Yes, unlike you, who is showing great empathy and totally not relying on the concept of pain and punishment by posting a derisive response attacking my character without responding to any of the arguments I made.

Basically, all you have said is “you are bad, therefore you should feel bad.”

I’m sorry that my comment has made you upset, but you haven’t given any clear indication of what was wrong with it, so I’m afraid I can’t help you feel better about it, and instead I can only assume that your being upset has nothing to do with the comment you’re responding to, but is instead just a reactionary expression of your ongoing displeasure about a lengthy discussion we had the other day about a city in Tennessee explicitly mentioning homosexuality in their law about public decency.

Also, I’d like to point out that empathy isn’t the same as sympathy. Empathy is simply the capacity to understand another person’s point of view, it doesn’t require agreeing with it.

Where could you possibly have gotten that I think everyone is perfect and that a god created us that way?

Well, you said Christianity is terrible because in order to be a Christian you must believe you’re a terrible person and can never be good (which is incorrect BTW, but we’ll save that for later).

So since you said that this was a terrible belief, and you didn’t provide any alternative, I simply took the opposite stance and showed how that isn’t any better. Also, I didn’t say that this is what you were arguing for, I very clearly asked you what your preferred alternative was.

Religion, and Christianity in particular, is a terrible belief system and it causes cognitive dissonance and psychosis. Christianity creates pain and suffering and turns otherwise good people into monsters. You’ve not refuted that at all.

And you haven’t proven that this is the case either, or do you happen to have any studies that show that mental illness is more prevalent in Christians than in atheists, or at least the population as a whole? Otherwise I assume you’re just working with anecdotal evidence, such as having been raised by Christian parents whom you consider psychotic. Unfortunately, that’s not enough evidence to condemn all of the approx. 2.4 billion people in the world who consider themselves Christian. Even if, say, all of the Christians in the United States were demonstrably psychotic, that wouldn’t be enough evidence to condemn Christianity as a whole (although it would at least warrant suspicion that the two may be linked).

Now, as far as misrepresenting Christian beliefs goes, you said that Christians believe that people can never be good and therefore must always feel terrible about themselves. That’s not the case. It’s rather that people can never be perfect and therefore should always strive to improve. Do you see the difference? One interpretation says “you’ll never come anywhere close to God’s perfection so you might as well give up and not even try”, the other says “you may not ever reach perfection, but you’ll certainly come closer to it if you keep trying.”

Okay, let’s assume you’re right and that is indeed a terrible belief system. What’s your alternative? It seems to me that you are arguing that we should believe that we already ARE good people and we don’t need any forgiveness or grace in order to be good. If anyone disagrees with that and points out something we’ve done that hurt them, we can just tell them they’re wrong because God created us to be perfect and sinless and we don’t need to change a single thing. How does that attitude not lead to blatant narcissism in the long run?

If you don’t believe there is at least a chance that you might be wrong, there is no reason to ever listen to the complaints of other people, and no reason to ever try to find any compromise. It’s simply the law of the stronger. Whoever has the most power makes all the rules because God made them perfect and they don’t need to fix a single thing. Isn’t that exactly what you are accusing Christians of doing? How do you get morality out of that philosophy?

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That’s not what I asked.

I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you haven’t heard before, but from a Biblical perspective sex is for procreation and gender roles reflect the natural hierarchy of God.

Also, it’s not slavery to give people incentives to do what’s right in the long run instead of what feels good in the moment. We also have laws against killing and stealing even though the vast majority of people recognizes that it’s wrong and would never do it. Or would you say that you feel enslaved by the existence of such laws?

People being able to live their lives the way they want to without bothering anyone?

Apparently it IS bothering people enough that they’re willing to go through the trouble to make laws about it.

You’re making shit up. Mad anal sex is not restricted to homosexuals you prude 😏

Doesn’t mean it’s appropriate to teach children about it.

Okay, I’m going to keep preaching the words of Jesus then.

Fantastic, then I’ll blame you for all the people killed by atheists because you didn’t do anything to prevent it.

Okay. Then don’t expect me to play yours.

What did I lie about?

You can call me whatever you want but if being decent means allowing children to be taught about crossdressing and anal sex then I’d rather be a bigot.

From a Christian perspective, they are imprisoning and oppressing themselves because they don’t want to give up their sinful lifestyle yet want to have the same benefits as those who do. You want to have your cake and eat it, too.

Why is it so difficult to understand that normal people don’t want to constantly be bothered or have to deal with gay people insisting they be allowed to do gay stuff around their kids?

I mean come on, at some point you gotta look at this whole thing reasonably. Where has all the LGBT acceptance in the West gotten us? There’s gay people in the White House, transgenders in the military, pride parades in every major city, and yet somehow we’re still arguing about whether gay people are oppressed because some states won’t allow them to teach children about anal sex.

At some point you have to ask the question whether gay people are living in a state of feeling permanently oppressed not because of what Christians will or will not allow them to do, but as a result of their sinful lifestyle?

FWIW, I’m not sure that putting them in prison is the right way to deal with the problem, but from a Christian perspective, there isn’t much anyone can do about it as long as they insist that being gay isn’t the problem, lack of tolerance is.

Look, clearly it would be preferable if people are moral because they have reasoned things through, because then they won’t be as likely to fall to temptation or be reasoned out of it. Now I don’t know about you, but, I would prefer someone who doesn’t murder me because they believe they’ll go to hell if they do to someone who does because he believes he’ll get away with it.

It’s not immoral to believe in Santa Claus, is it?

Lots of gay sex happening in prisons, should be right up their alley, no?

Okay but they’re not murdering them, are they?

As far as Christianity is concerned, gay people are living in sin. And as long as they are not repenting or seeking help with their condition, they cannot be saved.

Except Jesus didn’t make millions of dollars from publishing his philosophy in book format, and L. Ron Hubbard didn’t willingly die in order to prove his belief in Xenu or whatever.

The point was that anything, no matter how innocent or lifesaving, can be used for murder if you really want.

But I get it, you want to stay mad about the past.

If one person can do it, so can you. Unless you prefer to stay mad about the past forever because that isn’t going to change.