Is religion still relevant in modern society?

[Runa216]

padib said:

If I may, and I will be careful in my response so as to be devoid of any bigotry, free of blame. If there is anything wrong in the redaction of my post, be it impoliteness, rudeness, disrespect or intolerance towards other views, I will leave it up to you to demonstrate.

To explain.

Everyone is born a certain way different than another. We know from the development of an infant in the womb, that hormonal development can cause higher or lower levels of sexual hormones in the infant's development. These levels later dictate sexual orientation in the person. This is a given.

For regular cases, please allow me to exclude for the time being hermaphrodites, I'll assume the individual to be either male or female, with the reproductive system respective to their sex.

Given a male that developed with a lower level of testosterone, said male could have a sexual desire towards the same sex, biologically speaking. That desire would be within his body.

If a person born with that feature would want to honor God, and what is written in the bible, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_homosexuality#Passages_from_the_New_Testament), he would look to abstain from said desire. Assuming for a moment that this individual also has desire for the opposite sex, but to a lesser degree, this person's battle to honor God would be to find biological ways to increase their level of desire for the opposite sex, by ways of personal development, diet, sport, and other external factors.

For the following segment of my explanation, I ask that you be open, rather very open, it will be a difficult challenge (kindly understand what I mean). I will ask you to swith viewpoints for a brief moment.

Assuming this for a brief moment, assume that homosexuality is a sin, something that displeases God. Let me walk you through this briefly as a mental exercise. If homosexuality is a sin, then it can be likened to, for a simple example, for all things other than self-harm: substance abuse. I want to liken it to this because it is something that both you and I, no matter our position, strongly disagree with. A specific example being alcoholism.

Science has shown that alcoholism is something that can be passed down genetically. For the person suffering from this condition, yet desires to please God, it will be their battle to work against their biological pre-disposition, by the power of will, but especially the power of prayer.

You can reset your position now, thanks for walking with me through it I know it is hard for you, as you mentioned earlier. The reason I wanted to walk you through it is to demonstrate that, though God creates all of us different, with different tendencies to different things, good or bad, it is also possible by the power of will and prayer to go against tendencies that would be considered a sin in the eyes of God.

Sincerely, I just want to help and be constructive. If I'm not, I fail for myself. Please let me know where I do.

While I do commend you for being rational for once (yes, I know that's passive aggressive...but also true), there's still a lot wrong with what you're saying here.  Not that the logic you've presented here is fallacious (it's actually reasonably sturdy), it's that you've ignored one glaring point that destroys your whole argument:  what god/religion says is harmful and what Science says is harmful are VERY different things.  

Basically the argument you've made here is that, in the eyes of religion, Homosexuality is a sin.  BEING homosexual isn't, since you're born that way (thankfully you at least see this truth), but ACTING on it is.  Engaging in homosexual acts or desires is considered sinful, and if you want to truly be one with the lord, you have to deny these cravings and seek a heterosexual relationship (made easier if the person in question is Bi instead of gay.)  

This is bad.  

See, science has proven time and time again that it's more abusive to yourself to push to be someone you aren't than it is to be yourself.  While 'spiritually' you may be damaging yourself by doing homosexual things, there's less than 0 proof (meaning there's proof to the contrary) that an act of homosexuality is in any way dangerous in and of itself.  (granted, taking a step outside can be harmful, but this is within reason.  Proper precautions have to be taken for every action, and there's no proof that homosexual acts are harmful in and of themselves.)  

Basically what this boils down to is preciely what I said: Denying your nature is harmful to your mental and physical wellbeing, the only thing you 'hurt' by doing homosexual acts is the preists and religious folk who condemn such acts.  I'm sure God would understand.