On Fri, November 7, 2014 9:31 pm, Michael Scott wrote:
I haven't and don't intend to impose anything on anyone. It's same sex activists wanting to impose their beliefs on what already exists and change the definition of marriage. Whether I choose to "have one" or not is not the issue. GLBT activists want to change the definition of marriage. That's IMPOSING your beliefs on others, not the other way around.
Do you want to impose your religious beliefs on others? You don't, for religious reasons, support same-sex marriage. Have you therefore concluded that everyone else has to live under that as well, even though it doesn't effect you? The definition of marriage is not a static thing, and it is not owned by any religious authority. The age when marriage was considered acceptable has changed. Race restrictions once existed. As did religious restrictions as well, for that matter. So therefore the definition is mutuable. In a modern society we're pretty much settled on the opinion that as long as it's between consenting adults, it's none of our business in a legal sense.
They're either secular or they're Baptist. They can't be both.
Says you, but that just tells me that you don't know what the word 'secular' means. Secular is just the world available to all of us, which we currently live in whether they are atheist, pagan, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. and is independent of their religious beliefs. Some secularists have a concept of the otherworldly, others do not. I have a 'funny' story about this actually. It involves an older Jewish friend of mine, who some people might know, named Halina. She was at a social function and a person giving the speech sat at her table and started speaking in Hebrew. She said that she didn't understand Hebrew, so he started speaking in Yiddish. She apologised and said that she hadn't spoken much Yiddish since she was a child. He asked what synagogue she went to. She said she didn't really go to synagogue, her family were secular Jews. "Secular Jews!", he mocked. "There is no such thing. It's an oxymoron.". He ranted for a while on the issue and concluded with the damning line "By what right do you call yourself a Jew?" With remarkable modesty, she is not prone to making too much an issue of the matter, but this was an exception. She stared him straight in the face and said: "I think six years in Hitler's death camps entitles me to that right". You see, her family in Poland had been rounded up for being Jewish in 1939. She was 16 at the time when she was incarcerated at Auschwitz II-Birkenau and towards the end of the war at Stutthof. These weren't 'just' concentration camps; they were extermination camps. Somehow she survived. So, are you going to look her in the eye and tell her too that she's "not really" a Jew as well?
Again, they're either Christian or they're not. You can't be both Christian and secular. You either believe in, trust and follow Jesus Christ or you don't.
Again you are displaying that you simply don't know what secularism is, and it would be helpful if you educated yourself on the matter. Secularism doesn't mean that you give up trusting and following Jesus if you want to. What it does mean is that you don't apply your version of Christian laws onto people who are not interested in them. Here is what George Holyoake, the person who coined the term "secularism" in 1851 had to say on the matter: "Secularism is not an argument against Christianity, it is one independent of it. It does not question the pretensions of Christianity; it advances others. Secularism does not say there is no light or guidance elsewhere, but maintains that there is light and guidance in secular truth, whose conditions and sanctions exist independently, and act forever. Secular knowledge is manifestly that kind of knowledge which is founded in this life, which relates to the conduct of this life, conduces to the welfare of this life, and is capable of being tested by the experience of this life." If you would like some further discussion on the matter you may wish to read my presentation to the Humanist Society on the issue. http://isocracy.org/node/168
That's sad.
I'd be saddened if you are so insecure in your faith that you believe that you must impose by law on everyone else. If you *don't* believe in imposing it by law on others then guess what? You're a secularist! -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech Mngmnt) (Chifley) mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt