Not wanting to start a new thread on homosexuality that'll eat far to much of my time, I'll drop that issue here and welcome PMs from any community members that wish to continue discussing it in a respectful manner, or who have questions or friendly disagreements about my previous posts in this thread.

My last comment is basically:

(@Gian-Reto: Thank you for your kind post, I didn't get a chance to respond earlier. I enjoyed discussing Islam and Christianity with you earlier in the thread)

The peaceful muslims need to take actions. These 'terrorists' don't work on themselves. They are around us. They are your coworkers, your friends, your family. Any extreme tendencies should be addressed. The less these 'terrorist incidents' are happening in the future, the more likely general public will forget. It won't happen overnight, or in a year, or possibly in 10 years, but if Islam as a religion and community can remain peaceful for a long time, people will no longer have Islamophobia.

While I do think Islam as a religion has parts that promotes violence in its root doctrine (I'm not even talking about ISIS, which is an outlier), I also think an unrelated phenomenon is responsible for part of the violence as well, that shouldn't be overlooked.

I noticed a half-dozen months or so ago, that alot of the European recruits for ISIS are young men recruited via the internet who seem frustrated with life/school/society/whatever. This seems very similar to the profile of young men in the USA who go shoot up schools. In that kind of situation, I think Islam itself isn't the problem, but that ISIS serves as something the young men can latch onto and through which they can vent their frustrations.

Imagine if a large network of non-Islamic anarchists were visibly (and physically) present in the USA, and blowing up banks. I imagine some of the teenagers who shoot up schools would join such a group instead - that is, a group that welcomes them, calls them heroes, trains them how to use weapons, and gives them excitement and a sense of belonging while stimulating and directing their anger and bitterness instead of helping them process it healthily. I think that's what ISIS is to some of these teenagers. It's what some street gangs seem to be - a "family" for those who don't feel like they belong anywhere else; one that helps them refine and direct their anger for the "family's" selfish benefit.

I don't think that's what ISIS is to most of the recruits, though. Nor what al-Qaeda is. But it's one aspect of the ISIS problem, I think, and one that Muslims can't be personally responsible for addressing.

I mentioned a mocha-kahlua cheesecake earlier - the cheesecake is made from scratch, and I made the creamcheese and sourcream myself, from raw milk from a nearby farm. It has a layer of chocolate ganache in the middle. There's actually a second cheesecake - both are cooling off, and will then need four hours to set up. The result (which I've made before) is better than any other cheesecake I've had, with the exception of Cheesecake Factory's cheesecake. This is the 4th + 5th cheesecake I've made in the past three months since I started learning how to make them again.

In the Biblical view, gay sex isn't a "worse" sin than, say, adultery. All sin is slow-term poison to one's own freedom, whether I'm a serial liar or a serial killer - it's the consequences of those sins that have different proportions (i.e. serial killer has worse effect on someone's mind/heart/soul/whatever, and rightfully a harsher governmental response because it violates a 3rd party's freedom).

I am pretty sure first paragraph is a cardinal sin in most religions :P ( I cleansed myself from evil sugar few years ago so I am ok though )

And isn't this "gay sex" also an adultery as there is (afaik) no way of gay marriage in any Abrahamic religions?

Side-note: In that linked article, it also claims Jesus never condemned homosexuality. That's a common statement by people (Christians or otherwise) who don't know the Bible, trying to explain why Christians shouldn't condemn homosexuality. Not only does the Bible claim He is God, and orchestrated the writing of the Bible; in the gospels Jesus indirectly references and confirms the section of the Old Testament that condemns homosexuality (among other things). Further, even if Jesus himself didn't explicitly condemn it while he walked the earth, other parts of the Bible do (though people try to twist those verses also), and Christianity holds that the entire Bible is God-inspired, and Christianity in general (perhaps surprisingly to non-Christians) doesn't actually hold the red letters of Jesus to be any higher importance than the rest of the Bible, Old Testament or New Testament (which both condemn homosexuality).

Just to make it clear: this has nothing to do with what is written in the Bible, and everything with how it is interpreted.

Its a fact most of european protestants (others than some hardcore congregational chapels) have a very different stance on gays. The catholics might approve with the interpretation you put forward there (at least the catholic officials), and I know a lot of US protestantic churches also do.

But this is not "a fact", its just interpretation. All of these christian sects share the same Bible, yet they interpret it differently.

For you as a christian, your interpretation is of course what counts (I just HOPE you have your own and not just follow your churches or preachers ones...).

If you say "the way I read the Bible, I interpret it as god disapproving of gay sex/marriage/existence"... well, that is just your damn right to do.

If someone else reads the Bible differently, because he interprets the text differently... well, that is also his damn right.

Because there is not one accepted interpretation if you look at the whole of christianity. If your church forces one upon you, and you accept that without questioning it, fine. If others don't or other christian sects try to force a different interpretation upon people following that sect, doesn't make them wrong, or heretics, or whatever.

It just means they follow a different interpretation of the same holy book. Which is what has happened since the dawn of religion. The way I see it, that is good... what happens when one sect of a religion can erect a monopoly we have seen in the middle ages.

So if you are against gays, don't wave the Bible and state "the Bible dissapproves of gays!"... make it clear "the way I read the Bible, god dissaproves of gays".

There is a ton of christians worldwide that have a different opinion. You clearly don't speak for them, so you clearly don't speak for "the Bible".

For what it is worth: the way I see it, there are two pages of the Bible that counts. The ten commandements. The rest is just fluff added because the Bible would be to short without it, and to try and put forward examples on how to live as a good christian. Which often happen to be too obscure and vague to be of practical use.

That is my very personal interpretation. Does that make me a bad christian? Maybe in the eyes of the church... well, I couldn't care less. Churches where built by humans and are run by humans. I don't feel bound by their laws, because they are NOT what should be the center of a religion. Faith in god should be.

But again, that is my very own personal opinion. My religion, to put it like that. Everyone is free to disagree with me.

So, as the Islamic state collapses the quality of their soldiers has dropped off extremely quickly. Since their command structure was gutted by airstrikes, communication and readiness seems to be non-existent, which is why they're losing so much territory.

A battle from the side of ISIS

(Abu Hajaar is a legend)

From the side of Peshmerga forces

I think it's starting to be clear that airstrikes on the command structure at least worked pretty well, and expanding airstrikes will probably accelerate their degradation in fighting ability.

I think it's starting to be clear that airstrikes on the command structure at least worked pretty well, and expanding airstrikes will probably accelerate their degradation in fighting ability.

Read that too this morning... while that would be happy news if ISIS really going down, I will not trust these reports 100% yet. When there are more reports from other parties involved I will.

I was convinced that airstrikes alone would not be enough, and given how much the peshmerga, iraqui forces and other non-ISIS combatants struggled against the ISIS just some weeks ago, I am not sure yet how this could have swung around so quickly.

Maybe Assads croonies and the russians DID do something after all against the ISIS (besides going after everyone BUT the ISIS). Maybe the US Airstrikes DID suddenly increase in effectiveness. Maybe the ISIS is just finally wearing out. Who knows.

And the media does not just promote Islamophobia, it also promotes the anti-Islamophobia, which only justifies the existence of Islamophobia.

Example: if the FBI had to fly some spy planes around the mosque where the San Bernandino shooter frequently visited, well that's the reaction from the shooting, not Islamophobia, but the media loves to spin that news and claims "Oh, look! Peaceful muslims got spied on. Islamophobia!!!"

This cannot be stressed enough. I don't know what the sociological term is for this phenomenon (but I'm sure there is one), but there's a feedback loop that basically works as such: "When one side of a debate overreacts, it is guaranteed that the other side will overreact at least as much in return". It's an effect that can quickly turn what started as a mild-mannered discussion among moderates into a mud-sling jailhouse fight teeming with vitriolic imbeciles, and it's why probably half the political topics on this sub-forum get closed.

Interesting talk.

This has been derailed multiple times with random abortion bashing so I just leave this here.
If abortion to you is killing a human. What is the punishment?
In texas if pregnant woman falls would that need a police investigation if the action was attentional? Death penalty if the fetus dies?

When DT told he was pro life and stated that the woman should be punished pro life organizations lost their minds.
Ordering the hit is the same as pulling the trigger.

Just to make it clear: this has nothing to do with what is written in the Bible, and everything with how it is interpreted.

I'll reply in a private message so as to not derail the thread, but I didn't want to let that statement slide publicly: We can say conclusively that the Bible condemns homosexuality, with overwhelming scientific literary analysis, overwhelming scholarly consensus, even from gay liberal scholars.

Since it was written by someone (or 40+ someones), yes there is a "correct" interpretation: Whatever interpretation is closest to what the authors intended to convey.
The arguments that the Bible doesn't condemn homosexuality requires all sorts of contortions and flimsy reasoning. You can disagree with the Bible, or believe it's just an old book, but you can't change what it says.

This has been derailed multiple times with random abortion bashing so I just leave this here.
If abortion to you is killing a human. What is the punishment?
In texas if pregnant woman falls would that need a police investigation if the action was attentional? Death penalty if the fetus dies?

If a post-birth infant is killed, say two days after birth, what is the punishment?
In any state, is a infant dies under suspicious circumstances, who investigates if the action was intentional? And what is the penalty?

A pre-birth infanticide shouldn't be any worse than a post-birth infanticide, so ofcourse no death penalty.
Until relatively recently in USA history (the 1973), abortion was illegal, so it's not like this would create some new set of complexity we've not dealt with before.

In what way was I "bashing" abortion? I thought I was presenting rational arguments. Is any opposition to ideas you support automatically "bashing"?

Just to make it clear: this has nothing to do with what is written in the Bible, and everything with how it is interpreted.

I'll reply in a private message so as to not derail the thread, but I didn't want to let that statement slide publicly: We can say conclusively that the Bible condemns homosexuality, with overwhelming scientific literary analysis, overwhelming scholarly consensus, even from gay liberal scholars.

Since it was written by someone (or 40+ someones), yes there is a "correct" interpretation: Whatever interpretation is closest to what the authors intended to convey.
The arguments that the Bible doesn't condemn homosexuality requires all sorts of contortions and flimsy reasoning. You can disagree with the Bible, or believe it's just an old book, but you can't change what it says.

Completely agree. The Bible is pretty clear on its morally bankrupt stance on most things (slavery, racism, misogyny ,etc)

All the more reason to consign it to the dustbin of history.