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Little Blackfly posted:I know Paul's not all bad. But Paul directly calls people like me degenerate sinners. You can prevaricate all you like about how early Christians would have been fine with queer people, but you know they wouldn't have been. Why should I trust Christians not to cite him again, among other passages, to oppress queer people again, especially after all it took to get (some) good Christian people to acknowledge our basic humanity in the first place. I apologize in advance for this post. I should just be honest, I am a homosexual. At least in part. I have known since I was young. And I suspect most men are, to some extent, even if they aren't fully aware of it, or don't want to admit it to themselves or to others. I think science such as Kinsey supports this. (This isn't meant to be a challenge to anyone, I just want to establish that I believe it to be a common temptation, despite the popular belief it is something only a small subset of men experience.) I think homosexuality comes partly out of love, but partly out of sin. It is love that attracts us to someone's heart. It is love that breaks through the fear of betrayal. But my rational mind, which is in tune with truth, which is God, tells me that I should prefer a wife, and to try to have children. If I choose not to procreate, and universalize that principle, then I spell the separation of the sexes and the death of the species. If there is a cultural shift in which good people evade procreation, I believe the results will be nothing less than catastrophic. I can't endorse that. In short, I view it as an obligation to humanity itself, to the future, to harmony with the female sex, and to my family, to keep it going. It is a responsibility. My misgivings with women, born out of experience, will have to be worked through and laid aside in a spirit of humility, honesty, truth, and love, in the hopes of lasting union between the sexes. I know I can fall in love with women, I have done so many times before, I'm just afraid to try because I don't want to be hurt. My preference for men, who share so many of my interests, who are usually much kinder to my heart, must be kept at the boundary of sex. I must work hard and dutifully to achieve a sex life that does not make me feel unholy, and I should resist sex otherwise. I am grateful that my sin is not punishable by the state, or by the church, although I have to admit that would probably make it easier to avoid, but only out of fear, which corrupts the soul. It may be hard to face, but it is the truth, and I trust in God to get me through, and to never fear the truth, but to be humbled by it! The words and actions of Christ tell us that the only moral alternative to marriage and (attempted) procreation is celibate devotion to God, which is actually held to be an even higher and more spiritual choice than marriage, because romance and sex are sacrificed. In practice, sexual activity is common amongst many supposedly celibate people, to the extent celibacy seems sometimes like a lie, an outer shield used to protect people from criticism rather than a true dedication. I cannot endorse a hypocritical and dishonest "celibacy" that is actually filled with sex, but I greatly respect the discipline of sincere spiritual abstinence, including from pornography and masturbation, in the same sense I respect fasting. Of course, in these times, I interact with many openly homosexual people and find them to generally be very kind and fun. I am, in a sense, one of them. Some are members of my church community, and everyone gets along great there and supports one another. I support them against those who condemn them, I enjoy their company, and again, this is because of love. I think homosexual monogamy is less sinful than heterosexual promiscuity. So I believe it is a sin, a sin I myself commit, a sin I truly wish I did not, a sin I confess now and in the confessional, and a sin I pray to God to help me with. And I admire those who either commit to true celibacy, or achieve healthy marriages. Sorry again for talking about myself so much, but homosexuality comes up a lot in relation to Christianity and it seemed appropriate and even necessary that I finally share my experience and thoughts on the issue. I hope my words do not inspire any sadness, that is not my intention. To address the point of your post a bit, I think Paul sometimes got angry with the church community's decadence and tried to keep it in line so it would leave a positive impression on the surrounding community. At times, he could be rough, it is true. My advice is to simply understand how he feels, know he is speaking from his heart, and realize that Paul himself, as I believe most men do, likely struggled with the issue.
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Jul 12, 2014 22:54
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And I reject your epistemological framework and the truth you claim to feel, as well as your childish teleological view of human life and procreation. Those feelings are at least partially the source of a great deal of the hatred and misogyny that suffuses the Abrahamic religions and cause so much suffering to people. You can feel or believe whatever you want to believe but its ultimately meaningless, and even if you did manage to create a society truly based on your personal and highly contingent understanding, within a generation some other cleric or scholar could bring the old hatred right back again. And it would still be harmful and destructive to people. I "know in my heart" that the love of God you feel, the purpose you divine for human life, is a construction of your own mind, illusory and subjective. I have no reason to trust that the good I see in Christianity will persist in a Christian society, or that its evil will be suppressed. Charity, reverence for life, equality: these ideas are all over the world in a million different forms, and yet everywhere people still have to fight for recognition of their basic humanity. If Christianity was such a panacea to problems of temporal power, shouldn't it have won by now? Your own repression of your feelings based on the edicts of a voice in some desert shepherd's head is also to me a sign of you being damaged by religion. That belief in and of itself is harmful. You are, indeed, an example to be pitied. E: especially your belief that a samesex relationship implies no procreation. Why assume that gay people as a group will forgo procreation? Political Whores fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Jul 13, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 23:14
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buttcoin smuggler posted:Thanks for the detailed post. On your view, how late is too late for an abortion to be moral? No date is too late; that's way too simplistic. Firstly, there are many fetal health problems or abnormalities that can only be detected at a later date in the pregnancy. By banning abortion after a certain number weeks, we would be forcing women to carry these pregnancies to term anyway and give birth to a baby who cannot survive for longer than a few days or even hours. This seems incredibly cruel. Another reason is that in the United States at least, politicians have been hard at work coming up with legislation designed to delay women from getting abortions for as long as possible. Poor women are hurt by these laws the most because they also have to deal with the high costs of transportation and medical services. In a perfect world, everyone would be able to get an abortion as soon as they decided they needed one, but in reality it takes some women months to raise enough money even though they wanted an abortion back in the first trimester. By banning abortion after a certain date, we are singling out poor women to have children they cannot take care of. I can't describe women in these situations who get later abortions as being immoral. You'll have to come up with a more complex criteria than a cut-off date.
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Jul 12, 2014 23:55
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buttcoin smuggler fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 23:58
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buttcoin smuggler posted:Do you think any abortions are immoral? Not my abortion, that's for sure!
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Jul 13, 2014 00:09
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Little Blackfly posted:If Christianity was such a panacea to problems of temporal power, shouldn't it have won by now? Kyrie, Homosexuals have loving procreative relationships right now, in which they raise loving families. There is no reason you can't have that. Everything is "partly out of love, but partly out of sin" and no sin can separate you from God. http://www.thestar.com/life/2014/07/03/photo_of_toronto_dads_with_newborn_son_goes_viral.html Separately, you'll never sleep again, and you'll spend the rest of your life terrified for the child, and the whole business of children is exhausting. But after experiencing the relationship between parent and child, I cannot deny that experience to anyone. Homosexuality is a non sequitur to having a procreative marriage. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Jul 13, 2014 |
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Jul 13, 2014 00:33
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BrandorKP posted:Thing is Christianity inverts this question. And when it's at it's very best it loses. Christians hope for the resurrection and the Kingdom but the context of that hope is despair and utter defeat. OK but I'm not a Christian and this thread isn't about Christianity generally but about the ultimate good of giving temporal power to a Christian government. So providing some evidence of this, given Christianity's dominance of many parts of the world, would be a good start.
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Jul 13, 2014 00:42
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What's with this whole "Christian government" crap anyway? What would Jesus have to say about that? He'd be like "gently caress these mud kingdoms bro, get ready for the kingdom I've prepared for you."
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Jul 13, 2014 00:54
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Also Julius Caesar accomplished way way more than Jesus Christ.
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Jul 13, 2014 00:55
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SedanChair posted:What's with this whole "Christian government" crap anyway? What would Jesus have to say about that? He'd be like "gently caress these mud kingdoms bro, get ready for the kingdom I've prepared for you." its anarcho-syndicalism. edit: christian anarchism
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Jul 13, 2014 01:00
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Little Blackfly posted:OK but I'm not a Christian and this thread isn't about Christianity generally but about the ultimate good of giving temporal power to a Christian government. So providing some evidence of this, given Christianity's dominance of many parts of the world, would be a good start. Oh, I'm against theocracy and theonomy. But I don't think secular democracies have managed to actually be secular. I haven't made this argument yet (because frankly it's reaching even for me) but I think we're not moving towards a more secular world but that we're actually reverting to more polytheistic world. And more problematic we don't know it, we worship our gods of state or markets or liberty or guns or class struggle without recognizing that we treat them as gods. I don't see an alternative to a monotheistic response. I don't want a theocracy of any of those gods either. Because let's face it. Theocracy looks often looks like fascism. I think fascism is a, maybe the, clearest expression of the demonic. Anyway there is a reaction to, a diastasis, to a synthesis of Christianity and modernity (and that reaction is also a reaction to fascism). I think there are alternatives. SedanChair posted:He'd be like "gently caress these mud kingdoms bro, get ready for the kingdom I've prepared for you." Basically this but right now, immediate. The kingdom (heaven) and hell are immediate. And it's increasing ceasing to be an abstract conversation. And often the people I see as most advocating for the Kingdom are not Christian or are even are radically against Christianity. I keep trying to get away from Tillich but I don't see an out other than correlation.
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Jul 13, 2014 01:33
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buttcoin smuggler posted:Do you think any abortions are immoral? Yes.
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Jul 13, 2014 02:13
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Kyrie eleison posted:A lot of self hurting stuff Kyrie, you've been lied to. You've been told to repress yourself. You've been told that you're wrong. That you're evil for having these feelings. You're *not*. I'm bisexual, and I don't have any sort of 'voice that says I should prefer women'. Or any 'logical side that is in line with a higher power'. I'm an ex-christian, I understand what its like. You were taught this as a child, and it's *Really* hard to break away. It's really hard to stop and realize that if the bible or christian faith is as it is said? gods a loving prick and has no place in a civilized culture. Its really hard to realize that to the church, your worship is more important than who you really are, and your happiness. Kyrie eleison posted:But my rational mind, which is in tune with truth, which is God, tells me that I should prefer a wife, and to try to have children. If I choose not to procreate, and universalize that principle, then I spell the separation of the sexes and the death of the species. If there is a cultural shift in which good people evade procreation, I believe the results will be nothing less than catastrophic. That's not your rational mind. That's what you've been forcefed all your life. 'god' doesn't tell you that you should prefer a wife, that's the cultural norms that people have tried to force you into. Literally trying to make you round to fit in a round hole, when in actually you're a triangle. You're repressing yourself, and all that's going to do is hurt you. A lot. Believe me, there is not going to be any sort of cultural shift where people avoid giving birth. Even with abortions legal, there are still babies being born. We have a *long* time to go before people slowing down on baby births has an actual affect. Even if LGBT people were accepted tomorrow, and nobody gave a gently caress? There's still a great number of hetero people who are more than happy to have kids. Even then, you're not unable to procreate. There are such things as donor wombs, there are such things as sperm banks where you can store sperm. I don't understand how you're saying that if you don't procreate it 'spells the seperation of the sexes'. The most I can imagine is that you think that if people can choose to be gay, why have babies. Which, I'm sorry Kyrie, is wrong. You do not choose to be gay, bi, or a lesbian. It just happens. I did not at any point in my life wake up and say "Y'know what, I want to gently caress a guy instead of a girl." I just glanced at someone, and I realized that I found him. . . Cute. This shocked the hell out of me, and it got me upset, and I wanted to repress it. I wanted to bury it. But I came to realize it was a part of me. And if some god is going to cast judgement on me, having apparently made me who I am, then gently caress him. Kyrie eleison posted:I apologize in advance for this post. Paul was a dick, who outright subverted the words of jesus, and ignored the teachings when it became inconvenient. He went into it to try and get his own church going. You can tell because he does things that jesus himself said not to do. “For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” ~ Matthew 5:18-19 That was Jesus speaking in the bible. So he's saying all the old testament rules still apply. Then Paul goes and says 'Well it's just fine to eat whatever you want.' or do whatever that goes against all the previous teachings. So I guess he's least in the kingdom of heaven. Basically Paul was angry that he wasn't getting any and decided to try and make sure nobody else could either. But you also have to understand, by old testament rules? We're all going to hell. Poly-cotton clothing is the most common type of clothing nowadays. I'm pretty sure we've all shaved our beards at least once. If you've ever had shrimp, congrats. That's an abomination, just as bad as being gay. So we're going to hell there too. Hell, following the old testament rules? We couldn't be speaking right now. quote:You must kill those who worship another god. Exodus 22:20 Following any of the old rules, as Jesus said you should, you should be a mass murderer.
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Jul 13, 2014 02:19
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I think it's a rather narrow and facile conclusion. Societies have always been shaped by myth and ideology, and ours is no different. Secularity is in any case a very Christian and Roman concept, and decrying the necessity of a Christian underpinning of society isn't a call for the universalization of American capitalist democracy. Hell, your whole concept of polytheism, rather than the specific focuses of cultural worship, being a problem reveals an obvious bias in the way you think about religious faith in a world that is by no means only monotheistic. Why should Christianity be our blueprint for social organization, and not something like Buddhism, Hinduism, or the Iroquois's great law of peace, or even something entirely new? Why should anybody not invested in Christianity personally trust even a modern synthesis of it to provide guidance for society? E: It's not even that I believe Christianity has nothing to contribute. But why assume it should serve as a moral framework? Where does that certainty come from, other than a lack of introspection? Political Whores fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Jul 13, 2014 |
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Jul 13, 2014 02:40
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buttcoin smuggler fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Jul 13, 2014 02:41
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buttcoin smuggler posted:Could you give some examples, and your reasoning behind thinking they're immoral? One example pro-life people like to bring up is forced/coercive abortions in China. I also find them immoral, but probably for a different reason. Abortion is a dangerous procedure that can cause physical and emotional trauma, especially as a pregnancy progresses (though not as dangerous as giving birth). For that reason, while it is acceptable for a woman to consent to such a procedure being done to herself (much like how she should be able to consent to being pregnant), it is immoral for another person or the government to force it upon her without consent. I consider coercive abortions to be immoral, and legally I would categorize them as assault.
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Jul 13, 2014 02:57
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Kyrie eleison posted:Anyway, here's my thoughts on that abortion thing. It's that, scientifically speaking, human life very clearly does begin at conception. If you were to identify, biologically, the moment at which every human life began, you would go back to the moment the sperm entered the egg and began the rapid chain of events that results in a fetus and finally a baby. I pointed this out before, but this is definitely not the case. If you're looking for discrete events that lead to a point where a fetus starts developing progressively, you need to take into account TWO events: fertilization (merging of the gametes) and implantation (which initiates the developmental directionality): ShadowCatboy posted:Technically, fertilization doesn't create a new, genetically distinct human organism either. Left on its own, even if it got all the nutrients it needed, a fertilized ovum would probably just develop into a ball of undifferentiated (or abberantly differentiated) cells. Fertilization provides the complete set of genetic material, but the zygote is just a formless, symmetrical ball of cells. Implantation helps break this symmetry and initiates the development of form. Also, if we're going for a strictly Abrahamic view of fetal personhood... the original Jews/Christians didn't consider the fetus to be an individual life. Damage or death of the fetus was apparently treated as a property loss more than anything. Killing an unborn fetus was punishable by a fine according to Biblical law. Killing the mother however was murder, so there was apparently a distinction drawn there between what is murder and what isn't.
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Jul 13, 2014 02:58
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Still waiting on an answer to my question. E-Tank posted:So you're saying that athiests cannot be moral?
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Jul 13, 2014 03:03
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buttcoin smuggler fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Jul 13, 2014 03:03
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Little Blackfly posted:I think it's a rather narrow and facile conclusion. Societies have always been shaped by myth and ideology, and ours is no different. Secularity is in any case a very Christian and Roman concept, and decrying the necessity of a Christian underpinning of society isn't a call for the universalization of American capitalist democracy. Hell, your whole concept of polytheism, rather than the specific focuses of cultural worship, being a problem reveals an obvious bias in the way you think about religious faith in a world that is by no means only monotheistic. Why should Christianity be our blueprint for social organization, and not something like Buddhism, Hinduism, or the Iroquois's great law of peace, or even something entirely new? Why should anybody not invested in Christianity personally trust even a modern synthesis of it to provide guidance for society? And that's a very real problem. And again I don't think synthesis is possible anymore ( I did for a while, I don't now). Correlation is still an alternative. And it (correlation) may be as problematic as a synthesis. But I'm pretty far into a bottle of 1783 tonight. So this may not make drat bit of sense. Have you looked at that David Brat rear end in a top hat. He talks about the things Christianity should learn from Nietzsche and it confuses a lot of people. They can't figure out where hell that comes from. I know where that comes from, I know exactly where that comes from. There are a very limited (singular) number of theologian who call Nietzsche a prophet and make that argument and I happen to be obsessed with him. Now this is rambling and only tangentially connected to the specific conversation you and I are having, but it's relevant to discussions I've had with some other posters in the thread, for gently caress going on years at this point. But, to get back on topic I am aware of the obvious bias in my ideology and the repercussions but I'm still willing to risk them. And I think you're absolutely correct about secularity being "a very Christian and Roman concept". But when you ask this: "Why should Christianity be our blueprint for social organization?" I won't respond with a dogma or a doctrine. My response is to point to the cross. What do temporal powers do to individuals who are authentically for others? Little Blackfly posted:Where does that certainty come from, other than a lack of introspection? Christianity survives it's own negation. I haven't encounter another ideology that manages to survive that yet. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Jul 13, 2014 |
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Jul 13, 2014 03:38
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E-Tank posted:Still waiting on an answer to my question. An atheist can act morally but try cannot be moral because an atheist doesn't believe in morality.
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Jul 13, 2014 04:26
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BrandorKP posted:You're underselling the length. Add the length of breastfeeding to the nine months ... never sleeping again Yep. The no-choice position usually hinges very strongly on ignoring the reality of pregnancy as hard as you possibly can. Talk about god, talk about fetal biology, talk about any and everything under the sun ... except pregnancy. If someone attempts to talk about pregnancy, hand wave it away and dismiss the difficulty. Anything post birth is dismissed by invoking the word "Adoption". Anything prior to birth that doesn't kill you is whining. As a result people who advocate forced gestation passionately/truthily tend to be amazingly ignorant of maternal biology and what pregnancy does to a body. They also drastically underestimate how dangerous it is ( how can it be dangerous? Its natural! My body was "made to do it"! God doesn't give you challenges you can't handle. Etc ) To top it off, they generally will completely dismiss anything that only happens sometimes. The list of pregnancy complications is a zillion miles long. You are pretty much guaranteed to have something go weird, but an individual complication is generally rare. Thus any specific complication will be deemed an edge case and dismissed while presenting a comprehensive list will backfire. The list will be willfully misinterpreted as a claim that all of these happen every time, the straw man argument dispatched, and the no-choicer will start wallowing in the "pregnancy is no big deal" propaganda convinced that you are blowing it out of proportion with the blatantly inaccurate list. So I only bring up profoundly disturbing things that happen every single pregnancy like the gross changes to brain structure. BrandorKP posted:That looks very much like Libertarian non-aggression even if that's not the place it actually comes from in your argument (and there are reasons for that). I disagree. Libertarians and An caps try to take the standard morals and ethics that we as a society hold for matters of blood and flesh and apply them to all forms of property. I hold the more normal view that lethal self defense is not warranted for property crimes unless the property in question is vital to continued health. By contrast, people who advocate forced gestation are trying to exempt pregnancy from the system of ethics and morals that surround every other issue of bodily autonomy and treat it like a minor property crime for which the use of lethal force in self defense is never permissible. BrandorKP posted:
I contest the idea that their position is based on the ideal you describe. If this ideal were actually the driving force behind their position they would continue to hold life above bodily autonomy after birth. I've met only a handful who do that. Your typical no-choicer will hold that I should be compelled to gestate. That it is acceptable to imprison and restrain me in the interest of fetal safety. If I propose starving myself to miscarriage they'll advocate force feeding. But if the resulting baby requires additional human flesh to survive - say a kidney or a bone marrow donation - they immediately reverse their stance and hold the potential donors right to bodily autonomy over the actual babies right to life. They will even respect my right to refuse to donate after birth. This makes no sense with your proposed motivation. Forcing me to be pregnant is massively more invasive and a profoundly greater violation than spending a few hours donating marrow. But they'd let an actual baby die rather than violate my bodily autonomy further to save it after torturing me for nine months in the name of a fetus. Something else is motivating them. I met one no-choicer who openly admitted to a motive that was logically consistent with his actions. He proposed that a fertilized egg always miscarried unless god intervenes. Every successful implantation is thus God's explicate will. He then contended that my argument fell apart because I am a creation of God and have no right to self defense against my creator.
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Jul 13, 2014 04:42
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Miltank posted:An atheist can act morally but try cannot be moral because an atheist doesn't believe in morality. Some atheists clearly do believe in morality though?
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Jul 13, 2014 04:48
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buttcoin smuggler posted:Are there any non-coerced, elective abortions you find immoral? What about sex-selective abortion? I find it immoral but think making it illegal is a useless solution. I find it immoral because it perpetuates the idea that females are inherently less valuable than males, and because the significant gender imbalance it can result in leads to national instability and increased violence against women. But the truth is, even though I find it immoral, I can understand that women often do it out of desperation. if I were in their situation I can't confidently say I wouldn't have done the same thing. They have a right to their bodily autonomy just like every other woman, and even if I intellectually disagree with their reasons for abortion from my comfortable position, I don't have the right to interfere with their bodies. I value individual liberty and think mandating certain kinds of reproduction for the good of the state is abhorrent. To effectively reduce this problem we must attack it from a different angle. So why do they do it? Sex-selective abortion is the natural consequence of patriarchy combined with modern technology. The reason families choose to abort female fetuses in large numbers is because in the countries most heavily affected by this problem (EX: India, China) girls and women are culturally and legally devalued/disadvantaged to the point that having a daughter is often a devastating economic burden on a family. Banning abortions in this case would be treating the symptoms instead of the disease. Some of these countries have outright banned sex-selective abortion, but women continue to seek out illegal ultrasounds and procedures anyway (with all the grisly consequences you can imagine). The only true solution to the problem is to dismantle the sexist institutions and traditions that make women second-class citizens, so that when families have daughters it's not a disaster, but a reason for happiness. Of course, that's vastly more difficult for politicians to accomplish than just proposing "Let's ban abortion!", so... The good news is that there's evidence this approach can work: quote:There is, however, one country thus far that has managed to return from grotesquely imbalanced SRBs to normal human ratios: South Korea. As explained by Woojin Chung and Monica Das Gupta in 2007 in Population and Development Review, there is still considerable dispute about the factors involved in this turnaround, with many institutions and actors ready to take credit (as the old saying goes: success has many fathers). Available evidence, however, seems to suggest that South Korea’s SRB reversal was influenced less by government policy than by civil society: more specifically, by the spontaneous and largely uncoordinated congealing of a mass movement for honoring, protecting, and prizing daughters. In effect, this movement — drawing largely but by no means exclusively on the faith-based community — sparked a national conversation of conscience about the practice of female feticide. This conversation was instrumental in stigmatizing the practice, not altogether unlike the way in which nationwide conversations of conscience helped to stigmatize international slave-trading in other countries in earlier times. The best hope today in the global war against baby girls may be to carry this conversation of conscience to other lands. Medical and health care professionals — without whose assistance mass female feticide could not occur — have a special obligation to be front and center in this dialogue. When you boil it down I often find abortion to be a symptom of the real social problems going on under the surface. Poverty, lack of healthcare, welfare, grossly inadequate resources for the disabled, institutional sexism, etc. Abortion bans are frequently lazy attempts by the government to address these problems... by ignoring them completely  Addressing these problems is the only effective way to significantly reduce abortion.
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Jul 13, 2014 04:55
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BrandorKP posted:Homosexuals have loving procreative relationships right now, in which they raise loving families. There is no reason you can't have that. Everything is "partly out of love, but partly out of sin" and no sin can separate you from God. I honestly find that story more disturbing than anything. It's like something out of the twilight zone. It's particularly bizarre to me that the mother of the child is not named and is only mentioned in passing. It seems disordered, and I am concerned for the child. Put simply, this is not what I want for my life. My own homosexuality does not automatically make me comfortable with things like this. I think a lot of homosexuals feel the same way, but prefer not to admit their own homosexuality, or face the criticism from the political crowd. E-Tank posted:Kyrie, you've been lied to. You've been told to repress yourself. You've been told that you're wrong. That you're evil for having these feelings. I have not been told that I am evil for having feelings (not by the church anyway). The truth is that my social influences are mostly liberal in nature. I deduced my ideology by myself through my own private studies. The church does not say anyone is evil merely for feeling sexual attraction and recognizes sexual morality as a universal struggle. It is the most common confession by far. I find this position more in line with my intuition and reason than the alternative which teaches that I should deny being a sinner and do whatever I feel the inclination to do. quote:“For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” ~ Matthew 5:18-19 He also says he comes to "fulfill" the law, but does a number of things which seem to contradict it, such as healing on the sabbath and interrupting the stoning of the adulteress, meaning there is clearly a more nuanced meaning to what is being said here. He highlighted the best parts of the law such as "love your neighbor as yourself" (from Deuteronomy), emphasized hypocrisy of those who claim to enforce it, and generally sought the moral spirit of the law. As for Paul's take on the Old Testament, please read my gbs post here.
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Jul 13, 2014 04:57
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Miltank posted:An atheist can act morally but try cannot be moral because an atheist doesn't believe in morality. I believe in morality. I believe that people should try and live in a moral fashion. I just disagree that morals are based on a loving lovely book that was written two thousand years ago. I believe in the moral of 'If I do this, and people get hurt through my actions, I am immoral for doing this'. Its a surprisingly solid moral, even if its so simple. But please, tell me again how I'm an immoral heathen who is one step away from murdering you with a rock.  Kyrie eleison posted:I have not been told that I am evil for having feelings (not by the church anyway). The truth is that my social influences are mostly liberal in nature. I deduced my ideology by myself through my own private studies. The church does not say anyone is evil merely for feeling sexual attraction and recognizes sexual morality as a universal struggle. It is the most common confession by far. I find this position more in line with my intuition and reason than the alternative which teaches that I should deny being a sinner and do whatever I feel the inclination to do. I am not going to sit here, and judge you for your beliefs. Nor am I going to tell you what you should and shouldn't do. I'm going to just show you what the church in their quest to rid the world of 'sin' has done to people like you and me. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/one-towns-war-on-gay-teens-20120202
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Jul 13, 2014 05:01
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I'm interested in knowing what others think the difference between morality and ethics is. I've been using the two rather interchangeably myself, to be honest.
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Jul 13, 2014 05:03
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buttcoin smuggler fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Jul 13, 2014 05:03
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FourLeaf posted:I'm interested in knowing what others think the difference between morality and ethics is. I've been using the two rather interchangeably myself, to be honest. Ogmius815 fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Jul 13, 2014 |
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Jul 13, 2014 05:10
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buttcoin smuggler posted:Since you're trying to dodge the key issue here, I'll be more direct this time. No. Like the answer I gave in my last post, that would be immoral. I'm not trying to dodge the key issue here. You asked a broad question, so I had to search for an answer- and look, it was the same answer you were clearly fishing for here! Why are you acting like this is some devastating concession? If you wanted that specific question answered you should have loving asked it at the beginning.
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Jul 13, 2014 05:18
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buttcoin smuggler fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Jul 13, 2014 05:24
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buttcoin smuggler posted:Ok, great, now we're getting somewhere! So you hold abortion in that hypo to be immoral. Why is it immoral? I'm guessing you'll respond it's because the fetus has some kind of right to life, but I want to be sure. drat dude, sure are pushing people into a corner with your logic bombs here.
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Jul 13, 2014 05:26
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buttcoin smuggler fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Jul 13, 2014 05:28
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Miltank posted:An atheist can act morally but try cannot be moral because an atheist doesn't believe in morality. The (hypothetical) existence of God doesn't prove or provide substance to any kind of morality, because you can't get from an is to an ought. That is a pretty basic result of philosophical inquiry and you are really wrong here.
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Jul 13, 2014 05:32
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buttcoin smuggler fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Jul 13, 2014 05:33
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buttcoin smuggler posted:Ok, great, now we're getting somewhere! So you hold abortion in that hypo to be immoral. Why is it immoral? I'm guessing you'll respond it's because the fetus has some kind of right to life, but I want to be sure. A week before birth a fetus has developed the capability to feel pain, and to suffer. Like I mentioned in my first post, I think this is the factor which distinguishes personhood: FourLeaf posted:I would say that what gives a human's life value is its ability to experience happiness and suffering (I will refer to this as personhood). For that reason I feel that it is not only acceptable for women to have abortions, but also, in limited cases, to euthanize humans who have already been born. Specifically, I am referring to the case of anencephalic babies that VitalSigns mentioned. An anencephalic baby is certainly human, but I would say it is not a person. At the other end of life, I feel it was also ethical for Children's Hospital Oakland to refuse to continue life support once Jahi McMath was declared brain-dead. Her body was still human and capable of functions like breathing (with assistance), but her consciousness, along with Jahi the person, was lost forever. Past that point, I think abortion would be immoral without some kind of mitigating factor, like a severe health problem. You have designed your hypothetical to have none.
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Jul 13, 2014 05:41
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I actually don't think its possible to be moral if your doing it for religious reasons. Morality always has a component of intent, and it seems to me that if the only reason your not raping and murdering is because god will gently caress you up if you do, your morality is that of a man who is being coerced. An atheist on the other hand avoids immorality because its the right thing to do and has settled on his moral code by examining the axioms of his moral structure and deciding that its the decent and correct way to live. But really if your just behaving decently due to a fear of retribution from space, I don't have enough information to work out if your a decent person or a total bastard who only behaves decently due to a fear of ghosts.
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Jul 13, 2014 05:44
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buttcoin smuggler fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Jul 13, 2014 05:58
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buttcoin smuggler posted:There are good objections to Divine Command Theory but this isn't one of them. Here's what a popular theologian has to say on the matter. Christian apologetics as a whole tend to be worthless garbage for similar reasons: they have as a goal the sustainment of a particular set of beliefs, rather than a real desire to inquire. They have the trappings and language of philosophical treatise, without any of the content.
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Jul 13, 2014 06:02
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buttcoin smuggler fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Jul 13, 2014 06:07
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