Things are not "bad" based on their effects on other people. Things are "bad" based on how God has ranked them on the order of goodness. Fornication, Theft, and Adultery are all major sins, though they are not on equal levels.
Short Answer: EVERYTHING is good or bad because God said so.
34 comments
"Good" and "bad" are completely relative. What's good for the fox is bad for the rabbit. Being that you say god made both, then what's good here? That the fox eats the rabbit? Or that the rabbit lives and the fox starves? Or do you say good and bad only apply to people, and not the rest of creation? But what happens then to a hungry lion facing off a person in a pit...
No, good and evil are socially defined. After all, the animals don't have those concepts, and they are just fine. Moral Truths are silly.
OT Biblical rankings of sin from 9 to 1, worst (Death by fire or stoning for you and also your family or neighbors) to best (banned, no punishment specified):
9 - worshiping other gods
Fornication doesn't seem to be mentioned; although if rape is a 3, one would assume fornication is somewhere below that - certainly better than getting caught eating shrimp or seeing your sister naked.
Well, God told Moses to kill off people and take their land, so, how 'bout if I kill you and take your house?
Have you ever eating, or even touched, pork? Shellfish? Looked at a woman with lust in your heart? Not made you heave and wave sacrifices? Cooked or gone shopping on the Sabbath? Come on, be honest. To avoid being a hypocrite, you should stone yourself to death.
So, what does God think of the yummy steak and cheese sandwich I had for lunch?
Oh, wait, that's mixing milk and dairy products, bad example...
What does God think of the fact I've got a sluggish Dell laptop I use for work while some of my co-workers have snazzy IBM/Lenovo machines?
Not really all that fundie; almost every religion deals to some extent or another with moral absolutism, the idea that humans are subject to an absolute moral standard that is imposed from outside themselves by some ultimate authority.
What makes the fundie version of this so annoying is how arbitrary and capricious this exterior moral code is: homosexuality is a major "sin" but war is not. Pre-marital sex is a major sin but domesic abuse is not.
The annoying thing about the Christian fundie exterior moral code is it's absolute obsession with sex. Like God has nothing better to worry about than where you put your johnson.
Sandman, god wants all the virgins delivered to him, alive and unbroken. If they manage to survive past the age of consent, he don't want them no more.
that explains why Xians are happy to persecute, torture, and kill those they disobay god
The majority of Christians aren't, because generally speaking, normal, remotely sane people aren't. On the other hand, this asshole just might.
I firmly believe that evil, cynical people can warp anything , any philosphy, any belief system, any personal obsession, no matter what it is now or wanted to be originally, into something poisonous that serves only the leaders' ends. Virtually every religion is a case in point. Give it a few centuries and even Trekkers will be killing each other in pogroms.
Just sayin'.
"Evil and good are things in their own essence, they are not made good by the giver. If he gives good- so call him. But if evil springs from him, do not name it mine, til you know better its true fount!" -lucifer from lord Byron's Cain.
Give that thought a go...
So think about this, coolly and logically for a second. You are declaring, say, in the case of homosexuality, something that two consenting adults do, in the case of sexual acts, in the privacy of their own bedroom, and in the case of their relationship as a whole, on the same level as any heterosexual couple, which harms no one whatsoever as evil. Why? Because God said so. In a book, mind you, that has been translated, and retranslated, and cobbled together through the ages, passed through the hands of God knows how many men with agendas and using a word that hasn't even existed prior to the 1980s. I mean theologists are, to this day, debating as to whether the verse indeed condemns homosexuality, or, say, male prostitution. So Good or Bad because God says so? How can you even say with confidence what God even says?
...and on the 6th day God created Fornication, and He declared it was bad. And lo, it came to pass that He created Theft and Adultery and He declared them also bad. And He was most pleased with His work, and rested.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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