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Comment by dx87 | Hacker News Reader

I've got family members that are a good example of this. Some live in a rural area of the South and think that worsening weather is punishment for allowing gays to marry. Meanwhile when one of my cousins came out as gay, my grandparents who live a few states further North said that he didn't choose to be gay, God made him like that, and invited him and his boyfriend to thanksgiving dinner to make sure he knew that everyone still loved him. Both groups of people are super religious (same religion even), and both use their religion to back up their beliefs, not the other way around.

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> Both groups of people are super religious (same religion even), and both use their religion to back up their beliefs, not the other way around.

That’s because as far as I can tell, the purpose of “religion” is to assist in tribal bonds. Even though it’s not explicitly stated, it helps serve as a proxy for people to figure how closely to align themselves with another.

When I was a child, I wondered why people who didn’t believe in the assumptions of a religion or act according to them still stated they belong to that religion or performed certain rituals and traditions relating to the religion.

I came to learn it’s because it helps serve as a signal to where your political allegiances might lie and helps manage your priorities and subtly inform others.

Non “religious” societies may have weaker tribal bonds or allegiances with each other, so in times of conflict, they may be unable to create the group dynamics that enable them to survive and/or thrive. Of course, my whole theory might be wrong and maybe there are better signals nowadays.

Dunbar (famous for the "150 friends" rule, based on neocortex size) claims that religion is a scaling technology which allows groups to expand above the 1500 person size, which is as large as a group can get and still have most members able to recognize members by face.

Above 1500 people, a group needs a non-personal method to tag who is trustworthy and who might be plotting you harm.

Religion fills the gap nicely, gives you a reason to trust the other person. Works well, until it doesn't.

Long way of providing scientifically derived support to your statement on the "purpose" of religion.

Most of the time, religious people don’t bother with actual theology. If you care to look, there is a lot of critical thinking that went into the Reformation. Both of these examples go against mainline reformed theology in America. Reformed Covenant Theology says God doesn’t punish us with earthly catastrophes and God doesn’t make people sinners. Many times, Christians just make up or guess at their own theology because they haven’t bothered to read the Bible or haven’t consulted with ministers on matters like these.

Concerning the Reformation and the two big doctrines that came out of it -- sola scriptura (Bible alone) and sola fide (faith alone) -- there was a Pew Research poll done a few years ago, asking U.S. Protestants about whether they ascribed to those beliefs.

Turns out, only 30 percent of U.S. Protestants believe in both sola fide and sola scriptura.

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2017/08/31/poll-most-p...

On a bigger scale, Christians used to be anti gay for seemingly their whole history, then when others in the same western society decided gay is OK, they suddenly decided that Jesus was telling them to be tolerant all that time and all those earlier Christians had somehow got it wrong.

I think there is a strong element of that. But Jesus himself actually said almost nothing about homosexuality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_New_Testa...

The traditional Christian view of same-sex activity derives from more direct statements made by Paul, and Jesus’s general statements about sexual immorality. What Paul actually meant about homosexuality depends on ambiguous translations from the original Greek. Moreover, Jesus’s prohibition on sexual immorality depends on what counts as sexual immorality. Christian denominations that accept same-sex marriage interpret these statements differently. This is particularly easy in Protestant Christianity because it accepts that the Bible is the work of people and that it must be interpreted.

On one hand, I think you’re correct that a lot of this is results-driven rationalization—looking at the Bible anew with the desire to reach a particular end goal. That in and of itself isn’t necessarily that big of a deal, though. We do the same thing in the law, with texts that are far less ancient and where the original meaning is far more apparent. The Supreme Court just decided this year that Congress had already banned discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity back in the 1960s.

But there have also been theologically relevant changes. It wasn’t until the 21st century that it became widely accepted as a matter of science and sociology that homosexuality is innate and not a choice. These facts are enormously important theologically. Christianity is not in the business of affirming peoples’ choices. But an overriding principle is that God created each person individually and knows and loves each person. Within that framework, an orientation that is innate is very different from behavior that is a choice. Moreover, an overriding purpose of Biblical marriage is to have and raise children. In the United States, large scale studies showing that huge numbers of gay couples were raising children together were released in 2011, based on 2010 census data. This went largely unnoticed among folks who don’t see child rearing as an essential purpose of marriage and life generally, but is tremendously important for deciding that same-sex unions fall within Christian (and other traditional) understandings of what is a marriage.

Jesus spoke about eunuchs, who in modern terms would be “trans”.

Not quite. Their goal re: castration was not to become female or identify as such.

For there are some agenders, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some trans, which were made trans of men: and there be ace, which have made themselves ace for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

Again, the goal, even with the english words changed in your paraphrase was not about appearing/embracing as a different sex/gender. It was in abstaining from sexual activity through castration or choice.

I said elsewhere in the thread: “Early Christianity was pretty plainly against sex as such, straight or gay.” I think this verse supports it.

Please share your thoughts as well as the verse you think supports it.

I don't see it just from reading this verse (and knowing the section).

Another basis for the Chrisitian (also the Jewish and Islamic) view on homosexuality is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah#Religious_v...

Paul was a Jew. He was only ever relating in the NT what the Old testament was teaching. So it's very easy to understand what he was saying if you reference what he was quoting.

On sexuality being innate/not a choice. The Bible does not prohibit any innate characteristics, it prohibits actions. Actions are always choices. Homosexual actions are what the bible prohibits, the Old Testament first and then repeated (and quoted) in the New Testament.

Marriage is not involved in these prohibitions.

Early Christianity was pretty plainly against sex as such, straight or gay, but I don’t think Christianity per se is more anti-gay than any other religion. Gay marriage in the modern sense just didn’t exist anywhere, afaict, and Christianity was against sodomy but not fanatically so until the early modern era. The real anti-gay paranoia seems to me to be more of a product of early modernity than a specifically Christian thing.

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