Following up on my previous post, "Churches shouldn't be able to discriminate against gays," yesterday I wrote another post on my Salem Political Snark blog about how a sermon given by the Salem Alliance Church lead pastor said in no uncertain terms that same-sex sex goes against the grain of God.
I transcribed part of a podcast of a sermon given by Pastor Steve Fowler in 2016 sermon and shared it in the post (Boldfacing is mine, obviously.) This is how Fowler supported his conclusion about the sinfulness of same-sex sex.
When Adam and Eve have sex, it is not just union. It is a reunion. It is the image of God as represented by Adam. the image of God represented by Eve. And when these two opposite genders come together it is not just union, it is a reunion. It is a beautiful picture of what God is trying to get us to understand of relational intimacy that is represented in the Godhead.
And you will see a consistent sexual code from Genesis all the way to Revelation. In fact, in Revelation there is the marriage supper of the lamb. What is that? It’s reunion. It’s all the saints. It is everyone with Christ. And this physical oneness is a beautiful picture of that.
And you will never find in the scriptures any positive pictures of a same sex union. It just isn’t there. There’s this consistent sexual code. There’s this beautiful metaphor that’s presented in sexual oneness, as a picture of people of the opposite sex coming together.
So we talk about running from sexual sin. Here’s what we’re saying. Any kind of sexual activity outside of a marriage with a male and a female, this is something we should not be engaged in. So if you’re married and you’re having sex with someone who is not your spouse, you don’t just need to resist, you just don’t need to fight it, you need to book it, you need to run.
And if you’re sexually active with someone you’re not married to, you need to run. If you’re engaged in porn or you’re going to strip clubs, you need to run. And on this topic, what God is saying is that if you’re engaged in same-sex sex, if you’re using a same-sex relationship in that way, you also need to run, you also need to book it.
And I just want to say to you, I don’t want you ever coming to Salem Alliance Church and walking out of here, and saying that guy never told us. This is exactly what it says. And we can work hard, and we can say we know better, or that’s the ice cream cone in the pocket, but friends, it’s what God’s word reveals.
It's easy to critique what Fowler said. He makes a series of unsupported assumptions.
(1) God exists.
(2) The God that exists is the God of the Bible, not some other God.
(3) The words in the Bible are God's words, not human words.
I've been enjoying bantering on Facebook with some Christians who don't like what I said in my second Salem Political Snark post about why a boycott of the Broadway Coffee House, which is run by the Salem Alliance Church, is justified.
Some people defend the Salem Alliance Church by saying this is a matter of religious liberty.
Well, sure, people are free in believe in whatever crazy thing they want to. But usually it isn't so obvious that the crazy people are running a business aimed at attracting the general public -- most of whom don't believe in the crazy ideas held by the crazy people.
The situation isn't all that different from the KKK operating a restaurant back in the days when the United States tolerated racial discrimination. If you disagreed with the KKK's views about African-Americans, you wouldn't feel good supporting the KKK's restaurant, right?
A somewhat milder analogy would be if Planned Parenthood operated a coffee house that didn't make clear to customers that all profits from the business go to support Planned Parenthood.
I'm pretty sure that anti-abortion Christians would urge people not to patronize the coffee house once they learned where the profit from a latte or muffin purchase goes -- to an organization whose values they disagree with.
Lastly, here's a blog post comment interchange I had with a Christian believer, Nate.
Brian, So for you to say theirs NO proof of God's existence, is like you have proof of the contrary. Let me assume, you believe something...all things come from nothing? So, you believe that a big bang happened and from chaos came order? Take a Rolex Brian, take this time piece and all its parts and pieces; shake it for a million, billion years. Will it become a perfect time piece? No Brian, it will not. Show me your demonstrable proof, your absolutes and I will show you mine.
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Nate, I've had an active Church of the Churchless blog for 14 years, so I've a lot of experience dealing with religious people who make thinking/reasoning errors. Which now includes you. You can check out my arguments for why you're wrong by going to this link and doing some searches about "existence God" or such by using the search box in the right sidebar.
https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/
Briefly, in both science and everyday life it usually is impossible to prove a negative. It is up to the person making a positive claim to provide solid evidence for that claim. Let's say that I claim that it is invisible fairies who are making the flowers grow in our yard. Can you provide proof to me that the fairies don't exist? Remember, they are invisible and show no signs other than the flowers growing.
No, you couldn't. You''d just tell me, correctly, "Brian, you're crazy. There's no proof of the fairies, so they must be just in your mind." Which is exactly how us atheists view God: as a crazy idea that only exists in the minds of believers.
Regarding your watch analogy, this has been thoroughly disproven by modern knowledge of how evolution works. There's even a book, I believe the title is "The Blind Watchmaker," that discusses how evolution/natural selection produces the complexity of life from simple principles without the need of a designer God.
So try again, Nate. I know you can't provide demonstrable proof of God's existence, and that you believe on faith. Just accept this is the case. And understand that it is perfectly reasonable for people who don't support the Salem Alliance Church's teachings to boycott businesses of the church that funnel money into the church coffers.
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