Thoughts on life, love and faith by Plasticmind.

11 April 20061. Simon Owens:

Hello, I found my way to here through technorati and saw that you linked to one of my posts and thought I might discuss some of the things you say.

I'm an agnostic, so I'm not going to argue scripture or the rules of Christianity with you, though I think the rules in Christianity are contradictory at worst and ambiguous at best when it comes to homosexuality. I've made the mistake before (and I've seen others do so too) of arguing with a person who has different religious beliefs, and there really is a wall there that is impossible to side-step when one is talking about faith and non-faith. You have a convenient book to turn to whenever pressed with something moral, while I must take a multitude of life experiences and somehow construct this together into what I believe is right.

What I can say is that I have absolutely no moral objection whatsoever to homosexuality as an agnostic. And on top of that I live with three gay roommates and have a gay best friend as well. So naturally you can see why something like a kid being expelled for being gay enrages me...even if it's a religious institution. This is probably going to offend you, but I think homophobia is similar to the slavery debate --- slave owners used the bible to justify slavery, and 50 years from now, there won't be any Christians who use the bible to justify homophobia.

I do have one quibble, however. You seem to mistake the actual reason for expulsion in the article. As the article says, the rule he was expelled under was "deviant sexual practices" while as far as we know he was simply found to be gay. One of the main points I drive home in that post was that gay does not always equal sex. For all we know, the boy could have been a virgin, and yet the Christian Right continually tries to paint the picture that gay = sex.

13 April 20064. Simon Owens:

"What I am saying is that basing your morality on experience is justifying everything ever called heinous throughout time"

My first response to this is, "But Jesse, don't you realize that Christians are historically just as guilty of this justification as any other cultural group?"

To a certain extent, yes, I do believe in moral relativism. One of the main arguments put towards me from Christians is "Without a higher law, there's no right and wrong," as if the fear of this is going to scare me into faith.

Well, yes and no, I'll get to that in a second.

But first let me address something that you seem to assume: Because you have the bible, then all moral relativism ceases to exist. I couldn't disagree with you more. Even with the Bible, Christians have been able to argue every side to just about every issue that has ever come about (including homosexuality). Look at our current president for instance. Even though the bible clearly states "Thou Shall not commit murder," he still justifies human war. One Christian can look at Thou Shall not commit murder and then find another quote in the bible that seems to indicate that war is sometimes okay. As I indicated in my previous reply, the bible is ambigious at best and contradictory at its worst. The very terrorists that flew into the World Trade Center used the same Koran that other Muslims use to promote peace. So I think that Christians are just as guilty at moral relativism as your most devout atheist. The only difference is that they have a several-thousand page book to look through and pick out the quotes that support their argument. This is why I refuse to get into bible-quote wars with Christians, because every quote I'll point out will be met with an alternate quote.

That being said, let's assume that I'm correct that the Bible wasn't inspired by a God at all but was really just written by a bunch of men. Do you see why I wouldn't consider it a "higher law" but just a reflection of the current cultural norms (as you put it) at the time it was written? This was the wall that I was speaking of earlier that is hard to negotiate when a person of faith is trying to discuss something with a person of non-faith. One gives credence to a set of laws that mean nothing to the other.

Now, after all this, I don't believe that moral relativism is absolute. There has been some ethical proofs that philosophers have come up with (I don't have time to go over them here, I would recommend a book called The Elements of Moral Philosophy, by James Rachels that goes over them well). For instance, one can prove that lying is wrong by the mere fact that if it weren't, language would cease to exist. If you were to tell me something was a "hat" when truth and lies are equally balanced, then I would have no reason whether or not to believe you, since it could just as well be a "lamp" or a "bottle," making language utterly useless.

To dive even further, you seem to suggest that once one allows homosexuality, you can justify anything, even rape or murder. Here is the heart of liberalism: Our belief isn't that anything is fine and dandy, that nobody should be able to judge someone else. Our belief centers around consent. Homosexuality is the consent of two people. Absolutely nobody is getting hurt or forced to do something against his will. When it comes to murder, rape, pedophilia, or even bestiality, there is one party that isn't consenting to the action. It's not a coincidence that most atheists would agree that murder is wrong. If your theory that without a "higher law" anything could be justified, then non-believers would span all across the scale of what is wrong in this particular issue to a statistically-high degree.

***

To move on, just because sexuality is inherent in the definition, this does not indicate any sexual acts. To use your own argument against you, I looked up the term "heterosexual" and got the definition "Sexually oriented to persons of the opposite sex." So are you saying that sexuality is inherent (in the sense that it's their most defining aspect, as you seemed to allude with the word "inherent") in heterosexuals as well? You also assume that he's engaging in gay sex. Why? Are you incapable of imagining a virgin homosexual? Why would he be attending a conservative Christian school if he didn't hold at least some of their moral rules in high regard? You say "I don't think you could argue that he wants the homosexual relationship without the sex; we call that friendship where I come from." Well, I don't know where you come from exactly, but I've had relationships that were more than friendship that didn't involve sex at all.

"What you should at least understand from all of this is that if I believe the Bible teaches something to be wrong, I can’t just say it’s right even though it’s acceptable by cultural norms. Does that make sense?"

Well, why not just believe it's right because nobody is being hurt, or because the bible says a lot of things that you probably wouldn't agree with? Do you believe that people should be put to death for shaving their beards or be punished for wearing two kinds of thread in one shirt? Do you believe that Jesus stood on a mountain and was able to see the whole world because back then they thought that the world was flat and that if you were high enough you could see everything? If not, then why not believe that for a second that there is a higher set of laws that even God references?

Of course, I'm leaving volumes and volumes of loop-holes in here, not because I don't have answers to them, but because to address them all would fill an entire book (for instance, I could prove that there is a set of morals and that God doesn't create what morality is, but it would take several more paragraphs). So I guess I'll have to let this reply be :-P

14 April 20065. jscottkill:

Simon, I appreciate your methodical approach. I thought that you might find this interesting....http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-taylor0.html

19 April 20066. davey joe:

Ok, Mr Owens. This is my view.

If The only Proof you have of Morals, is that everyone agree's with them, Then Its in vain, Because If you have faith In something You have no Proof of, How do you know your right?

Where exacly Do you say the Bible Contradicts itself?

There are no contradictions in the Bible, Whether you think so or not.

I dont have the years of Seminary that Mr Gardener does, but I am positive that Relative morality is flawed. Unless we didnt have finite minds, we would never be able to fully analise ethics, and values. Thats like saying animals have rights. To have a right, says that you know you exist, and know you can die. Animals arent afraid of dying. They have only the instincts to run when they are being chased.

And If you are Agnostic, That says that you Do not Nessesarrily beleive in Yaweh, Mohommad, Budda, Kreshna, or Ali Babba. That gives a considerable Loophole. For all the definition of it, You could worship an inatimateobject, and make it your diety.

You leave several points out, that should be clarified, for the purpose of Understanding you background beleifs.

If I have offended you, I must apologise, It was not intentional.

4 May 20067. Probably the only female Jesse on the planet...:

I dont know why we bother... Religious minds and non-religious minds apparantly cannot peacefully exist together for very long.
I consider myself to be non-religious because I think that there are too many questionable things regarding the Bible. What about all the books of the Bible which were intentionally removed because the higher orders of the Vatican believed that some contradicted others? Something is not right. I think that the truth (if there really is any) is being hidden or at least distorted to suit a certain group's whims.

Nobody can be completely sure of anything! We all go by on our instincts, our intuition.. what WE regard as right and wrong. What I consider wrong stills lies in another man's right. Recently, I have been forced to mentally debate what a colleague of mine mentioned about his opposition to homosexuality and his religion.

I think that if u truly believe that homosexuality is wrong BECAUSE the Bible said so, then so be it. But I find that most people continue to use this argument 'the Bible said so' to cement an argument that they themselves do not comply with. Too often people use the Bible conveniently.. when it suits their whims. Apparantly, the Bible condones fornication and adultery... because these same people are oftentimes the ones who oppose homosexuality on religious, biblical grounds..
I am not trying to justify 'gayness' but its true that we do alot of things that aren't 'good' or 'righteous' in regard to religion but these things aren't taken as seriously or viewed as harshly as homosexuality. Why? Is homosexuality 'more wrong' than adultery and fornication? Why?

Furthermore, I believe that religion is a manifestation of man's controlling nature and greed - an attempt to control the masses (perhaps for the better, perhaps not).Its almost comparable to 'The Village' movie.
I am sure many may disagree with what I'm about to say next but if people weren't so open-minded and they had not changed, adjusted, developed, accepted... we may still be existing in a cave in Mongolia :|
In a broader light, changes bring about more changes... which can very well be positive! But we can never see the positive outcomes or progress, if we continue to restrict ourselves to only what we are acustommed to.

So let's stop creating more divisions and embrace everyone for who they are and who they choose to be.

15 May 20068. David Casey:

I can't believe the crap I'm reading here. Immature idiots. For one, the bible is a nasty book written by male monks up in the cliff top monasteries in the 8th & 9th centuries, for the sole benefit of removing power from women because some snakey monk was scared of them. Look at the damage they've done. At one point the human race looked like it did have potential to become something greater than it is, but that point has long passed and if there was a god, he left us a long time ago. You're dreaming if you think he's still here - he left when we showed our true colors. We've been abandoned - no, not abandoned, he left in disgust. We have proven over and over again just how evil we can be, and how we will support the most hidious of ideals, how we will without a second thought kill the ones we are supposed to love, how we will divide ourselves into groups based on really unimportant divisions, and then these groups will actively pursue the slaughter of minority groups. How long would it take if we removed law and order for us to seize the opportunity to "cleanse" the population of "undesirable elements?" We would revert to our real selves, the monsters we have become, and Christianity is one of the main monsters behind this perverted inner self. You are too young to understand and you are too blind to ever see this, but let it be known you were told, so that one day, if your god returns and turns all the christians to ashes, you were told why long before your alien god returns. Go ahead and dismiss this, because you are not capable of understanding what is so wrong with you. You hate homosexuals, you hate liberals, you hate, you hate, you hate. And you call yourselves christians, and all you do is hate. And I can't resist saying: "Those homophobes who detest homos with great zeal are 99 times out of a 100 homos themselves, so deep inside them is their secret, they will hunt down all those who can read their secret and possibly disclose it." Whatever, we've now passed the point of no return. It happened about seven years ago. We have successfully killed more than ½ the species of life on earth, we've managed to pollute the planet beyond repair, we can never go back to how it was, how beautiful it had been, and we can NEVER reclaim the potential we once had. We are now to become an abandoned experiment, much like Africa. If only you had all listened to people instead of business, we may have evolved into something worth respecting, but we didn't. You still don't get it. Perhaps the task set up for us was too hard, perhaps the elements of evil were too strong, whatever, we failed. We failed to become anything good, and now god does not have an image that resembles us. We are no longer in his image, we are in the image of his mistakes, his refuse, his garbage, and we will be dealt with accordingly. Bye. Hope it was worth it. If I sound bitter, it's quite possible I am. I watched a beautiful place become very ugly. I watched a world listen to demands of money instead of people. I saw intelligence denied and base desired approved. I saw my favorite species die and become extinct because of a mining companies lust for increased profits. I saw the hope of humans get murdered in plain daylight and the authorities were behind it. I don't care anymore because I will not sell my integrity to beg for forgiveness.

26 December 200711. Cory:

People like you remind me of just how far the human race has to go in terms of moving out of the dark ages and reliance upon superstition and into an enlightened society in which people will hopefully one day learn to love everyone and treat one another with respect. You are a pastor? Do you think your god would be proud of you for spreading such a hateful message? You managed to insinuate that homosexuality (something two consenting adults engage in) is akin to thievery (one party does not consent), pedophilia (one party cannot consent), bestiality (one party cannot consent), and necrophilia (one party cannot consent). There is nothing wrong with homosexuality; two consenting adults have every right to love one another. Those other things you mentioned are heinous acts in which a person, a person's property, or an animal is violated against their will. Do you not see the distinction?

What is wrong with you? You are sick. If there was a god, he wouldn't like you. 100 or 200 years from now, our posterity will remember people like you as the unfortunate evil influences of the day. You will be remembered as a divider, a spreader of hate, a barrier to progress, a roadblock thrown in the way of humans becoming better humans. The only justice we will ever get is in how history will record your evil deeds after we're all gone.