patrick.net

It all depends whether the congregation will still give them the money.

'Church Logic' is not a subject I would hang my hat on.

MisdemeanorRebel says

... then why are Church Leaders who had a one time adulterous sex act years ago, despite many years of marriage, forced to step down, even if they are truly repentant and the deed was not repeated?

It's a question of hypocrisy.

There was a time that our society would put up with it. I still think our society won't tolerate it, but our vote no longer matters.

Two reasons. One, the Church doesn't understand what sin really is. Two, they don't understand the concept of grace, unmerited favor.

All those churches with the sodomy flag up are fishing for dollars.

Gays have no children of their own, and are generally two working adults.

Patrick says

All those churches with the sodomy flag up are fishing for dollars.

You spelled "fisting" wrong....

Lol, they would openly promote fisting too, if they thought it would be profitable.

Patrick says

All those churches with the sodomy flag up are fishing for dollars.

Gays have no children of their own, and are generally two working adults.

Most churches are into anything that gives their leaders $$$. See https://archive.is/hvXQT#selection-1103.0-1103.97

Patrick says

All those churches with the sodomy flag up are fishing for dollars.

Gays have no children of their own, and are generally two working adults.

I would never attend or join a church with openly gay clergy. Gay members are another story. It’s just another sin. But to have openly gay clergy is to basically flout God’s laws, that they don’t matter and that’s an open invitation to severe natural consequences. I wouldn’t want to be around such a place.

Rb6d says

Most churches are into anything that gives their leaders $$$.

Bingo. Bingo. Bingo. It's also a shield to cover for their sins so the members can feel good going to bed even though they're scum bags.

Yes, there are good religious people. It's mostly a game/scam if you dig a little deeper and know the right people. Any religion. Jews I guess kind of flaunt the "club" so to speak. Otherwise they're all interchangeable. Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc.

The whole idea really is idiotic if you think about it. Sorry to the religious Patnetter's, but this is 100% true if you apply logic to the discussion. We can't even get modern media to be accurate and you think tall tales from 2000+ years ago are accurate and true? Get me some of that koolaid.

It's not a church, if it has openly Gay theologians. No more so, than Joe Biden is a Catholic just because he went to mass that one time.

Shaman says

Patrick says

All those churches with the sodomy flag up are fishing for dollars.

Gays have no children of their own, and are generally two working adults.

I would never attend or join a church with openly gay clergy. Gay members are another story. It’s just another sin. But to have openly gay clergy is to basically flout God’s laws, that they don’t matter and that’s an open invitation to severe natural consequences. I wouldn’t want to be around such a place.

I'm curious as to your religious affiliation, although I know I have no right to ask.

I believe you've said you were once a liberal, I'm curious as to your transformation. For a (long) period of time, I was actively anti-religious, but seeing the other side of that, I'm extremely tolerant of religion. It isn't perfect, but it's better than a government. Atheism is a privilege, not a right. I think many people need it and it's both beneficial to the person and society in general at this point.

It's interesting, at one point I thought truth is all that mattered, and I'm starting to believe that white lies and deception, and even propaganda can be beneficial if applied properly.

How does our perception of reality through our five senses compare to the allegory of Plato’s Cave? Religion is like the five blind men describing the elephant. Each has a piece of the Truth, but none come near the reality of that pachyderm. Still, a search for the Truth is better than wallowing in lies, or worse, assuming that the truth is exactly what we see on the wall of the cave.
Some can accept the word of a holy man. Others, like myself, have to discover it for themselves. I’ve never been very good at blind faith. A sort of rational extrapolation about the giant hole in reality that people frame as God is the best I can do. You find it around the edges of things, in the inevitable cracks in explanations, the problems with philosophy, and the unknowns in science.

Shaman says

I would never attend or join a church with openly gay clergy. Gay members are another story. It’s just another sin. But to have openly gay clergy is to basically flout God’s laws, that they don’t matter and that’s an open invitation to severe natural consequences. I wouldn’t want to be around such a place.

How about a Lesbian F2M Tranny -- not always F2M, so please ask Xir which pronoun Xe prefers; it changes according to context.

Evangelical Lutheran Church appoints TransBishop.

Rev. Megan Rohrer, the new bishop, is a very interesting person. Although God joyfully created her female and she still retains her lovely female first name, she employs the plural pronouns “they” and “them” for herself, as well as “he,” and asks the rest of us to do the same. She does not, however, seem to fully identify as a man, and at 41, her “transition” seems to still be in process.

As Rohrer explains on her personal Twitter account, “I have different pronoun preferences in different contexts.” She suggests to others, “Consider asking trans people ‘What pronouns would you like to use in this context?’” An observant respondent properly noted, “That would be assuming we know they are trans.” Yes, it’s complicated.

While Rohrer declared herself lesbian in college, she now identifies as queer and transgender while remaining married to a woman and continuing to raise two children. Since 2014, Rohrer has been the pastor of Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in San Francisco. About her faith journey, she explains, “As I became queerer, I also became more faithful.”

Megan expresses the central focus of her ministry this way, “I think the most important thing I can say as a queer pastor is ‘I’m sorry, using faith to tear other people down is not good news,’” adding, “We need to all be as loud and angry as the people who want to declare there are types of people that God can’t love.”

https://thefederalist.com/2021/05/18/in-ordaining-a-trans-bishop-leftist-denomination-calls-god-a-liar/

I couldn't imagine being a seminary student these days in any but the most hardline ones.

It continues with this great point:

As she says this, the video shows her buttoning up her black clerical shirt over rounded surgical scars where her perfectly healthy female breasts used to be. Megan apparently desires a man’s chest, but all she has now are the scars dramatically reminding her and everyone else of what God created her to be. Unwittingly, her video is a brutally honest presentation of Megan’s story — perhaps more so than she intended. It certainly calls us to sympathy and remorse.

But as you see her self-damaged chest as she vests in her clerical garb, she confidently explains how most people are irrational on this matter:

Most peoples’ feelings about gay and lesbian people, and trans people, aren’t rational. And maybe as I’ve matured as a pastor, I’ve figured out that it’s feelings. People have a feeling or a fear that is compelling them to say ‘no’ to an entire group of people. The way to respond to that is by … being louder than other people’s fear.

Yes, this is a lecture on rationality from a person who cannot honestly tell you whether she is a man or a woman. This from a supposed ambassador of Jesus Christ, who reminded us with precise clarity, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female.”

Say it with me:

Leftism is a mental disorder.

WookieMan says

The whole idea really is idiotic if you think about it. Sorry to the religious Patnetter's, but this is 100% true if you apply logic to the discussion. We can't even get modern media to be accurate and you think tall tales from 2000+ years ago are accurate and true? Get me some of that koolaid.

@wookieman
Let’s apply logic to the discussion. We also need facts of course!

But let’s start with logic. We have to assume that earth, humans, solar system and universe have an origin. Many have sought to tell tall tales of the origin since the first millennium of human history. More recent tall tales have sought to discredit/replace the creators place in the universe. But that whole idea is idiotic. Logically if there is an origin then there must be an originator or originators. Logically one would expect the originator(s) to be far advanced in knowledge and power, probably capable of acting outside the laws of physics.

Logically we would expect the originator to give the apex creature an instruction manual and brief history of the creation as well as plans for future events. Surely the creator would have no difficulty preserving this instruction manual for the past several millennia using any means necessary.

Now one of the facts to consider is that God has a different yardstick than you and I do regarding righteousness. I was reading about the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah recently and how before God destroys the cities he rescued “righteous” Lot and his two daughters. This is the same guy who offered to let a mob rape his two daughters literally hours before he was rescued. The daughters then later decide to get their dad drunk and have sex with him. So by yours and my standards these don’t sound like righteous people do they? But God rescued them.

We all need that rescue.

PeopleUnited says

But let’s start with logic. We have to assume that earth, humans, solar system and universe have an origin. Many have sought to tell tall tales of the origin since the first millennium of human history. More recent tall tales have sought to discredit/replace the creators place in the universe. But that whole idea is idiotic. Logically if there is an origin then there must be an originator or originators. Logically one would expect the originator(s) to be far advanced in knowledge and power, probably capable of acting outside the laws of physics.

So aliens?

PeopleUnited says

Logically we would expect the originator to give the apex creature an instruction manual and brief history of the creation as well as plans for future events. Surely the creator would have no difficulty preserving this instruction manual for the past several millennia using any means necessary.

Oh no. I have seen some of the most complex systems created through evolutionary algorithms. We just happen to live (would have to live to exist) in a universe where evolutionary algorithms work with matter.

I want to stress, we have NO IDEA what the origin of the universe is, or if there is even an origin. There's been problems with the Big Bang hypothesis for a LONG TIME, and I'm convinced it's wrong now. The James Webb telescope is seeing stuff that should not exist, if the hypothesis is correct. Maybe there are localized big bangs? Maybe the universe is eternal, maybe it's infinite?

I don't wonder so much how I exist, or you do, I wonder how an ATOM exists. Now that, that's a real damned mystery.

Maybe there is no start, maybe the universe is eternal, maybe there are multiple universes. We work with what we can understand, but none of this presupposes a god or even if god exists, does god care about it's creations? There's no way to know. The problem of simply being aware of existence, that's a billion times more complicated than just understanding how ANYTHING exists. If you really think about it, it's really weird.

For all I know, only I exist, and everything else is just something presented to me. I could be in a completely immersive video game, or something similar to that. Maybe all of what I perceive as existence, is just a test. I can't know.

richwicks says

So aliens?

Funny. But I do believe “aliens” exist, they are just more accurately described as angels and demons. Inter dimensional beings created by the creator.

richwicks says

evolutionary algorithms

Does this bs algorithm create matter, energy and life?

Those who lie to themselves or claim they can’t know the creator are emotionally and intellectually dishonest and willingly ignorant of what people in places around the world are discovering every day. They are making this discovery even today by doing something that the scoffers, liars and willingly ignorant never thought to do, they looked for God. The thing is, when you look, when you honestly and earnestly seek Him, you will find Him. Acts 17:27

PeopleUnited says

Does this bs algorithm create matter, energy and life?

We don't know how life originated, and it might be beyond our capabilities to EVER determine it.

But we know, without ANY QUESTION WHATSOEVER, that life changes over time to adapt to its environment. This is why a black man from Sub Saharan Africa would make a shitty Eskimo, and an Eskimo would do very poorly in Sub Saharan Africa.

This is "controversial today", although - it's not. It's obvious.

PeopleUnited says

Those who lie to themselves or claim they can’t know the creator are emotionally and intellectually dishonest and willingly ignorant of what people in places around the world are discovering every day

If you were born in China 400 years ago, you might have just as much certainty in your religious beliefs, but you wouldn't be a Christian. How lucky you were born into the One True Religion. You won the cosmic lottery...

Just be honest with yourself and the rest of us. When are you going to earnestly search for God?

PeopleUnited says

Just be honest with yourself and the rest of us. When are you going to earnestly search for God?

Who? Me?

I'm done with that.

What you just asked is the equivalent to me of "when are you going to accept your white privilege and you're a white supremacist?" Although I don't dismiss the possibility of some sort of god, I absolutely reject every known religion, well, every religion I know. Christianity, to me, like all Abrahamic religions, are a political control mechanism.

I have told you MULTIPLE times, that if there is a god, and if it wants it known to us, it's innate within us. We would certainly not have to read a book to know about it or learn about it. The idea that a retarded child that can never learn to read and can never understand the concepts of Christianity roasts in hell forever - think of what you are saying? A child that dies shortly after birth. That's Christianity.

I just find utility, from a political point of view, of Christianity. That's a great improvement from my 25 year old self, which saw none... but...



I'd rather kids believe that the world was created 5,000 years ago and there was a literal Noah's Ark and Adam and Eve were real actual people, than to think there's nothing wrong with a guy that has dicks shoved up his asshole dressed as a garish parody of a woman interacting with little children in their fetish clown suit. I mean, the Evangelical Bible beaters are wrong, but you can be way more wrong than that. What we are seeing today, was unthinkable, unimaginable to me 25 years ago. Did you really think this would be the result 25 years later?

I'm on your side. NOT even going to try to convert you or anything.

Drag queen story hour isn’t even the worst of it. California wants to take your children for not affirming their “gender” and PARENTS ARE LINED UP to poison and mutilate their own offspring.

Failing to seek God is the worst mistake anyone ever made. It’s the one they will always regret.

richwicks says

A child that dies shortly after birth.

Wakes up in Heaven. Just ask David, or read what he said after his newborn baby died. 2 Samuel 12:22-23

PeopleUnited says

richwicks says

A child that dies shortly after birth.

Wakes up in Heaven. Just ask David, or read what he said after his newborn baby died. 2 Samuel 12:22-23

22 He answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ 23 But now that he is dead, why should I go on fasting? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”

15 years ago, I would attempted to dissuade you from your religion, for the only reason it's incorrect. Today, I'll leave you alone.

You don't understand where I am. I'm on an unmovable rock. You think you have faith? I have better than that, I have mountains of evidence. I will never be able to return to Christianity and I've looked at many religions. They are all false.

IF there is a god, it's innate within us. It either prefers to stay hidden, or doesn't exist. If it exists, it certainly prefers us to think it doesn't exist. Either we are going through a test, or life is meaningless. Would be interesting if it's a test, but I also think it could just as likely be meaningless. If it's a test, we're under observation the entire time.

But you don’t even understand God, you claim God sends babies to hell. He does not!

All babies who die receive grace, not judgement. It’s time you reevaluate who God is, it’s clear you never where a Christian. You don’t even know who Christ is.

gay in church… aint s church… it’s a gay club.

PeopleUnited says

But you don’t even understand God, you claim God sends babies to hell. He does not!

All babies who die receive grace, not judgement. It’s time you reevaluate who God is, it’s clear you never where a Christian. You don’t even know who Christ is.

If god exists, man could no more understand it, than an ant could understand a human being.

PeopleUnited says

it’s clear you never where a Christian. You don’t even know who Christ is.

I was a Catholic. Ritual nonsense. The religion is Gnostic, which means it encourages good works and deeds. I was both shocked and disgusted when I met protestants that didn't believe in either good works or deeds, and thought belief alone in Jesus was salvation for them. Immoral garbage people. I'm still repulsed by them.

You can call me what you like, but I see very clearly now. Humanity is a rare thing, but I still have sympathy for all the simple, barbarous, vicious animals around me, in human form. I think they can achieve humanity, but there's a lot standing in the way of that. Our establishment wants as many subhuman animals as possible. I think this is short-sighted of them.

I just went through 3 years of "people" accepting injections into their body. It didn't matter if I told them that the disease has a less than a 1 in 1000 kill rate, that children has a statistically 0 chance of dying from it, that it was being used to crush small business in favor or large ones, that the masks and social distancing were discredited 100 years ago. These aren't human beings around me, they are things. They will believe the STUPIDEST NONSENSE imaginable, if it comes from the propaganda box. I've been over-estimating "people" all my life.

Most people are not conscious at all. They aren't sentient.