Cardinal Says U.S. Catholics Live Under 'Pro-Gay State Religion'

[Shelter]

Whow Sniffit - very good and analytic arguments.
I don't know if Moses really has got the TEN COMMANDMENTS directly out of the burning bush, or if at anytime someone in the dark past has written these commandments. But today I'm convinced these commandments are the cornerstones of our society.

I told you that I'm a believer in GOD but not in the instituion of the church - which church soever! I don't like the pomp of the official churches from every religious orientation. The catholic church sermonized to his simple members humility and submission. I'm a free man and I don't never ever humbly subjugating to any organisation - as well not to the church.

But this is not a contradiction for me to believe in GOD. And I asked before - what is GOD? An old man with a long white beard? Surely not! I think GOD is all the good things in ourselves. As we act, as we react! And that will be in my opinion the task of the ten commandments - to teach us to do the right things. And I mean all of us.

You are totally right Sniffit - there is no commandment against Homosexuality, or against black, brown, red or yellow people. Princes of the Church have made such special "commandments" and to every times through the history of mankind they have found keen followers.

They have responded to the anxieties of the simple people towards the strange customs of jews for instance. Or better towards every stranger.

But today we are sophisticated, at least I hope so, and there is no must for us to follow these Pied Pipers. And as well there is no need for us to disregard the Ten Commandments.

We are here a world wide gay-community - let us try to be better than those who will chase us. Let us try to show all these obstinate priests and blind church followers that we will be the better people. It will be very hard to do so, I know. And I for myself know that very often I have contravened against my own point of view. But I'll try too to work on myself. I'll try ....... And if we all do so, then I know, we will fill the TEN COMMANDMENTS with real life.

 

[frontlemon]

Sniffit I have something to tell here: in many religions as practiced nowadays, homosexual act is considered an adultery. Also I must mention that if any other forms of adultery is committed, the punishment handed down for such offences may lead to death penalty or mutilation
In the past and leading up to the present, religion has served two roles together: 1. to explain the unexplained and 2. to mete out justice in day to day life. The problem with religion is that it does not rely on logic to "derive" any of its conclusions and neither does it endorse logic as a means to derive itself, and hence, is immune to questioning.
One undoubtedly unequalled law that has been never been seen being violated in nature is the law of action and reaction couple: "to every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction" and religion has often severely failed to accord with this very basic natural law.

 

[bigsal]

'Tis a pity some of the writing here that has the most thought put into it gets relatively few readers. Most members are more interested in looking at boys than reading about god, the universe and the meaning of life. Don't let that thought put you off keeping up the high standards, those who do read it do appreciate it.

This is one of the evils of mankind, the lack of a dialectical confrontation. Even gay people are no exception.

 

[gorgik9]

A bit about God (singular), gods (plural), polytheism and monotheism, ethics and law.

Where to start? Maybe in the year 1902, when a group of archeologists dug up a big stone slab - a diorite stele full of cuneiform inscriptions in the akkadian language - in a region of Persia/Iran, that had been the ancient kingdom of Elam. When the long text was translated and analysed, the archeologists could tell the world that they had found the Law Code of the Old Babylonian king Hammurabi, a text that most probably was inscribed in the earliest years of the 18th century B.C.

During the 20th century other archeologists have dug out other laws even older than the code of Hammurabi in several different Sumerian, Babylonian, Hittite and Assyrian kingdoms and cities, and as far as I know the law considered the oldest today is the law of the Sumerian kingdom of Ur-Nammu, inscribed around 2100 B.C.

But maybe the most important knowledge that these archeological findings has given us, is the indirect knowledge that what had been the commonly accepted notion until 1902 - that the Mosaic Law in the Hebrew Bible/ the old Testament was the most ancient law in human history - was utterly, totally wrong. Even if you would accept the christian traditional dating that says that the Mosaic law was written around 1200 B.C., the Code of Hammurabi would still be at least 500 years older than the scribblings of Mose. Serious modern scholars usually points to a dating about 700 B.C., so the Code of Hammurabi is probably at least 1000 years older than the Mosaic Code.

What's really my point? Well one of the points is, that the literary and cultural genre of Law wasn't invented by the hebrews or had its origin in hebrew monotheism. Jahvist monotheism was absolutely not necessary to the cultural genre Law - the basic notions of Law was inherited from a series of much older kingdoms and cities, all of them with polytheist religion.

But when the hebrews had borrowed the formal genre from the babylonians, assyrians and hittites, they put in a content that on several points was radically different from these older traditions, and among the most important differences are things concerning laws on sex and sexuality. (Now we're getting into the really juicy stuff...)

What were the pre-mosaic laws on sexuality really??? There were some basic conceptual structures in the sumerian, babylonian, assyrian and hittite that were common to them all; sure, details were different, but the big picture was the same:
Laws in general, and laws on sexuality in particular were constructed from the point of wiew of the adult free male, and it concerned the free adult male's property. In particular it concerned that talking property we can call women (daughters, wifes) and slaves; a problematic kind of property, since it can go against the will and intentions of their owner and master. Then the daughters, wifes and slaves must be punished. Severely. Brutally. Draconic.

But what about the free adult men themselves? What would the law say about a man who wanted to get his cock sucked by another free adult man? NADA! Absolutely nothing! The Code of Hammurabi, which was in use for almost 1500 years, didn't say a single word about what a man did or didn't do sexually with another man. The other ancient pre-mosaic laws follows the same big picture as the Code of Hammurabi, and when it comes to men having sex with animals, the big picture was once again the same. The law was utterly U-N-I-N-T-E-R-E-S-T-E-D.

Now we get to the Mosaic Law. The basic point-of-wiew is still harshly masculinistic, but there's a very, very big difference: IF A MAN LIES WITH A MAN AS WITH A WOMAN, IT IS AN ABOMINATION. (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13) And sex with animals is just as abominable states precisely the same texts. We all know what we should do with human abominations - KILL'EM!!! So sayeth the very, very, very bloodthirsty LORD...

I see that my friends in this thread has tried to comfort themselves that there is no commandment against homosexuality in the short text of the Ten Commandments in Exodus and Deuteronomium. That's correct, but it doesn't matter - Levitucus 18:22 and 20:13 in all it's bloodthirsty harshness is in the Mosaic Law just as much as the Ten Commandments.

I think I'll have to stop here for the moment, and continue in another post in this thread a bit laters this evening.

 

[Shelter]

Whow Gorgik9 - before I'll answer I'll wait for rest. My good God we are now going back to the thickest fogs of our past - very, very interesting!
Gorgik9 I'll wait fraught with tension!

 

[gorgik9]

Thanks Shelter for the kind words! I should have stated early in my first post that personally, I'm a happy atheist.

Now where were I when I stopped in my earlier post?
Let's wrestle a bit with the question what were the hebrews really doing? What kind of notion of sexuality resulted from their radical re-interpretation of babylonian, assyrian and hittite law?

The Mosaic wiew on sexuality was this: That sex was a great thing, BUT ONLY in so far as hebrews made babies, i.e. made new hebrews. Every kind of sexual act or behavior, that wasn't intended to make babies was wrong. It's against the will of God the Creator, it is - as the great christian theologians of the 13th century would say in their scholastic latin language - contra natura. The only kind of sexual act acceptable to God was procreativ sex, i.e. sex with the intention of making babies.

Ah yes, christian theology...
If the Hebrew scriptures hadn't become - through strange historical happenings and pure chance - the foundation for two gigantic world religions, Christianity and Islam, the Hebrew wiew on sex legislation would have been nothing but a strange and scary phenomenon in the margins of western history of Law.

Another important thing is, that the stern prohibition against all non-procreative sex maybe wasn't the most important "gift" from the Hebrew "parents" to their Christian "children". I think it could be argued, that more important that anything else was - and is - the concept of sin, so richly and "lovingly" embroidered by so many, many christian theologians, and none more important than the great bishop of Hippo, Aurelius Augustinus, the greatest of all so-called church fathers, who bid us all to suck on - Hereditary Sin...

Well, it's getting late and I'm far from finished. I don't know, maybe I'll continue with one more post in this thread...We'll see...Now I'm starting to get tired...

 

[W!nston]

This discussion continues to be interesting. Thank you gorgik for helping to make it so.

I hope you will continue with your posts about the subject.

 

[gorgik9]

Thanks Sniffit!

In what books in the Hebrew Bible is Jahve in his most gory, bloodthirsty and violent mood? Tricky question since the books are so different not only in length, but also in genre and literary style, but my choice would probably be Joshua and Judges. In Joshua there is, among many other bloody things, the story about a people that Jahve has consecrated to destruction, which meant that it was the Hebrews duty - being Jahves chosen people, his henchmen - to kill and maim and burn not only every living person in this group, but also their city and every house and every thing in it. Total destruction, total death - that was the meaning of being consecrated to destruction by Jahve.

But a few of the Hebrew soldiers took some valuables and took it for them selves. Which meant that Jahve god really, really angry : "- Stupid fuckin' Hebrews! Why don't you do what you're told to do? Beware you damn illoyal brats, I'll fuckin' kill YOU!!!"

Our dear Lord in Joshua is 10000 times worse than a teenager on top testosterone and adrenaline levels - to put it mildly.

In Judges there's this famous song, the song of Deborah (Judges 5) about a women, who is a great fan of Jahve and a man named Sisera, who is Jahve's enemy. The story is this : Sisera comes to this woman and asks if he may get a good nights sleep in her tent, since he's so tired. OK says the woman, but when Sisera has gone to sleep, she takes an iron plug and a club, takes the iron plug directly in contact with Siseras scull and - wham bam thank you, ma'am - crushes his head with the club.

In the eyes of our dear Lord Jahve, crushing peoples head with iron plug and club is a very good thing to do.

Now it's reasonable to ask a comparative question : Is Jahve really so much worse than - lets say - the great warrior gods in Babylonian and Assyrian religion? Is Jahve a more violent testosterone / adrenaline brat than Marduk or Assur ? No, probably not. It's really a pity that I don't have any good english translations of some Assyrian victory songs to show you, but it makes it totally clear, that Jahve is a very close cousin of Assur and Marduk.

And now I'll have to tend to other things, but I'll continue laters. See you!

 

[frontlemon]

Yes Gorgik9 so true you are...
I can recall a similar kind for dynamics for the religion that I have grown up in - Hinduism. The problem that happens is that, at the very beginning you start with a religious text that is very unbiased, and you have these class of people who try to establish themselves in a society as the "keeper" of these texts. What they do is, basically try to fulfill their ego by selling their views in the name of the texts. And it is also very interesting to note that the "followers" don't ever question these "keepers" and the more stern these "keepers" become in enforcing their version of the texts, the more the followers believe that its the correct translation of the texts. May be this is based on the instinctive human deductive logic: since god is something we can't see and is hard to get, then a stricter law necessarily dictates the will of the lord..."

 

[bigsal]

Is useful to remember that the Bible is full of contradictions and absurdities that over the years, are increasingly evident, thanks to cultural emancipation and education of the population.

However, despite this there are still millions of people who take at face value what is written in it, and in order to support their conviction, it "scrambles on the mirrors" so stubborn, even refuting what seems obvious even to themselves.

One of the most controversial episodes of this book is the sending of the plagues (divine punishment) against the Egyptian people, in particular the death of all the firstborn, both men and animals, obviously a thing to which I do not think

But to dwell only on the Bible is reductive. In the name of many other religions have been committed atrocious crimes. Just thinking to the god Molech, the humans sacrifices of the Aztecs and so on. But the most absurd and phantasmagoric is that of the Christian Crusades. In the name of Christ who preached peace and turn the other cheek, they were created armies of the Church, with the atrocities that have been perpetrated in the "holy land", where, unfortunately, still today die for other reasons.

Of course, the topic is so vast and difficult to summarize in a few lines. But thank you all for the interesting discussion.

 

[frontlemon]

Bigsal-so true and one glowing example the post by Ioanna "The Cully Queens of Jamaica"

 

[gorgik9]

Thanks to all of you for interesting and intelligent comments so far, and particularly to dargelos : No I have no idea why we can't buy and own Canadians. I think - since I'm swedish - I'm gonna buy me a Norwegian slave boy to buttfuck thrice every night:rofl::rofl::rofl:

I thought I should elevate my discussion up to a higher level of abstraction by asking this question : Monotheism vs. polytheism, what's the difference?

I'll start by stating what monotheism is not: It's not a religion where it "just so happens" it only has one god; it's not a religion that could have two, seven, 123 or 15379 gods, but right now it just have one single god.

In monotheism, more than one god is a contradictio in adjecto, a self-contradiction, like a circular square. We use the same word God in the singular (god) or plural (gods), but the tricky thing is, that we use two very different concepts.

When the devout moslem chanting the islamic creed saying : "God is ONE", he's not saying : I'm a moslem and in islam we don't have more than one god.
No, he's talking about the radical singularity, the absolutely unique. God is the absolute singularity.

In polytheism, gods are supernatural beings, but they're not eternal and even less are they transcendent. If you don't believe me, you should read Hesiod's great mythological poem Theogony and the Babylonian epic of creation Enuma Elish : in polytheist systems, gods, halfgods, titans and everything else emerges out of chaos. Polytheist gods doesn't create the cosmos. They are rather the creations of the cosmos.

In monotheism, god is eternal and transcendent, which means that he's outside of every possible context and not a part of the cosmos. The monotheist god creates the cosmos as a whole through his word: The Lord said "Let there be Light!". And there was Light. (Genesis 1:1)

As you probably already have thought, I'm not finished yet. Tomorrow I'll deal with the tricky question if Biblical monotheism has a history or not.

 

[Shelter]

Gorgik9 - I don't know what to say. This here is really an academic digression about the credence from the outset until today. Marvellous! And VERY hard to argue against it.

Perhaps one thing: the word of God, as harsh, cruel and incromprehensible it may be found in the Bible or in the 5 Books of Mose or in the Coran or whatver Holy Script, who has written them? God? Who is God? Which language is God speaking in?

Everything what is written in the "name of God" is written by hominals. Mostly Priests or so called scribes. To all times, back from the gloomy days of our all beginning until today there will be men which want to have power. And how I can have power? I must convince the "normal" or the "illiterate" people. And the best to "convince" them is to threaten them with the power and the ugly punishments of an imaginary God if they will not be obedient.

So that's what I say - where is God - he is in my heart, not a person or any idol, but a feeling for always doing the right things.

 

[gorgik9]

@ shelter (and everybody else)
Maybe I haven't made my position clear enough? I'm an atheist so at rock bottom I'm uninterested in Him or Her or It - but I am very interested in all kinds of notions and conceptions and symbolic systems that makes up what we call religions because - and to me this is the real point - I live in a society and culture - Sweden, Europe - that for centuries and millennia has been moulded by christian institutions, beliefs, creeds, theologies, ethics etc etc etc.

So I want to get the best understanding I can of the society and culture I live in. Not that I think that christianity and other religions are the only important influences, absolutely not (that would actually make up to a quaint kind of fundamentalism, and I resent ALL kinds of fundamentalism...) - there's political and economic ideologies, science, philosophies, technology etc etc.

But I seriously do think that the influences of religions in general and christianity in particular on our societies often is not understood well enough.

I thought I would carry on with the discussion on monotheism / polytheism, but we had a bit of change of plans in this post. Maybe I'll continue with the mono/poly-discussion laters this evening.

 

[gorgik9]

Thanks dargelos ; as you see, I'm not stopping...

So let's go on with the mono/poly-discussion!

There was no given limit to the numbers of gods in polytheist religions (but at the same time, the very concept of "religion" is not unproblematic; maybe I'll get into that matter laters), in particular if you remember, that there weren't just the "big" gods that "everybody" knew about - there were the local gods, the halfgods, and if we look into ancient Greek polytheism there was the daimones and the heros; not precisely gods but also not precisely humans. Hero worship and heroic mythology - maybe the most typically Greek thing in Greek polytheism.

Or maybe that was the deification of humans - isotheoi timai, given the honours equal of a god. When the Romans got closer contacts with the Greek city states after the Macedonian wars and Macedonia was made a Roman province, it didn't take too long before Roman generals and consuls started thinking about their own possible deification. Julius Caesar - for example - got deified after his murder, and his adopted son Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (later a.k.a. Augustus) added the title divi filius to his name. Divi filius, son of the deified. And the conclusion? That we're talking about a world where it wasn't that uncommon to see a "Son of God" every now and then.

Actually the title "Son of God" or related titles such as "Deputy of God" was the normal official title of almost every king in ancient polytheist kingdom - so the Roman Emperor was a Son of God, the kings in the Hellenist kingdoms were Sons of God, the Assyrian kings were Gods Deputy, while the king in the kingdom of Juda in Jerusalem was - of course - the Boy of the Celestial Bigdaddy Jahve.

But the Pharao's of Egypt were closer to the heavens than any ordinary shitty king: As soon as he was enthroned, pharao (per aa in ancient Egyptian, "the big house") was identical to the God Horus. He was the living Horus while his - Horus' - father Osiris resided in the realm of the dead, "down below" so to speak.

While there was no given limit to the number of polytheist gods, there was usually made up smaller groups of the most important gods, i.e. a pantheon. So we have a Greek pantheon, a Babylonian Pantheon, a Sumerian pantheon and an Egyptian pantheon - or rather several Egyptian pantheons, that changed in history and with the destiny of the different royal dynasties.

And now we get to what probably was the very first monotheism in human history, the solar monotheism constructed by a single individual, the Pharao Amenhotep IV, who changed his own name to Akhenaton (1351-1334 B.C.), who moved his capital some 300 kilometers to the northwest from Thebe and constructed the new capital Akhet-Aton and wrote some peculiar long hymns to the sundisc-god, being the only god.

Akhenaton's solar monotheism became, after the kings death, a totally abortive project. His successors did everything to make everybody forget about this monotheist nonsens, and restored the traditional polytheism in Egypt.

The first monotheism that became historical tradition was - of course - Hebrew monotheism. But it's gotten very late, and I'll continue tomorrow.

 

[bigsal]

Thanks G. for making me remember things I read when I studied theology as an autodidact.

Obviously, the matter is of such a vastness, who for deepen this subject, we should fill pages and pages of forum thread, for many years.

However, the your brief but valuable notes on the subject, make it perfectly the idea of ​​the complexity of religions.

However, a mind few open, it is easy to cheat, and believe in things that non-existent, or that look real, but are not such.

 

[gorgik9]

Thanks for the comment Sal!

There's not much doubt about that Hebrew monotheism stuck its roots deep into the soil of west semitic and babylonian polytheism and there are several different and independent proofs:

First there's several texts in the Hebrew bible with motives, that really doesn't belong in a monotheist context, but belong quite unproblematic in a polytheist context, for example there are texts in Psalms (Ps 74:12-17, 89:10-13, 104:26) that describes Jahve's struggle agains the chaotic powers of the primordial times, or the description of the primordial monsters Behemot and Leviathan in Job 40-41. In those texts it looks like Jahve went on vacation to the Babylonian epic of creation Enuma Elish or the Kanaanite myth of the god Ba'al's fight with the primordial sea. In the monotheist context, God creates through his word alone (remember: God SAID, and it became). No need whatsoever for fighting chaotic powers - but that happens in all polytheist Theogonies and myths of creation.

Secondly, all the archeological findings dug out in Israel during the last 50-60 years which once again show us images of Jahve and jahvist texts that just "shouldn't" be there : For example small statuets of Jahve as a bull or bullcalf, or inscriptions where "Jahve and his Ashera" sends their blessings; Ashera was considered the godess consort of the Kanaanite High God El, but it seems as if Jahve borrowed Ashera every now and then.

And remember what it says in the first two commandments: 1) I'm the ONLY God you should worship. You must not have any other God beside ME.; 2) You must never make an idol or graven image of me, NEVER!!!

Most of the commandments are rather unoriginal moral commandments and you will find something similar in every culture around the globe. You don't have to read the Bible to find teachings that says: You shouldn't maim and kill your neighbours, and likewise you shouldn't steal from them.

No the truly original thing is the first two commandments, the genuinely theological commandments: No other Gods but me, Jahve, and no images or idols of me!!! Transgressing those two commandments is the arch-heresy among Jews, Christians and Moslems alike.

But how did all of this come about? What made Hebrews come to the conclusion, that they had to fundamentally re-mold and re-invent old polytheist traditions and come up with - Jahvist monotheism?

We'll have to talk a bit about the that very strange period in Hebrew history, the Babylonian Exile 587-539 B.C. But that's for a bit laters this evening!

 

[gorgik9]

The kingdom of Juda was smashed and it's capital Jerusalem destroyed in 587 B.C. by the army of the Babylonian king Nebukadnessar. The nobility of Juda were sent into exile to the Babylonian capital of Babylon, but the Babylonian empire didn't last very long either, and in the latter half of the sixth century B.C. there came a new powerful kid on the block: the Persian empire and it's king Kyros II or Kyros the great, who invaded Babylonia and Babylon in 539 B.C. and, in the words of the old negro spritual, "let my people go".

King Kyros let the relatives of the Hebrew nobility, that had been living in Babylon for about 50 years, go home to Jerusalem with the mission to restore the city and build a new temple, since Salomo's old temple had been destroyed in 587. The old kingdom of Juda became an official province of the Persian empire, with a governor (satrap) under the Persian king as it's secular ruler. In the city of Jerusalem, the high priests in the temple were the power brokers on a day-to-day level.

The descendents of the old Hebrew nobility hadn't been lazy for fifty years in Babylon. Some of the people living in Babylon expressed, wrote and discussed radical new religious ideas about Jahve as the only god to be worshipped and among those radicals were the prophet Hesekiel and - maybe the most influential, the chief constructor of Hebrew monotheism - the prophet behind the part of the book of Isaiah usually called Deutero-Isaiah or the second Isaiah by biblical scholars : Isaiah 40-55.

Now off you go all of you to read Isaiah 40-55! I'm almost serious, first of all because in a good translation it's actually a quite beautiful text, but more importantly, one of the most influential texts ever written: We came from a polytheist world, where religion wasn't about ortho-doxy (the correct belief), but rather a matter of ortho-praxy (the correct ritual action).

We came from a world, where religion was mostly about the sacrificial actions happening close nearby the temple, and the temple wasn't a house for any congregation where they listened to long tedious sermons, it was the house where the particular god had his local whereabouts.

Reading Isaiah: 40-55 we are on a journey, where religion becomes more and more about reading and interpreting the so called Scriptures and following their orders. It becomes more and more different from the old polytheist world, where no one - absolutely no one, remember the Laws of Hammurabi! - would say that a free man is prohibited to buttfuck another free man because...well y'all know why...IT IS AN ABOMINATION!

This will be my last post in this thread. I hope you have enjoyed and found something useful now and then!

 

[Shelter]

Hello Professor Gorgik9 - Thank you soooooo much for these marvellous and educational posts. Please allow me to replicate these posts so that I can translate them into German so that I can discuss it with my friends whom I've told from. Please give me your agreement.

 

[gorgik9]

Hello Professor Gorgik9 - Thank you soooooo much for these marvellous and educational posts. Please allow me to replicate these posts so that I can translate them into German so that I can discuss it with my friends whom I've told from. Please give me your agreement.

Of course you can do whatever you like with the content in my posts in this thread. If you can have some use of my texts outside GH it would make me truly glad:thumbs up: