Anti-gay church shows absurdity of religious belief

Over on one of my other blogs, Salem Political Snark, I've been writing about an ill-considered plan by city officials here in Salem, Oregon to pay the Salem Alliance Church to use a building the church owns as a temporary home for the public library while renovations are being made.

You can read why the Salem Human Rights Commission unanimously voted to oppose this idea in my post, "Human Rights Commission rejects plan for library to use church building." 

Why?

Because the Salem Alliance Church holds to the archaic view that same-sex marriage and same-sex sex are sins. So their attitude toward LGBTQ rights are straight out of the middle ages, basically.

The church doesn't want to burn LGBTQ people at the stake, but it wants to deny them the ability to love and marry like everybody else.

A Salem Reporter story today, "Plan to move Salem library to church-owned property stirs discrimination concerns," contains a great quote. 

Daniel Rollings, president of the Salem chapter of PFLAG, a national organization that advocates for LGBTQ rights, said the plan is still tantamount to partnering with a hate group.

“I am completely opposed to the city partnering with any organization, regardless of what it is, that actively discriminates against anyone,” he said. “The city should not put out bids to work with the (Ku Klux Klan) nor should they work with anti-LGBTQ organizations that actively discriminate against the LGBTQ community.”

For sure. Gay marriage is legal everywhere in the United States. Acceptance of gay rights is widespread. So how is it possible that religious organizations such as the Salem Alliance Church remain mired in irrational superstitions?

A visit to the church's web site shows why. There's a link called "What We Believe." That page contains a fairly brief summary of the Salem Alliance Church's beliefs, complete with footnotes.

Only problem is, the footnotes don't point to any fact-based, rational, defensible information. They're all references to passages in the Old and New Testaments. Which enables the church to engage in the sort of circular reasoning that is common to all religions.

What we believe is true because the holy scripture or holy person we believe in says it is true.

So that web page says under the "Bible" heading:

The Old and New Testaments, inerrant as originally given, were verbally inspired by God and are a complete revelation of His will for the salvation of men and women. They constitute the divine and only rule of Christian faith and practice.18

And footnote 18, not surprisingly is: 2 Peter 1:20 - 21  Which reads:

²⁰ Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. ²¹ For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Thus Christians believe the Bible is God's true teaching because the Bible says the Bible is God's true teaching. Illogical crap like that makes me ever so pleased to be an atheist.

Comments

[Amar]

These old school religions that rely on belief systems that date back 1000's of years have their hands tied behind their backs when trying to be relevant in today's society and the "new norm". They want dearly to hold on to their dogmatic faith, but I think deep down they can't reconcile that with their need to connect with today's youth. They are no longer relevant.

Anytime there is exclusion, how can their be talk of unity, not just within their church, but in society as a whole.

[j]

Gay marriage has been legal for about .0000000000000000000000000000000001% of human history. Before then, every single human culture -- not just Christian cultures, but every culture on earth -- said marriage was only proper between a man and woman.

But whether between whoever, it doesn't really matter, because we all know that marriage doesn't mean anything anymore anyway. Even the Catholics, who are stricter about marriage than any other sect, freely allow people to "annul" their marriages if they say the right things to church lawyers.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Amar
You wrote
"Anytime there is exclusion, how can their be talk of unity, not just within their church, but in society as a whole."

Well said!