Quote from: Silk on October 11, 2008, 10:55:14 PM
Quote from: Princess Katrina on October 11, 2008, 10:36:13 PM
Quote from: Silk on October 11, 2008, 09:02:12 PM
Okay. New International Version, guys. Come on.
Quote25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
And this version is really quite true to the original text. I also find that it has the least direct disagreement with other versions, passage for passage. Now, if you were to take passages twenty-five, twenty-six, and twenty-seven from the NIV translation of Romans I, it would be plausible to suggest that, according to the NIV, the Bible prophesied the advent of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, delivered through the vehicle of unnatural and generally unclean sexual practices. In this case, homosexuality is a direct act of God intended for punishing a society that has fallen to idolatry and come to take its creator for granted.
On another note, you could also read "dishonorable" to mean something more akin to "embarrassing," denoting more that the business of homosexuality would result in teasing and probably loss of social status. This is definitely the case for most homosexuals. Even if you could get past all of the deliberate negativity that society heaps upon it, it's unspeakably embarrassing for most of us even without that. You could also say it's embarrassing that some of us are being dropped into the wrong bodies as with transsexualism, but that's a whole nother can of worms.
Under this understanding, it would be more appropriate for biblical literalists to focus simply upon honoring and glorifying their immortal God. It would reflect a much more accurate understanding of the Bible, as understood through the NIV. If this approach by itself doesn't eliminate homosexuality, it should at the very least result, over the long-term, in nullifying any harm that could be wrought by it. For example, the gays could suddenly decide they like living the married life and create such a high demand for newborns that it puts the abortion industry directly out of business, thus killing two birds with one stone.
Actually, the most literal translation would be the New American Standard (NAS), short of having an exactly literal translation such as I have in my Greek-English Interlinear New Testament.
Oh, that's a very good version. Unfortunately, one of the problems with the more literal translations is that some of the idiom of the time-period comes across as gobbledy-gook to us here in the 21st Century. Unfortunately, translators sometimes go a little too far in this, and it just results in further confusion. For example, it really isn't necessary to assume that the destruction of Sodom was over male homosexuality, but the simple assumption that "knowledge" is always being used as a euphamism for sexual intercourse has the Sodomites LITERALLY saying, "so we can have sex with them." In some cases, it would be more helpful to the reader to simply add a footnote explaining various theories regarding meaning and usage.
What I like about the NIV is that, in most places, it finds a healthy middle-ground between literal translation and a more intuitive understanding as to meaning. Then again, it's also received some degree of criticism for this. In any case, I finally settled on this version primarily through cross-referencing it with the other translations that are available through Bible Gateway.
QuoteThere is one other issue regarding translations that further invalidates the KJV. More modern translations are translated from older manuscripts, in other words, manuscripts that are closer to the original, if not themselves the original manuscripts. KJV is translated from relatively recent manuscripts, which are more likely to have been edited or modified in some way.
Surely. KJV was still a major accomplishment in its time, though. In spite of its imperfections, it does have historical value.
I agree. The KJV definitely has historical, and literary (the language is beautiful) value. Beyond that, not so much.
I also agree that the NIV is a very good translation. I, personally, don't own an NAS because I have original Greek and Hebrew texts for when I need a literal translation, as well as various reference materials for the study of individual Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic words, and the NIV is what I would recommend to most people who intend to have only one translation of the Bible (I would've originally suggested the NLT until I started doing my research on Homosexuality and found that the NLT is far too presumptive in its wording, changing even places that explicitly say "man with man" and putting the word "homosexuality," thus encompassing lesbians in with gay men when the original text does no such thing).
The omition of Lesbians from every mention of homosexuality in the Bible is one of the things that lead me to question whether the Bible was speaking directly against homosexuality or certain other consequences and sinful traits that could be said to frequently manifest themselves among men who have sex with men.
I was recently informed that men who have sex with men, whether gay or straight in their actual orientation, are not allowed to give blood. This is because of the high percentage of HIV/AIDS victims who are, not just gay men, but men who have had sex with other men. Lesbians, or any other woman who's had sex with another woman, is by no means forbidden when it comes to giving blood because only a
very small percentage of lesbians have HIV/AIDS. The chances of lesbians passing HIV/AIDS to each other is extremely low. Not impossible, but incredibly low. There are other diseases this holds true for as well, though I couldn't give you an explicit list of them as HIV/AIDS is the only one I've learned anything about.
Every instance of man+man sex in the Bible is a case of men indiscriminately having sex with each other, with
multiple partners.
The only instance that could be said not to be that is not actually an instance of men having sex, but merely a declaration that men are not to lay with each other as they would with a woman, because it is
unclean. Now, to be absolutely clear, for a man to lay with another man as with a woman, that can really only be describing anal sex, the closest gay men have to vaginal sex. If you can't see how that is unclean, especially in a time with virtually no sanitation tools/abilities, you might need your eyes checked.
Now, obviously, there can be multiple interpretations of the passages I refer to. Every Christian is well within his right to interpret the Bible as he sees fit, especially in America. That is one of the hallmarks of the first amendment. I, personally, and I try to share this method with everyone I meet regardless of their religious orientation, prefer to study the Bible with applications of historical and anthropological evidence, literary criticism, and logic mixed with my Faith that God is a Just and Loving God.
QuoteThis is a fundamentally wrong view of atheist and/or evolutionary perspectives. First I am not a Genetically Engineered organism. My glasses were designed. My organs were not. Evolution is not a design process it does not seek any goal. It creates nothing and has no purpose. Evolution doesn't experiment, choose, discard or perform any function that comes from intelligent processes. Evolution is merely a human description of how competition weeds out organisms insufficiently able to compete for needed resources in their current environment. Anything that occurs in nature without unnatural intervention is by definition natural. Homosexuality does occur in nature even if you exclude humans. Homosexuality is by definition natural. I should also note that humans are Homo sapiens, humans are a part of nature and any human behavior is also as natural as any behavior observed in birds.
On the contrary, there is nothing wrong with my statements.
Evolution is a system of advancement for the existence of life. New models are created, seemingly at random, when certain conditions are met. That new model then either succeeds and reproduces to create more or it dies and is discarded. The purpose of evolution is to weed out the models that cannot survive in the environment in which they live and produce newer, better versions that can survive.
Homosexuality runs 100% counter to the natural process of evolution. It does not procreate and send its kind on into the next batch of creatures, to become its own species within that group.
Now, the only way to distinctly separate homosexuality from evolutionary concepts is to note that homosexuality does
not appear to be even remotely hereditary, though I don't know how much testing can be said to have been done on this. However, it is not common for homosexuals to produce children of their own genes, thus not passing their genetic code to the next generation, and thus not passing on any possibly new traits that might work towards the evolutionary advancement of the species.
My argument, however, was not that we are inherently unnatural. My argument was that we can be legitimately defined as unnatural as there are two appropriate ways of using the words natural/unnatural in that context.
Human bodies are designed, through an extensive evolutionary process whose purpose was to create the "ultimate life form" (not that we necessarily are such), for heterosexual reproduction. It is literally impossible for a human male to have sex with a human male and produce a child. It is literally impossible for a human female to have sex with a human female and produce a child. The natural process that the aforementioned Biblical text referred to when it said they "left the natural use" was heterosexual sex for the purpose of producing children, which was also a far more important thing from a societal standpoint due to the shorter lifespans and lack of massive population.
Personally, though, as an infertile lesbian who has a strong desire to be a mother, I see myself as a perfect candidate to provide a home for many orphans who would otherwise grow up without the benefits of a proper home, thus fulfilling a positive role in my society and for my species.
