Paisley Jr to promote ‘harm’ in society…
DESPITE believing that gay people harm society, Junior Minister Paisley Junior’s department is still giving the gay community £180,000. No doubt Rev Ivan Foster – who appears to have removed his article calling on another DUP minister to resign if he intends “using public funds to promote and celebrate that which he has opposed in the past and which is an abomination before God” – and the Free Ps will be more than a little perplexed that instead of saving Ulster from Sodomy, those ‘repulsed’ by it are obliged to strengthen the gay community.Meanwhile, Paisley gave the News Letter an exclusive interview (sadly not online), in which he defended himself by saying that “the opinions were given in a personal capacity in an interview arranged before he took up his role as a junior minister in the Executive”.
Despite attempting to portray this as a debate on freedom of speech (which it isn’t), the interview did not address the ‘harm’ that homosexuality does to gay people and society.
In yesterday’s Irish News Fergal Hallahan pondered:
“Are Scissor Sisters harmful? Rufus Wainwright? American novelist Henry James? The brilliant Irish writer Colm Toibin? Is Joan Armatrading harmful?
…
To say that a person or group of people repulses you when they have done you no injury and when there is no evidence they have injured anyone else is particularly ugly. It says more about the insecurities of the person doing the judging than about those they judge.
But for a public figure – a government minister, no less – to publicly say such a thing, to announce that they are “pretty repulsed” by homosexuals, is beyond the bounds of acceptability.”
Perhaps elaborating on homophobic views is more difficult once the ministerial code comes into effect. But the Belfast Telegraph still wants to know the DUP’s position on gay rights:
“Mr Paisley is in a unique position, as assistant to his father in the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister. The office has a responsibility for promoting and monitoring equality of opportunity, but how committed to defending homosexuals can he be, if he is repulsed by their lifestyle and thinks it is wrong?
…
As an influential junior minister, Mr Paisley has left himself open to doubt about his impartiality when dealing with issues of homophobia. Gays, like migrants, are frequently the target of physical and psychological attacks, which should be condemned by everyone, without exception.
The fact that the First Minister, Ian Paisley, led a campaign to “save Ulster from sodomy”, which failed to prevent British and European law on homosexuality being introduced, suggests that the DUP and its supporters may still be reluctant upholders of gay rights. The party and its leader have a duty, in 2007, to say where they stand now, or the views of Ian Paisley, jr, may be seen as representative.
It would be a great pity if the credibility of the devolved government were to suffer, in any way, from a split over attitudes to homosexuality. A debate on the issue could be healthy, if lessons were to be learned, but otherwise the voters simply want the executive members to get on with their real jobs, keeping their personal opinions to themselves.”
Why pick the eye – it’s a crap design: all the little nerves from the retina cells come out the wrong side and then have to be bundled together to go back through the retina to the brain: that is why we have a blind spot, although apprently it is larger in some people than others…..
DK,
“Why pick the eye – it’s a crap design…”
How dare you?! Next you’ll be telling us the prostrate is badly designed too because the urethra passes through it, offering an unacceptable risk of enlargement, infection and, er, death by cancer.
Well, I won’t listen!
“It says in the New Testament that Jesus laid his head in the lap of his “favourite†disciple. ”
Well blow me down, Joe, does it really?
Pounder
You clearly have swallowed the lies about the Bible without actually reading it for yourself. Read the story of Sodom, or Leviticus. Try the whole of Romans 1! The Bible is totally opposed to sodomy save to those who have the wildest system of hermeneutics. In fact, for thousands of years the vast majority of Christians have interpreted it literally – why the change now?
“Why pick the eye – it’s a crap design…â€
Of course it is…just you design a better one and mass produce it for 7 billion people and we will all acknowledge the idea of a Divine Creator is silly as man has proven to be His equal.
Where do we pick these eyes up from you – LOL!
So sam you have refused to answer my question. Where in the bible does either jesus or god clearly say gayness is wrong? If you had actually read my comment before you’d see me clearly state that I’d read the bible very carefully, something you apparently haven’t. How can a creationalist be ojective when he or she will only accept one source, and an extreemly source at that.
In fact, for thousands of years the vast majority of Christians have interpreted it literally
Complete twaddle. Your literal-factual method of interpretation is actually a fairly recent innovation. Ironically, you view the bible in precisely the same manner as militant atheists like Richard Dawkins – either it’s factually true or it’s a load of nonsense. You’re mirror images of each other, although Dawkins does have the virtue of being right about evolution.
Perhaps this will help – I don’t know how much more clearly the Boible could state this,
Rom 1:26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
Rom 1:27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
Jud 1:7 Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
“In fact, for thousands of years the vast majority of Christians have interpreted it literally”
Ok, cite all the commentaries from the last 500 years or quotations from ANY Church Father that says the Bible approves of SOdomy!
Of course it is…just you design a better one and mass produce it for 7 billion people and we will all acknowledge the idea of a Divine Creator is silly as man has proven to be His equal.
Where do we pick these eyes up from you – LOL!
Sorry to burst your bubble Sam, but the eye is a crap design. No-one designing the eye from scratch would come up with it’s current design. The light receptors are, put simply, back to front. Perhaps you could give us a reason why it was designed that way, since you seem to know God’s opinion on so many other issues.
Sam Hanna,
“Perhaps this will help – I don’t know how much more clearly the Boible could state this.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but pounder asked you where in the Boible God or Jesus or both are REPORTED AS SAYING that they disapprove of our pink friends. You haven’t come across with the quotes.
Does this mean (a) you don’t know your Boible or (b) that the quotes aren’t there?
“Sorry to burst your bubble Sam, but the eye is a crap design. No-one designing the eye from scratch would come up with it’s current design. The light receptors are, put simply, back to front. Perhaps you could give us a reason why it was designed that way, since you seem to know God’s opinion on so many other issues.”
I realise your sight is a bit lopsided judging by your comments but don’t expect the rest of us to fall for you superstitious logic that this all happened by chance or by the imaginary fairy “natural selection.” I have never argued for optimal design just evidence of design.
Now, to repeat my challenge for the umpteenth time – please provide the Laws of Evidence that demonstrate on a balance of probabilities that a design inference is more likely than not. I cannot make it any easier for you than that……….
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but pounder asked you where in the Boible God or Jesus or both are REPORTED AS SAYING that they disapprove of our pink friends. You haven’t come across with the quotes.”
Jud 1:7 Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
So you think this is a compliment to Sodomites – eternal fire? I would not like to be punished by you!LOL
Sam Hanna,
>>”Correct me if I’m wrong, but pounder asked you where in the Boible God or Jesus or both are REPORTED AS SAYING that they disapprove of our pink friends. You haven’t come across with the quotes.â€<<
“Jud 1:7 Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”
“So you think this is a compliment to Sodomites – eternal fire? I would not like to be punished by you!LOL”
So you think those words were spoken by God or Jesus? Hmm. That “Jud 1:7″ should be a clue. Yes, they’re the words of a chap named Jude.
I would not like to take Boible lessons from you. LOL
Sam, get out your bible and find out what Lot and his family got up to after God saw fit to kill the entire population of Sodom and Gemorrah.
Ian O’Doherty has a delighted piece on creationists in today’s Irish Independent:
“And the Lord didst create idiots, and lo he saw it was terrible…”
http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/and-the-lord-didst-create-idiots-and-lo-he-saw-it-was-terrible-690971.html
Kentucky here I come too :0)
Dawkins
Jesus Christ never wrote a single book – He sent the Holy Spirit to do that,
Joh 14:26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
Second Timothy 3:16 tells us, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”
So your Jesus must be a different one from the Jesus of the Bible. I suppose you have invented your own God as well…….
Sam Hanna,
“Jesus Christ never wrote a single book”
How do you know?
“- He sent the Holy Spirit to do that”
Would I find him on Amazon. That’s a pseudonym, right? Is his stuff a bit like Harry Potter or more Tolkien?
“So your Jesus must be a different one from the Jesus of the Bible.”
Yes, I keep him in the cellar next to the other spirits.
“I suppose you have invented your own God as well…….”
Certainly not! I leave that sort of thing the theists.
Ian O’Doherty has a delighted piece on creationists in today’s Irish Independent:
“And the Lord didst create idiots, and lo he saw it was terrible…â€
http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/and-the-lord-didst-create-idiots-and-lo-he-saw-it-was-terrible-690971.html
This has got to be the worst piece of Journalism from a member of the NUJ. No attempt was made to present any balance but straw men after straw men was built. It is ironic that the Independent roundly condemned Ian Paisley Jr for expressing his personal vies as did Dawkins et al here but no attempt is made to condemn this little piece of character assassination. At the very least this village idiot O’Doherty could have tried to come up with an argument predicated on logic. To dismiss soemone like Sir Isaac Newton and Einstein as “fools” says more about O’Doherty than ID.
Well done Dawkins, I would have guessed this time of writing would have impressed the simple. Got any more articles written from a pub……..
I take it you’ll be going to Kentucky too, Sam?
My favourite lines were these:
“But apart from the obvious worry that such utter rubbish is currently being awarded a level of credence few of us ever thought possible, the Creation Museum does contain some unintentionally amusing things.
“For instance, did you know that man co-existed happily with dinosaurs in the pre-Flood years and that all dinosaurs were harmless vegetarians? Did you know that in the pre-Flood years, no plants had thorns? In fact, God added thorns to plants in the years after the Flood, to prick the fingers of the chosen people.
“So, there you have it – Godzilla was more like Barney the Dinosaur and the supreme creator of the Universe is actually a cunning prankster who invented thorns on plants because he wanted Jews to cut themselves while they were picking roses. Or something.”
Oddly enough, O’Doherty mentions neither Newton nor Einstein. Nor indeed any “fools” at all. Are you sure you read the same article, Sam?
Oddly enough, O’Doherty mentions neither Newton nor Einstein. Nor indeed any “fools†at all. Are you sure you read the same article, Sam?
Both eminent scientists were firm believers in ID. Newton was a thorough Creationist and if he was alive today would probably have opened the Mueseum.
A little knowledge is dangerous – i wonder how many laws of nature have been discovered or even understood by O’Doherty?
If you look through the Answers in Genesis almost all of their scientists have postgraduate degrees and research positions in leading universities. It may amuse you to take one quote out of context and embellish it but anyone can play this childish game. You are the guy that cannot even come up with design inference laws and believe that One times ten to the power of 22 planets exploded into existence from absolutely nothing in a Big Bang!
I realise your sight is a bit lopsided judging by your comments but don’t expect the rest of us to fall for you superstitious logic that this all happened by chance or by the imaginary fairy “natural selection.†I have never argued for optimal design just evidence of design.
So are you saying that God, omnipotent and omniscient as He is, deliberately designed a flawed eye?
And would you please stop invoking the straw man of ‘chance’. Evolution is much more than simple ‘chance’. If you cannot see that that is the case then you obviously do not understand what evolution actually is.
Stiofán,
“And would you please stop invoking the straw man of ‘chance’. Evolution is much more than simple ‘chance’.”
He’s not STILL at it, is he? I’ve pulled him up on that five times today.
I do wish a mod would conflate these two threads where Sam is being made to look ridiculous. It would make things easier for all.
It is interesting the heat generated here by those who profess not to care – evidently they care very much!
It is also ironic that the Irish Independent is guilty of the most obvious Christian Fundamentalistphobia yet they would not dream of attacking the Koran which encourages people to murder Jews and Christians and be rewarded and the Book of Mormon which has not a single attested fact.
Just proves which Book the devil and his legions really hate!
“So are you saying that God, omnipotent and omniscient as He is, deliberately designed a flawed eye?”
The Bible explains that man was created perfectly but the effects of sin have degraded the optimality of design in each succeeding generation.
Gen 3:17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
It is an interesting fact that no matter what man tries to do with all of his scientific research that the moment he “overcomes” one virus, weed, tyrant it immediately mutates to something worse. Hence fulfilling this prophecy.
Is a fundamentalist someone who hates fundamentals?
“It says in the New Testament that Jesus laid his head in the lap of his “favourite†disciple.”
That’s nothing. He told Satan to get behind him.
He told Satan to get behind him. LOL!
“It says in the New Testament that Jesus laid his head in the lap of his “favourite†disciple.â€
Which Greek Text does it say this?
W00t, did he do it Greek as well?
I’m learning so much about Jesus today. And there I was thinking he was a bit of an asexual ascetic.
I must read your Boible more often, Sam.
Dawkins
One of the interesting things is watching you, TB et al arrogantly march on here and make arrogant claims about what the Bible says and how crazy creationism is. The puerile arguments that you have to resort to when examined only demonstrate that these Emperors have no clothes!
Are there any intelligent athiests of pro-sodomite activists left?
Sam Hanna,
You’ve spent the best part of a day putting up arguments that poster after poster has demolished. You can’t even remain civil but insult me and others at every turn. And you call OUR arguments puerile?
Yes, your Boible is rubbish, dangerous rubbish at that, as millions of victims of your skygod cult could testify to if they’d lived. Creationism crazy? That’s putting it mildly. I can continue to laugh at it, except that this garbage is poisoning young minds in the United States, minds that should be learning facts and being taught to inquire and question.
Christianity and all the other idiocies stultified human inquiry for centuries. Had that not been the case, our species would have colonized the stars by now. Now we have the proponents of intelligent design attempting to drag us all back to the stone age again.
And to think there are those who believe that militant Islam is the greatest threat to civilization.
You have just proven my point – you still have not even gave us the principles that design inference can be drawn from yet you continue to “claim” that it is stone age.
The USA is ahead of the UK simply because it still retains its belief in Go. Pity Britain does not learn the lesson as it plunges into a 3rd world economy and education system!
Sam Hanna,
“The USA is ahead of the UK simply because it still retains its belief in Go. Pity Britain does not learn the lesson as it plunges into a 3rd world economy and education system!”
You left out your own country, Ireland. Plenty of belief in Go and the Boible there I’d have thought.
Because God wants His people to prosper?
Have your credit card ready and put your hand against the screen.
Finally an explanation for Japan’s poverty.
The Bible explains that man was created perfectly but the effects of sin have degraded the optimality of design in each succeeding generation.
So let me get this straight. You are claiming that before the Fall our light receptors were the right way round? And then our genes mutated and made them back to front?
What’s your evidence for this?
Go does not exist.
It is a figment of wikipedia contributors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(board_game)
“The Bible explains that man was created perfectly but the effects of sin have degraded the optimality of design in each succeeding generation.”
It’s true! My dad has a full beard and I only have an itty bitty Russell Brand one.
Sam I’m still waiting for an exact quote from Jesus of Nazareth or his daddy saying that gayness is wrong. So far you have posted quotes of other people saying it, and we all know how easily you can onscure the bible to back up what you already believe. Hell the Orange Order got No Surrender from “No sir render on to Cesar what is Cesar’s and render on to god what is gods”. I want to hear the big man say it. But i’ll not hold my breath.
Pounder,
“But i’ll not hold my breath.”
Jeeze, give the guy a chance to wake up, Pounder!
His last post was at 3.45 am. I replied at 4 but only because I got up to go to the latrine. Otherwise I’d still have been in the … what does the Boible call it? Oh yes, the Land of Noddy.
Fair enough, but I’ve been asking this question since about this time yesterday. All I’ve got back is evasion and non-answers.
I know, Pounder, I foolishly got sucked into it too and made a few serious posts, before realizing that it’s like trying to argue with a Scientologist.
Considering life expectancy has risen markedly, even over the past hundred years, it seems mistaken that the design is degrading. You’re saying that our increasingly flawed design is encouraging us to live longer, healthier, better lives. Hmmm.
The USA is ahead economically overall, but the division between rich and poor is even more marked in the USA than in Britain (which is more marked than in other EU countries). Many of the poorest are the most ardent followers. Sam, I’m really struggling with your logic. Many Christians around the world live in squalor, if they believed harder, would God reward them. I mean, in this life.
Quite aside from that, many Americans don’t believe in God either, and are increasingly fed up with the way evangelical Christianity is being used as the basis for foreign policy decisions.
Pounder,
Before I forget. As you’d imagine from my nick, I don’t expend a great deal of precious living time on the Boible, but Sam induced me to take a look at it yesterday in an attempt to find out the answer to your question.
I’m sure this is old stuff but it was news to me. Apparently Go was OK with lesbians. In fact, women could do very much as they pleased as far as Go was concerned. If you take a quick tour through Leviticus for instance, you’ll find all sorts of proscriptions for men — and none for women.
Then it hit me: Go is a woman! What other explanation can there be?
Now, which one of us is going to break the news to poor Sam?
I would like to say on record as being a big fan of lesbians myself. I have many many of their movies.
LOL. I wonder how many Sam has?
“I’m sure this is old stuff but it was news to me. Apparently Go was OK with lesbians. In fact, women could do very much as they pleased as far as Go was concerned. If you take a quick tour through Leviticus for instance, you’ll find all sorts of proscriptions for men—and none for women.”
Rom 1:26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
Rom 1:27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
“The USA is ahead economically overall, but the division between rich and poor is even more marked in the USA than in Britain (which is more marked than in other EU countries). Many of the poorest are the most ardent followers. Sam, I’m really struggling with your logic. Many Christians around the world live in squalor, if they believed harder, would God reward them. I mean, in this life.”
This is not the point I am making. The fools here are trying to set up a straw man that belief in Evangelical Christianity equates to a superstition and retards scientific development. I am merely pointing out the fact that in westerm civilisation the country that retains the highest theistic belief for the last 100 years interestingly is the most advanced and wealthiest. I live in the USA and I can tell you there are very few poor people!
http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/zoom/pa_jesus_says.jpg
Flawed as it may be, my eye appreciated this.
Sam I’m still waiting for an exact quote from Jesus of Nazareth or his daddy saying that gayness is wrong.
Jesus Christ is not quoted on everything in Scripture. He affirmed that all Scripture both old and new was inspired by God so anything written in there is from God. Your argument is so puerile that no Bible scholar would take you seriously. It is a bit like saying I won’t accept what is cited in Hansard about a debate in Parliament as I have to hear for myself to be convinced.