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A former pastor who wrote a bestselling book on traditional relationships has confirmed the end of his marriage, apologized for opposing LGBTQ rights and announced he is no longer a Christian.
Joshua Harris' book "I Kissed Dating Goodbye", which railed against sex before marriage and homosexuality, sold over 1 million copies and became a fixture in Christian youth groups after coming out 22 years ago.
But Harris now says the 1997 work "contributed to a culture of exclusion and bigotry," and that he has "undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus."
Writing on Instagram, he added: "By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian."
"I have lived in repentance for the past several years -- repenting of my self-righteousness, my fear-based approach to life, the teaching of my books, my views of women in the church, and my approach to parenting to name a few," Harris wrote in the post.
"To the LGBTQ+ community, I want to say that I am sorry for the views that I taught in my books and as a pastor regarding sexuality. I regret standing against marriage equality, for not affirming you and your place in the church, and for any ways that my writing and speaking contributed to a culture of exclusion and bigotry. I hope you can forgive me," he went on.
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Religion
"A prominent group of 18 scientists and bioethicists from seven countries has called for a global “moratorium” on introducing heritable changes into human sperm, eggs, or embryos—germline editing—to make genetically altered children."
On the one hand, gene editing can fix birth defects such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease, and heart defects.
On the other hand, do we want a world where parents can choose the eye color, height, weight, intelligence and other genetic traits of their child? At the extreme, there is the potential to edit an embryo to have six fingers and toes, or a tail, or even so much that the result would barely be considered human. Where do we draw the line?
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Science and Nature
Apparently in Islam men should beat their wives out of love.
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Religion
For the first time "No Religion" has topped a survey of Americans' religious identity. The non-religious edged out Catholics and evangelicals in the long-running General Social Survey. The survey found that 23.1% of Americans now claim no religion.
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Religion
There is no God -- that's the conclusion of the celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking, whose final book is published Tuesday.
The book, which was completed by his family after his death, presents answers to the questions that Hawking said he received most during his time on Earth.
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Religion
Theists often misunderstand why most atheists don't believe, saying it is because they hate God, or don't wish to obey Him, or don't want to follow religious morality. This article describes the real reason, which most atheists already knew.
"What, then, is the real reason young Christians (and other religious believers) leave the faith? The answer lies in a prior, 2016 Pew Research Center survey which allowed respondents to answer in their own words. In this study, most “nones” said they no longer identified with a religious group because they no longer believed it was true. When asked why they didn’t believe, many said their views about God had “evolved” and some reported having a “crisis of faith.” Their specific explanations included the following statements:"
“Learning about evolution when I went away to college”
“Religion is the opiate of the people”
“Rational thought makes religion go out the window”
“Lack of any sort of scientific or specific evidence of a creator”
“I just realized somewhere along the line that I didn’t really believe it”
“I’m doing a lot more learning, studying and kind of making decisions myself rather than listening to someone else.”
“Religion is the opiate of the people”
“Rational thought makes religion go out the window”
“Lack of any sort of scientific or specific evidence of a creator”
“I just realized somewhere along the line that I didn’t really believe it”
“I’m doing a lot more learning, studying and kind of making decisions myself rather than listening to someone else.”
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Religion
For the sake of argument, assume that someone doesn't discriminate based on race except in one area: dating. Is that racist?
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People
Today was a perfect example of how Fox has become nothing more than Trump cheerleaders.
In two bombshell stories, Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was found guilty of 8 charges, and Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, pled guilty in federal court to eight counts, implicating Trump in the process.
So what is the top story on the Fox News website? A story about a murder suspect being an illegal immigrant. Classic.
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Politics
Interestingly, there have been modern-day attempts in Christianity to make God gender neutral. For instance, in the early 1980's the National Council of Churches released a new translation of the Bible that eliminated references to God as solely male. As an example, John 3:16 was changed to read ''For God so loved the world that God gave God's only Child, that whoever believes in that Child should not perish, but have eternal life.''
Is God male? If not, why should our translation of God's Word us the masculine pronoun?
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Religion