Baptist Church Excludes Democrats

[perfessor]

http://www.wlos.com/

I don't get it. Didn't Jesus ply his trade among tax collectors, prostitutes, and other "sinners"?

East Waynesville Baptist asked nine members to leave. Now 40 more have left the church in protest. Former members say Pastor Chan Chandler gave them the ultimatum, saying if they didn't support George Bush, they should resign or repent. The minister declined an interview with News 13. But he did say "the actions were not politically motivated." There are questions about whether the bi-laws were followed when the members were thrown out.

So my question for debate: Should the East Waynesville Baptist Church lose its tax-exempt status?

I say they should, since the pastor has turned the church into an arm of the Republican party.

[youngborean]

This is quite off topic right now. But personally I had a quite liberal sex education in my school. I would say that this was the place I found out the least about sex. I wasn't glorified, and it just wasn't sexy. If you are looking anywhere to blame it is not the people that are trying to give away condoms. It the increased access to pornography, the glorification of sex in media that are changing attitudes as far as I'm concerned. I never once thought that sex was more acceptable after hearing my Junior High School teacher talk about it. It was when I saw the rock musicians in a hot tub with 5 or 6 girls that I started to have different ideas about objectifiying women.

[AlAyeti]

Vladd and Jose,

Jose: "Vladd is right."

AlAyeti: "Wow I'm shocked."

Spin, spin, spin.

Vladd,

S T O P? You went out of your way to convolute my easily understood reference. So typical of the spin theory of social politics. You know that the police officer in my analogy wouldn't give a dam about your rabbit trails of definitions.

R A P E. How about that one.?

Ohh, I hope your not a fraternity pledge. That could be just as dizzying to read your reply.

Jose,

All of that to comfort your desire to keep unfettered hedonism on its path to destroy our society. And please, don't even try to paint me as a doomsday Christian wanting to set up a Theocracy. I am not trying to Evangelize you or anyone else. My pearls are for others. I realize people will make mistakes, but you and Vladd, are incapable of seeing what a mistake is if just letting the unruly go on and on poisoning us all.

Spare me the ad hominem so typical in a lacking rebuttal.

Fact is that virginity and faithfulness to your one "life-partner" would end every STD. That is empirical fact.

Your empirical view is drawn by observing ignorant and licentious degenerates (unchecked hedonism). I can't argue with it but I can try to implement a better world by not refusing truth. Educate them when they are young and virgins to believe that unchecked hedonism is a shallow place to find either fulfillment or happiness. I accuse anyone of educating children on how to have sex as being Pedophiles and Pederasts.

I am not like those parents that don't want to know. In fact I want to be able to proclaim that truth! Not just Biblical but empirical.

We are not unreasoning animals.

You ad Vladd have thrown in the towel on that and I see that as not coming from a place of enlightenment but just the opposite.

Jose,

I care about treating the people in the inner cities like human beings and not like beasts you assert they are.

[Jose]

Once again, youngborean comes through with the wisdom we have overlooked in our squabbling. Thank you! I think you are absolutely right.

...but how do we solve it?

Apparently, simply reporting the facts as they are is considered to be "throwing in the towel" and falling prey to some imagined "desire to keep unfettered hedonism on its path to destroy our society." You can't solve a problem if you don't first figure out what it is.

Fact is that virginity and faithfulness to your one "life-partner" would end every STD. That is empirical fact.

Your empirical view is drawn by observing ignorant and licentious degenerates (unchecked hedonism). I can't argue with it but I can try to implement a better world by not refusing truth. Educate them when they are young and virgins to believe that unchecked hedonism is a shallow place to find either fulfillment or happiness. I accuse anyone of educating children on how to have sex as being Pedophiles and Pederasts.

You are absolutely right that virginity and faithfulness to your one life-partner would, indeed, end STDs. It would be good if we could get to that ideal state. But that's going to be hard to do if we brand cultures we don't really know with the label of "ignorant and licentious degenerates" reveling in "unchecked hedonism."

I will point out that my son learned about sex not from sex education classes (which came later) but from the students at his Christian school. He told me that sex education was not only boring, but redundant. In order to make "a better world by not refusing truth," we must recognize the truth that he observed, the fact that sex is happening even in the midst of Christian teaching.

We are not unreasoning animals

We're not? How do you know? We certainly aren't mineral or vegetable, so we must be animal. Many animals mate for life, and do exactly as you would have us do. In fact, our evolutionary history has put strong selection on monogamy, but our ability to reason enables people to decide to do otherwise. We can even look at variations in Christianity, such as "The Church" as they now wish to be called, or "The Church of Jesus Christ," in which the True Believers take multiple wives. Again, it was "reasoning" that enabled this demonimation to overcome our evolutionary instinct for monogamy.

I don't say these things to disparage any particular denomination, but merely to point out that the comparison to "unreasoning animals" is inappropriate. Many animals reason quite well, and many display moral behaviors that are more admirable than those of humans. I merely point out that even Christian teaching does not check the "hedonism" of which you complain. More likely, as youngborean has said, our children learn from their peers, and from our television programs, rock stars, and sports legends to glorify sexual promiscuity.

And, of course, as I have already mentioned, there is the fact of the cultures we don't live in (which exist even here in the US) in which there is little economic hope and sex has become a form of barter. These are people, not animals or beasts, which you state that I "assert they are." I assert no such thing. I merely describe the facts, and ask that you do what any educator must do to make progress: start with the people you have, and move them step by step to greater knowledge. If you try to change people all at once, in one big jump, based solely on dogmatic assertions and name-calling, you are doomed to failure.

[AlAyeti]

JOSE: "I will point out that my son learned about sex not from sex education classes (which came later) but from the students at his Christian school."

He should have learned it from you.

By the time I started eighth-grade, my father already had finished a very sophisticated version of the birds and the bees. Including advice on choosing a wife. That was in the roaring hedonistic seventies.

Sex happens throughout the Bible stories in extremely graphic presentation (read Ezekiel!) and it's not going to exist within Christianity? We are trying to overcome our baseness and achieving a higher plain. That is a theme in the Bible and in science.

Let me ask you question. . . Can a traitor be part of what he betrays?

I say that to disparage many "denominations," and in a way complimenting the unreligious. That's Biblical.

I also disagree with you that we are unreasoning animals. We're not. Obviously we can act that way by being mentally ill or by choice. We are designed to live in a format that exists within the environment it was created.

Interesting statement this one: "I merely describe the facts, and ask that you do what any educator must do to make progress: start with the people you have, and move them step by step to greater knowledge. If you try to change people all at once, in one big jump, based solely on dogmatic assertions and name-calling, you are doomed to failure."

That is a declaration of war to a good parent! We have the sexual "agenda" methodically moving down through our school-age children indoctrinating them into more and more perversion in the guise of "sex ed." Parents, unlike what you did with your son, are realizing that the degenerate behavior they embraced when young, and now regret!, is a political movement to some people and those people are after their children. If parents let their kids learn in school then the future, like the present . . . is very dark indeed. Empiricism is the guide here.

Why is there no "progress" as we can see by observable facts that we are going back to Sodom and Gomorrah and certainly are not doing any "educating" because they sex being taught is anti-science.

There is a sexual education in our education system definitely trying to change the paradigm methodically. I do indeed try to interject what any eductor would and that is scientific facts. But, the sexual "agenda" methodically changing people to a different knowledge is employing the method you describe but with degenerates doing to teaching.

BTW. . .

The Baptist Minister of this thread topic tried to rid his congregation of the kinds of people I am describing. If a "Pastor" does not try to protect his flock than he is no follower of the True God.

[AlAyeti]

youngberean:"

It was when I saw the rock musicians in a hot tub with 5 or 6 girls that I started to have different ideas about objectifiying women."

/ / /

Now those rock musicians - balding, earringed and ponytailed - ARE the teachers.

And they have as many boys in that hot tub now as girls.

And guess what they are teaching?

[youngborean]

Now those rock musicians - balding, earringed and ponytailed - ARE the teachers.

And they have as many boys in that hot tub now as girls.

And guess what they are teaching?

What? This is a little strange. There may be bad teachers, but the edict of most sexual education programs seems to keep it very clinical and unsexy. If a teacher was promoting promiscuity as you suggest, I would hope there would be enough honest people to admonish them. I can not think of a sex education program where they are showing kids how to be sexy or how to pick up, it's more just how to prevent stds and such. And we all know how sexy pictures of stds are. I think your assumption about intent is getting the best of you on this one. Although the idea of a balding 80s rock star being a sex ed teacher would be great material for a sitcom.

[Jose]

I will point out that my son learned about sex not from sex education classes (which came later) but from the students at his Christian school.

He should have learned it from you.

Pardon my euphemistic language. He learned from the students how to participate in sex. Despite our frank and open discussions before and after, peer pressure brought him into this, even though he knew the consequences and repercussions. Peer pressure is a very strong force.

Sex happens throughout the Bible stories in extremely graphic presentation (read Ezekiel!) and it's not going to exist within Christianity? We are trying to overcome our baseness and achieving a higher plain. That is a theme in the Bible and in science.

Yes, of course it exists, but I wonder why the "religiously pure" seem to focus upon it with such intensity. Take gay marriage, for instance. The only ones who seem to worry about this are the "regiously pure" who are horrified by their imagination of what these guys would do as part of their hedonistic sex. Why not just stop imagining it?

It puzzles me that there is such outrage at sex, but that it is combined weirdly with the requirement to have a bazillion kids. If you think sex is bad, become a Shaker...of course, we see the strategy here, which is founded upon evolutionary principles. Shakers forbid sex, and died out. Chrisitianity encourages it (only, of course, for the purpose of creating more Christians), and has survived to this day. Reproductive success is the key to evolutionary survival.

Let me ask you question. . . Can a traitor be part of what he betrays?

huh?

I also disagree with you that we are unreasoning animals. We're not. Obviously we can act that way by being mentally ill or by choice. We are designed to live in a format that exists within the environment it was created.

Again, I apologize for my sloppy language. We are animals, sure enough, but not unreasoning ones. Animals, after all, are defined as creatures that move about the earth, and consume what has been produced by plants or by other animals. A certain amount of hubris enables some people to believe that they are somehow special, and superior to animals, but we are, nonetheless, animals--not, as I noted before, minerals or vegetables.

: I merely describe the facts, and ask that you do what any educator must do to make progress: start with the people you have, and move them step by step to greater knowledge. If you try to change people all at once, in one big jump, based solely on dogmatic assertions and name-calling, you are doomed to failure.

Interesting statement this one...

That is a declaration of war to a good parent!

Huh? To describe the world accurately is a declaration of war? To summarize the educational literature, noting that people learn by increments, is a declaration of war? To advise you of a workable strategy for your goal of changing the behavior that now exists, is a declaration of war? I don't get it.

Why is there no "progress" as we can see by observable facts that we are going back to Sodom and Gomorrah and certainly are not doing any "educating" because they sex being taught is anti-science.

No, it is independent of science, just as the religious declarations are. Science is no more, and no less than gathering observations about the world and attempting to develop the most coherent and predictive explanations of those observations. There is no agenda other than learning how things work.

There is a sexual education in our education system definitely trying to change the paradigm methodically.

Which paradigm? Can you explain?

I do indeed try to interject what any eductor would and that is scientific facts.

What facts do you refer to, specifically?

But, the sexual "agenda" methodically changing people to a different knowledge is employing the method you describe but with degenerates doing to teaching.

Again, can you expand on this? I don't get it. What is this mysterious "agenda"? How is it "changing people to different knowledge"? What "method" do you claim is being used, and that I described? What is your evidence that "degenerates" are doing the teaching--that many of them are Democrats? ...or is it that they teach about the world without filtering it through the narrow lens of one particular religion?

[AlAyeti]

The Bible can sit out the debate about the sexualization of our youth.

I live in California. The sexualization agenda is to get to "Questioning Youth" and push them into lifestyles defined by sex acts.

Science should be used in defining sexuality. Biology and physiology are being ignored and a political and perverted point of view about sex is finding a place throughout curriculum.

But science insults cultures that define themselves by their sex acts.

Science proves when life starts. And through teaching sex ed.

The "religiously pure?" No Christian I know CAN admit they are pure about anything. But sex education is the place where we find trolling for the next generation of deviants. We certainly can only find sexual purity in the scientific description of sexual intercourse but we see aberration taught somehow as acceptable and as a constitutional right.

You can't have sex education independent of science and scientific boundaries within the education environment. Otherwise it could be called Pedophilia or Pederasty.

In fact to use your Shaker example, the same nature of same-sex couplings can be viewed as naturally wrong. Evolution is indeed cruel to this behavior. But somehow we see it spreading and multiplying and not dying off. Why is this?

Because science is replaced with ideology and the religion of relativism even when it opposes provable scientific facts.

Why are Christians obsessed with sex? Hardly an obsession with sex. It is an obsession with protecting children from perverts and deviants. Something you see taught often as OK is perversion and deviant behavior couched in sex ed classes.

Like I said to describe the world and science accurately is a declaration of war to sexual deviates. To force parents to have to, by law, accept the teaching of anti-scientific deviate sexuality is a declaration of war.

Yet we see only one political party demanding laws to this effect. Hence my opinion of Democrats. The sexual agenda methodically advancing is moving step by step by laws from Democrat politicians.

The Pastor in that Baptist Church did the right thing.

The whole deal of being a Christian on judging others is if you can stand to take the same judgment.

I'm praying the Pastor is a better person than those he asked to repent or leave. This isn't really a question of john Kerry or George Bush but Jesus.

Jesus told the prostitute "caught in the act of adultery" to "go and sin no more." That means He judged her as a sinner that was sinning and had to change.

The Pastor did the same thing to voters of John Kerry.

I wouldn't have done it the way he did. I would have been far more caustic in sermons while never mentioning them by name. The result would have been the same but I wouldn't be in the press.

[MagusYanam]

Science proves when life starts.

'Science' says nothing of the sort. That's still a matter of intense debate among scientists and philosophers, though my stance on it is this: we consider a human being dead (i.e. their life ends) when their brain no longer functions. If a person stops breathing or their heart stops beating, we try to resuscitate them until it becomes apparent that irreversible and fatal damage has been done to their brain, after which any coroner would declare them dead.

Therefore, according to a symmetrical logic, life begins in a human being when brain activity begins.

I'm praying the Pastor is a better person than those he asked to repent or leave. This isn't really a question of john Kerry or George Bush but Jesus.

Jesus told the prostitute "caught in the act of adultery" to "go and sin no more." That means He judged her as a sinner that was sinning and had to change.

The Pastor did the same thing to voters of John Kerry.

I agree that it isn't a question of John Kerry or George Bush, though the implication you make here is that voting for John Kerry is a sin. This is ludicrous: I voted for the guy I thought had the better stance on Iraq, and that was John Kerry. Does that make me sinful, or any more so than the guy who voted for Dubya?

We are all sinners, so why ostracise one group from the community for a specific sin (if such it can even be called)? Did this pastor do the right thing? I would say he did not.

I also disagree with the point that being Christian requires you to judge someone of a certain sin only if you can stand up to that same judgment. Jesus said, 'Let he who is without sin [nota bene, no qualifiers] cast the first stone'. Judgment belongs to God - I am content not to usurp him.

[Jose]

I live in California. The sexualization agenda is to get to "Questioning Youth" and push them into lifestyles defined by sex acts.

Science should be used in defining sexuality. Biology and physiology are being ignored and a political and perverted point of view about sex is finding a place throughout curriculum.

I really don't understand what you're saying here. Science can define sexuality perfectly well. The biology and physiology are being used to inform what is taught. The rules of basic science, or inquiry in any discipline, are also being used to help students learn to think for themselves. Do you dislike "questioning youth" if those youth question the religious dogma on which they were raised?

Why do you keep insisting that there is a sexualization agenda, and that its goal is to push kids into lifestyles defined by sex? This makes no sense. Can you explain where this idea of yours comes from--you know, using real data?

Science proves when life starts. And through teaching sex ed.

I don't understand your "teaching sex ed" bit here, but I agree that science proves when life starts. Actually, it proves when life started--a couple billion years ago. Since then, life has continued, each kind of living thing reproducing according to its kind. As time passed, and populations were broken into smaller groups, and as mutations occurred, some of the kinds changed. In time, we ended up with what we have now. When does a human life begin? Uhh...you start with a living egg and a living sperm, and they fuse, and change their patterns of gene expression. They were living beforehand, and they are living afterwards. The only difference between a fertilized egg and a liver cell is which genes are turned on. But...what does this have to do with the Baptist Church?

Because science is replaced with ideology and the religion of relativism even when it opposes provable scientific facts.

How can science oppose science? I would argue that insisting that any discussion of sex is "deviant" is itself ideology. I also argue that this so-called relativism applies to Christians--especially the born-again kind--as much as it does to anyone else. You claim (or at least, imply with your words) that you are more moral than I am--and certainly more moral than those nasty Left-Wing pederasts who teach our students. (And since I voted for Kerry because his morality was superior to that of Bush, and since I teach students, I guess you'd have to call me a nasty Left-Wing pederast, too). If you can possibly insist that some people are more moral than others, then you are engaging in relativism. If you can claim that some behaviors are better than others, you are engaging in relativism. If you place your religious views above those of others, you are engaging in relativism. If you base opinions about people on their external genital morphology, and not on the fundamental makeup of their brains, you are engaging in relativism. In fact, the very purpose of religion is to provide people with advice about which things are better relative to other things (and usually, it seems, which people are better relative to other people). That's relativism.

What you object to is not relativism itself, but the fact that we explain to our children the facts that your religion would hide from them. This includes the bazillion facts that support evolution as the best theory of the origins of living things, and it includes the facts of biology and psychology that sex exists (and that god made it fun, though we don't mention that because they find out on their own). It includes the fact that male and female brains are different, and that gay brains are in-between. It includes the fact that certain behaviors exist in the world, whether we like it or not, and that preparation and defense are better guardians than ignorance. It also includes the fact, which should be taught as a part of religion but seems to be missing these days, that no person or group of people is any better than any other person or group of people. Science does not expel people because they voted for the wrong party.