His views are entirely consistent with what his religion teaches though. Much as we may like to sweep it under the carpet because it doesn't appeal to a modern secular PC audience. A quick bit of research will show the Bible does not like homosexuality. I don't agree with him but at least his views are consistent with his religion. And this is a problem - and certainly a good reason for separation of church and state.
A quick bit of research will show that there is a considerable variation on what various religious groups consider what the words of the Bible actually mean.
A lot depends on exactly how various phrases are interpreted, because from what I can gather, the Bible doesn't come right out and specifically condemn homosexuality per se, but rather, uses a series of phrases that are either cultural references that are subject to argument over precise interpretation or are euphemisms.
The mainstream view seems to be that homosexuality isn't "a sin", but homosexual behaviour is .... though even that doesn't seem to be viewed entirely consistently.
This UKIP councillor's views seem, erm, loony to me on a couple of points. First, even if we accept that a vengeful God will sent floods, how do we know these particular floods are in response to that particular bit of sinning by that particular political figure? Is that the only sin that occurred in the flooded area, or is this idiot claiming God contacted him directly and said, "Hey, these floods .... they're Camerons fault for supporting gay marriage"?
Secondly, and more generally, since nobody can prove anything in the Bible is actually the Word of God, or even that there is a God, any claims of this type are subject to the same objection. Why should the notion that these floods are God's retribution be any more or less credible than any other religious edict?
Bush and Blair "praying together" frankly worries me a lot more than this twit claiming a specific weather incident is punishment.
I think the real story here is the press latching onto anything they can to discredit the UKIP in the run up to European Parliamentary elections.
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I think the floods were in response to Monty Python's "Life of Brian". God is just a bit late as he has a huge backlog of cases to work through, and must have fewer staff as the economic downturn has affected Heaven.com.
Some truth in that - this was a local councillor in some backwater that wrote to his local rag. The wider press press got hold of it and decided it was newsworthy. He really is insignificant in the scheme of mainstream politics.
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It is fairly clear.
See Levitikus 18 on wikipedia
Now if you believe the Bible to be the Word of God.... While we'd like Christianity to be a fluffy Jesus is Love above-all-else-athon, I can see how interpreting it based on the words clearly written on the page is a reasonable interpretation too. I completely disagree, but there it is.
Ah, to get involved or not in a conversation on Biblical interpretation?
Probably an unnecessary conversation since, if anything, the Bible's stance on homosexuality isn't the question here but rather it would be the Bible's stance on interpreting weather patterns as the will of God.
Suffice to say the Bible provides no grounds for making such interpretations in any sort of specific sense.
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Spot on. I went to a Jesuit school (which incidentally is the order the Pope belongs too) and while I was there the Headmaster was a priest called Michael Holman, who went on to become Provincial superior of the Jesuits in the UK and is now Principal of Heythrop College, University of London. Whilst students, he told us that there was nothing in the Bible that would suggest acts of nature are God’s work. He did say that it would be difficult to not interpret the bible as condemning homosexual acts, but that it is no different, and given no more importance, than say eating shell fish or pork, or wearing gold jewellery and given that it does not appear in the 10 Commandments, can be considered of less importance than what appears there.
Ultimately, people can, and do, interpret the Bible (and the Koran, Torah, etc….) in whatever way they wish to reinforce their own, predetermined, views. I doubt there are too many people that read the Bible with no preconditioned ideas beforehand, and then have them all shaped by the book, as opposed to say, a homophobe, reading the Bible to give credence to his/her homophobia. It is far more likely that it was/is society at large that placed the importance on specific interpretations of the contentious parts of the Bible, and ultimately the vast majority of religious people think it is for individuals to interpret the Books whatever way they want to. To equate an extremist with the mainstream view, and then say ‘they all believe it’, is to ignore the majorities interpretation. What makes the extremists right and the mainstream wrong?
I can't believe I'm about to put a huge space to give fair warning as the remainder of the post, a direct quote from the King James Bible, may be NSFW:
Good grief. What other way can you interpret the following?
18:22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. (Leviticus 18:22 KJV)[1]
20:13 "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." (Leviticus 20:13 KJV)[2]
i absolutely disagree with the above, but I'm stumped as to how you can take anything other than the obvious meaning out of it.
Where he gets the floods from is another matter...
The bible isn't a book that you can simply read once and then assume you have as good understanding of it as those who spend years studying it, taking account of the provenance of the passage in question, who it was addressing, what has happened since the events described and so on. For you to tell such people what they believe is pretty offensive really - we wouldn't accept a religious person telling an atheist what to believe, so why is the reverse acceptable?
On the positive side, if that's what you truly think Christianity is saying then there's a lot more hope that if you ever bother to delve into it some more and understand it better you'll change your opinion of it.
I'm currently in Soho, and saw two gents holding hands walking down the street, and yet the sun is shining. How can this be?
Not if you're going to quote Torah at us, no. Judaism clearly teaches that once God handed the law to man, it became man's responsibility to choose how to interpret and enforce the law, and that's done through the approriate structure - the council of Rabbis back then, the elected government now. God doesn't get a say in it any more (no, seriously, I've studied this).
Then Jesus came along and said "fine, you want to punish this person for their sin; the person who is without sin throws the first stone." No stones were thrown that day.
So just because it's written down, doesn't make it black and white.
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