer The Doors, that's why he gave us Jim Morrison, duh!). And don't even try to tell me "Well maybe they just like the music", because nobody could possibly like that.

But yes. Church on a whole has become too, shall we say, commercial. It's not about what it used to be or what it should be. But I'll stop now before I get another mail saying I've been reported for going off topic. (Hey, I tried to tell some homophobe he was wrong in his opinion and I got bashed, go figure... It's just the world we live in)

And I would say churches shouldn't be trying to spread their message. If people want it they'll come get it, and christian missionaries are responsible for destroying many beautiful cultures in the name of spreading the good word. Some of us don't want what your selling. The entire world DOESN'T have to believe what you do. If the message had real value it would spread on it's own because the people who had the message would live better lives because of it. They don't. They live the same lives as the non believers and followers of other religons. Christianity doesn't make anyone a better human being, it just subdivides us up into the flock, and the ones the flock is trying to convert. Reminds me of the Borg.

So does the value of a person depend on what that person does? Or is the value of a person based on the fact that a person's a person, no matter how small? And regarding the other thing, what in the world are you talking about?

So does the value of a person depend on what that person does? Or is the value of a person based on the fact that a person's a person, no matter how small? And regarding the other thing, what in the world are you talking about?

The proof of God is found all around us, in Creation itself. The Bible says that people are without excuse because God's power can be seen in the things that are made.

How do you think this computer got here, by an explosion in a sand hill? No, someone had to design the pieces and feed information into it to make it capable of doing what it does. Same as any life form around. We aren't just intricately designed pieces of hard stuff and soft stuff, but we are programmed with information so complex that we still don't understand it. Someone has said that if you wrote out all the information contained in our DNA, you would get more books than would fill the Grand Canyon. To my mind, naturalistic theories of our origins take way too much faith--yea, credulity.

I will not try to justify hatred of homosexuals, because there is none. If there is a Moral Law (and there is), then some activities, though they may be pleasurable, may still be immoral. Please allow me to quote from Jay Budziszewski's book, "What We Can't Not Know."

"Conjugal sex means self-giving, making one flesh out of two. By contrast, when a man puts the part of himself which represents new life into the cavity of another man which represents decan and expulsion, at the most basic of all possible levels he is saying, 'Life, be swallowed in death.' We cannot overwrite such meanings with different ones just because we want to."

Our bodies have parts designed for certain uses, and when you use them for activities other than those they were designed for, one of three things happens: They either work badly, stops working, or break. Here we get the consequence of sexually transmitted diseases. They would all pretty much disappear if women kept themselves for their husbands, and men kept themselves for their wives, before marriage and after.

Homosexual behavior goes against our natural design. It is unhealthy besides being immoral, which is why I cannot just accept someone being involved in such a lifestyle. The only power I have to influence their choices is through government sanction or prohibition of that behavior, and since the Supreme Court took away states' right to punish sodomy, the only thing we have left is marriage. If the homosexual activists are successful in redefining marriage away from one man and one woman, then I believe our civilization will have taken a very significant downward plunge. Then why should we not legalize polygamy or polyandry, multiple marriages across the board, or even incest?

And now I want to go back to the issue of those tiny humans that we dehumanize with the term "fetus" -- which actually means "little one."

The unborn human child only has four basic differences with a born child:

Size: A human is human from the moment of conception, just like a turtle, a cow, or a whale. Scientifically there is no argument here.

Level of development: After conception, life is a progression of growth and development to maturity and then a (hopefully) natural death. Handicapped people have "developmental disabilities," which doesn't mean they have brain problems, but that there were problems with their development.

Environment: Some people say, "Well the fetus is not viable," as if this makes abortion OK. Well, you're not viable stark naked on the North Pole, either. Location doesn't determine who is a person and who is not.

Degree of Dependency: You mentioned emotions and thoughts as what makes people human. Really? What about an infant? The only thing about infants that we know is that their emotions and thoughts are immature. Most of us can't remember anything for the first few years of our lives. Likewise, there's no way we can know what kinds of emotions or thoughts an unborn child might have, so this is a weak defense of abortion if that's how you meant it.

All people are valuable, pricelessly valuable, which is why it breaks God's heart (and mine) to know that millions are being killed for no good reason (abortion) and millions of others are destroying themselves with sexual immorality. I would really like for it to stop, so I will not refrain from speaking out.

Carrie

I hate to tell you, but STDs would be here even if homosexuals didn't exist. There are ways to get them other than sex, and once somebody does they can spread it to everybody they have sex with. I'm not sure how it is unhealthier than other sex, or how it's immoral. As for polygamy and polyandry, what's wrong with it from a moral standpoint? The only thing I can think of is economic, which isn't moral. Incest creates genetic problems. Homosexuality does not.

As for your proof, we are getting to understand more. Out of that, I haven't seen anything that I think will never be explainable by scientific means. People once thought pregnancy came from god. That's not sure. People once thought humans came from god. Most educated people will tell you that that's not true. This is a trend and it'll continue.

You said the truth about the fetus yourself. They have immature feelings, but they're still feelings. To be honest with you, I'm probably not the best person for you to debate with on abortion. I'm a vegetarian for half of the reasons your giving.

Edited on 08/20/2006 7:42pm

There have been many attempts to refute the conclusions of Cameron's Omega Journal study, but the relatively short life spans of homosexuals discovered by that research seem validated by other research. In 1994 the University of Chicago published an anonymous survey of over 3,400 people of all adult age groups to the age of 59, asking them whether they considered themselves heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. On page 302 of the Social Origins of Sexuality, the data appear:

Age Men Women
18-29 2.9% 1.6%
30-39 4.2% 1.8%
40-49 2.2% 1.3%
50-59 0.5% 0.4%

Where did all the homosexuals go between the ages of 40 and 59? If homosexuals were living normal life-spans, we should expect to see 2-4% of men and 1-2% of women aged 50-59 claiming to be homosexual, especially if they were "born that way."

Either homosexuals are dying in dramtic numbers before the age of 60 or nearly all of them are switching their "orientation" after the age of 50.

If the Omega survey was so severely flawed, then why do we find these corroborating numbers in other surveys? Why is there an 840% reduction in homosexuals between the ages of 40 and 59? Common sense must agree that the Omega findings are not far from the truth.

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