had my faith very aggressively tested tonight.

[SpaceDinosaur]

This is not about the action, I'm fine with what happened. This is about how I feel now.

What's just happened.
I gave a friend a lift home as I was driving and he was quite drunk.
Midway home he asked how we (group of friends) cope with a mutual friend being religious...she's getting married in a church.
I replied that I was religious, he attended my church wedding 6 months ago.
"You can't be religious, you're supposed to be intelligent"
Sorry?
"You're a scientist, you have an analytical mind, why are you acting like a brainwashed idiot?"
God love him he loves a soap box so I was then treated to a tirade of how there was no God, how if there was a God we would be perfect, how God couldn't exist because of the diseases babies in Africa die of. (That was his pet topic)

No responses from me were heard so I allowed him to rant himself out including a full session of calling God all the names under the sun, asking God to smite or kill him now and laughing at me.

I am at peace with the event. Shocked but not upset. He'll apologise for being so aggressive, confrontational and rude tomorrow (if he remembers)

I felt tested. I wanted to come home and open my bible and see where it fell (something I did a lot as a teenager) but I can't find it which makes me sad. I wanted to find the verse and chapter about not testing God.

I would like to ask for a verse or chapter to read. I have a digi bible. I can't explore the book, I can't find it right now.

noble, given that there were no lifelong monogamous homosexual relationships at the time (certainly that I'm aware of) I don't find it surprising that it wasn't mentioned no. You're reading it from the context of a completely different time and culture.

Mixed fabrics were also called an abomination...

Sodom and Gomorrah is a mob trying to gang rape. Hardly surprising for that to be condemned.

It's not gang rape that's the problem!

"Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

Lot the good man would happily send his virgin daughters out to be gang raped, but having sex with the men under his protection, that would be wicked.

You're reading it from the context of a completely different time and culture.

Yeah, not one in which people followed a book that said homosexuals should be put to death. I'm guessing that's why there were no long term homosexual relationships to point to, and why it went without saying that they were on the 'no' list.

Don’t forget homosexuality was a crime until relatively recently. Back in those days nobody questioned the interpretation of Paul. It is only in the wake of a shift in secular mores towards a more liberal attitude that people have been motivated to try to tweak Paul’s position to suit contemporary taste. People want the Bible to be ‘right’ – whatever right is according to the morality of the day.

Yes noble, because allowing harm to come to a guest was seen as worse than harm coming to his daughter.

You are the one blinkered by your attitude that the Bible and Christianity is repressive. I get it, really, and there are certainly reasons to think like that. But it influences how you interpret it. (And yes I'm sure the way I think influences it too, it would be foolish to think otherwise).

But the wicked men of Sodom didn't go to Lot's house to have sex with women. They didn't even go to beat up the men. They went to have sex with the men. That's how bad the men of Sodom were. The Bible writers were trying to depict a truly awful city of worthless people who deserved destruction, and that's the action they chose to illustrate the story.

You can't seriously claim that the Bible was not pretty firm on the matter of gay sex.

New Testament: Jude 7

In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

religion is much easier if you don't think about things too much. God doesn't want us to question or be tested. We must accept faith blindly,

By definition a get out clause!

Lumpy what evidence?

Yes I seriously can. And your attempting to use Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of 'how bad' gay sex is regarded in the Bible is seriously reaching.

God doesn't want us to question or be tested.

Except in the OT when he allowed his followers to enter him into a 'who's the best God' competition against the followers of Baal. God nailed it with a flaming bull and the prophets of Baal were duly slaughtered.

The not testing God thing only came in when he stopped responding.

what the NT says that because of sexual immorality and perversion of the men of Sodom (the example given in the story is asking to have sex with men) they will burn in eternal fire.

How can you put a positive spin on that?

You've done well to want to go back to the bible, I love this 2 minute video about why it makes sense to believe in a God www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/family/teenagers/what-your-peers-say/why-believe-in-god/

mumarelli that video is so simplistic it's quite embarrassing.

That video woefully conflates theism with creationism. Most Christians in the uk acknowledge that evolution is fact.