Jesus, a force of evil?

[James_S_Saint]

What makes the “best house” the best, in your view? That seems an intractable problem as an objective matter. If everybody’s view of “the best house” is different, where does that leave things?

Well I thought I was talking to YOU about YOUR opinion of the “best ethics package” and YOUR advise as to what group promotes them effectively. Or Scientific evidence that the package would actually work well, which would be tough to obtain.

We aren’t designing a world religion to feed to the masses. I am asking you of your idea of “best”. You had said that the Catholics are “unjust, wicked, and perverse”. My argument up to now has been that they have a “working ethics package” that might be the best on the planet regardless of whether it is as good as we might want.

And “complete” means that you have included everything of significant relevance. It isn’t complete if it says that the steering wheel must be on the left but says nothing of which side of the street to drive on.

 

[James_S_Saint]

And you got me. That wasn’t what I was thinking you were going to come back with. Although I should have guessed.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I was arguing for against the Jesus/Christian model for exactly this reason – it’s a self-contradictory framework. One the one hand we see Jesus emphasizing the “inner” motivations and goals of man, focus on love as agape, sacrificial, giving. And while we don’t have any direct words from Jesus on the question of homosexuals, Paul takes over later and completely “legalizes” and demonizes homosexuality in a way that is starkly and conspicuously at odds with Jesus’ focus on love as giving, selfless, intimate in a generative and “building up” way.

The Christian teaching in the Bible does not comment on homosexuality, at all. Homosexuality, defined as the exclusive attraction of a person for his/her own sex, was not a framework that Paul was working with, at all – it is a modern social definition. The question is this: is homosexuality a natural kind? If yes, then you may have a good point. If no, then a clear defense is available: Paul was condemning actions, not people. You may disagree with what actions ought to be condemned, but that is not a matter of principles.

Either way, many moderns Christians do consider homosexual activity more sinful than other forms of fornication (which is the parallel that Paul tends to draw), and this is serious error.

It’s precisely because frameworks like Christianity are fraught with these ethical and moral contradictions that the ethical man refuses to take on the cancer and pathogens with the good fruit that’s available. We esteem the idea that the ‘truth shall set you free’, and yet we are confronted with this “mystery” of our freedom really being bondage (wink), as we are most free when we are bondservants of Christ – again the same kind of ethical thinking that puts “arbeit macht frei” over the prison gate.

But here you condemn Aristotle’s ethics, too. The man who is most just is also the most free, because he is not constrained by his desires; rather, he desires justice, and freely pursues it. The Christian is not told to seek out what he does not want – license – but rather to let his desires be transformed into desire for the good. Christians who do not do this are often dogmatists who desperately want to sin, and therefore they become Pharisees. But, as you know, a philosophy is not proven wrong because we fail to live it out.

Christians are exhorted to tell the truth, but when it comes to the science of human physiology regarding human sexual orientation, their honesty and fairness goes out the window.

And what of the science that says that all sexuality is much more fluid in its object than we might expect?

This is a kind of utopian thinking that tends to produce horrors and atrocities in spite of itself, anwyay, so it really isn’t a bug so much as a feature of human psychology, that kind of diversity.

Do you really think it will be the Christians who commit the horrors and atrocities in the coming 100 years?

 

[Touchstone]

Well I thought I was talking to YOU about YOUR opinion of the “best ethics package” and YOUR advise as to what group promotes them effectively. Or Scientific evidence that the package would actually work well, which would be tough to obtain.

Well, you know what you are intending than I know what you are intending. The best tools I know for living an ethical, morally positive life I will only sketch, as that’s a book-length answer you’re asking for:

• Honesty as the best practice in dealing with others, and particularly in dealing with the self
• Responsibility and self-discipline borne as the cost of autonomy and freedom
• Empathy and compassion for your fellow man (I am fundamentally like my neighbors)
• Courage in the face of adversity as the means to sustain one’s principles and achieve goals
• Industry as the means to achievement and independence
• Magnanimity in dealing with others, as the evidence of one’s inner strength and good will
• Love for others as I want to be loved as the basis for a sustaining, rich and gratifying set of personal relationships
• Reason and rigorous thinking in all things, so as to maximize the good, and avoid error.
• Law of symmetry. Treat others as I expect to be treated as the grounds for mutually positive interactions in society.
• Commitment to see justice upheld and justice done. If I don’t defend justice for my neighbor, or even my enemy/opponent, I cannot expect justice for myself.
• Dignity of the human person. Humans are born with innate drives, intuitions and reasoning capacities that give them inherent value, and their lives and interests are not to be gratuitously thwarted or cut short by anyone else, be it man of “god”.

These are virtues that come to mind for the ethical framework I esteem.

We aren’t designing a world religion to feed to the masses. I am asking you of your idea of “best”. You had said that the Catholics are “unjust, wicked, and perverse”. My argument up to now has been that they have a “working ethics package” that might be the best on the planet regardless of whether it is as good as we might want.

I think Catholics would nod at a lot of the items on my list. Catholics would certainly approve of the idea of upholding justice as an ideal. But the baggage of their dogma has removed them from justice as a human concept, and it has been “godified” – just is what some imaginary god wants, not what balances the interests of men and their liberties against their actions. So a Catholic supposes he can vote against equality under the law for homosexuals, and yet still claim to be for “justice”, because the concept has been subverted by this alien concept of “God”, a construct unaccountable to men in construing the term “justice”.

And “complete” means that you have included everything of significant relevance. It isn’t complete if it says that the steering wheel must be on the left but says nothing of which side of the street to drive on.

That sounds like you are focusing on coherence and self-consistency rather than completeness. Coherence is good, and as I said in my previous post, coherence is one reason a moral thinker breaks apart a package like the basic Christian bundle of ethics – it’s not a coherent, self-consistent whole. It’s because we seek a coherent framework that we must reject the self-contradictory parts.

Situationally, reason is regularly needed to resolve unavoidable tensions and conflicts between virtues. Being honest and seeking justice sometimes conflict – when the Nazis knock at the door asking for Jews to haul away to the camps, should you tell the truth? In practice, the interactions between these principles can be complex and problematic.

-TS

 

[Prodigal_Son]

• Honesty as the best practice in dealing with others, and particularly in dealing with the self
• Responsibility and self-discipline borne as the cost of autonomy and freedom
• Empathy and compassion for your fellow man (I am fundamentally like my neighbors)
• Courage in the face of adversity as the means to sustain one’s principles and achieve goals
• Industry as the means to achievement and independence
• Magnanimity in dealing with others, as the evidence of one’s inner strength and good will
• Love for others as I want to be loved as the basis for a sustaining, rich and gratifying set of personal relationships
• Reason and rigorous thinking in all things, so as to maximize the good, and avoid error.
• Law of symmetry. Treat others as I expect to be treated as the grounds for mutually positive interactions in society.
• Commitment to see justice upheld and justice done. If I don’t defend justice for my neighbor, or even my enemy/opponent, I cannot expect justice for myself.
• Dignity of the human person. Humans are born with innate drives, intuitions and reasoning capacities that give them inherent value, and their lives and interests are not to be gratuitously thwarted or cut short by anyone else, be it man of “god”.

As a side note, Touchstone, I admire the way you have “put your ideas on display” by making such a list. Many criticize, but offer nothing in the place of a Christian ethical viewpoint. As soon as you do commit to make your ideas concrete, you expose yourself to criticism, which puts you “on defense”, so to speak.

Christians, by definition, have their ideas on display, 24/7. This makes us a sitting target for criticism. My favorite kind of atheist is the atheist who offers some positive system of his own, such as Leela, our resident pragmatist. By offering your own ideas about morality, here, you begin to fit into the same category.

 

[James_S_Saint]

I agree with P_S, but making you a target is certainly not my intention here.

Demonstration is the affirmation of theory and is the foundation of Science.

I wasn’t concerned as to exactly what your list of ethics might be, but whether it is being successfully demonstrated by any group anywhere. For it to be demonstrated it would have to be viewed in a “complete package” form. Just as with any Science experiment, you have to look at all that is happening within the system so as to conclude anything from it, which happens to be (although unknown to you) what Hebrew philosophy is all about. When the TOTAL is viewed, the HOLY is revealed.

So now, is there any group that demonstrates your better ethics package that is NOT relying on any outside support in any way (else it would not be the complete package)?

 

[Touchstone]

The Christian teaching in the Bible does not comment on homosexuality, at all. Homosexuality, defined as the exclusive attraction of a person for his/her own sex, was not a framework that Paul was working with, at all – it is a modern social definition. The question is this: is homosexuality a natural kind? If yes, then you may have a good point. If no, then a clear defense is available: Paul was condemning actions, not people. You may disagree with what actions ought to be condemned, but that is not a matter of principles.

Why would be. Actions are certainly fair game for review regarding principles, in my view. I must misunderstand. I’m saying that Paul condemns, in the most savage terms, actions which are fundamentally good and positive human interactions. Homosexual contact – I’m not talking about orientation or urges, but the act itself – as the expression of a giving, intimate, honest love where each is seeking the best for the other is denounced by Paul. He doesn’t discriminate in some responsible sense, condemning the taking advantage of one homosexual by another, where one exploits a power relationship to gratify himself at the expense of another (a minor/child perhaps). No, his condemnation demonizes even the most sublime expressions of affection and intimacy between homosexuals, calling what is good evil.

Some homosexual encounters are immoral, no doubt. But the same can be said about heterosexual encounters. Paul denies the possibility of good, moral homosexual encounters, categorically. That is itself a major moral lapse on his part. And it has catalyzed a horrible legacy of shame and cruelty by the church that came after Paul.

Either way, many moderns Christians do consider homosexual activity more sinful than other forms of fornication (which is the parallel that Paul tends to draw), and this is serious error.

Understand, and appreciate this acknowledgment. But while I commend the move to being more consistent in seeing heterosexual fornication (as the Catholics understand it) as similarly problematic to homosexual offenses, I don’t think that really improves or changes the basic moral of the church on this issue, which is its failure to look at the merits and dynamics of the relationship and actions themselves – real love vs. selfish, manipulative, exploiting/vicious self-gratification. It is committed to lumping in the good with the evil and calling it all evil. Which is an evil stand to take in its own right. The church is to be condemned for such a position, even if it does better in “equal demonization” of heterosexual and homosexual contact outside of heterosexual marriage.

But here you condemn Aristotle’s ethics, too. The man who is most just is also the most free, because he is not constrained by his desires; rather, he desires justice, and freely pursues it. The Christian is not told to seek out what he does not want – license – but rather to let his desires be transformed into desire for the good. Christians who do not do this are often dogmatists who desperately want to sin, and therefore they become Pharisees. But, as you know, a philosophy is not proven wrong because we fail to live it out.

Well, such a man is still constrained by desires, it’s just a distinction is being made between base desires (“empirical interests”) and higher desires (e.g. justice). But that simply begs the question – what is the good? That’s a key question, but it’s one that Christianity doesn’t answer well. If you commit yourself to feeding the hungry, which I commend as good, but yet condemn a loving homosexual couple by the same measure, what do we make of that? Here is a very confused and self-cancelling set of ideas. Charity on one hand, injustice and cruelty on the other.

The argument is NOT pinned to a commitment to immediate or base desires, but crucially centered on the problematic nature of what “good” means in Christianity. Reduced to its core, “good” is “what God wants”. And that’s a very low view of “good” for humans, in my view. And a dangerous one, prone to atrocities, at that. History confirms this.

And what of the science that says that all sexuality is much more fluid in its object than we might expect?

I’m not sure what to make of that in the context of this post. But, as in all things, things are what they are. Whatever the science reveals, we should be informed by and incorporate into our model, not just our mechanical model of how things work in the real world, but into our moral/ethical model.

Do you really think it will be the Christians who commit the horrors and atrocities in the coming 100 years?

No. But I think a defense like that will be the apologetic offered by Christians to excuse themselves from the evils they are institutionally committed to. Homosexuals aren’t being sent to the gas chamber, so never mind Catholic immorality in dealing with them? Campaigning against condoms in Africa isn’t like turning them away at the hospital door when they are sick and ailing, but that doesn’t redeem the immorality of the campaign, its role in thwarting efforts of reduce suffering and the spread of deadly, orphan-making disease.

It seems a very weak defense if one says, “well, we aren’t committing atrocities anymore!”. Perhaps not, but that’s really a very low bar for the champion of cosmic truth and goodness, is it not?

-TS

 

[James_S_Saint]

I’m not sure if you saw my post that slipped in just as you were posting yours.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Some homosexual encounters are immoral, no doubt. But the same can be said about heterosexual encounters. Paul denies the possibility of good, moral homosexual encounters, categorically. That is itself a major moral lapse on his part. And it has catalyzed a horrible legacy of shame and cruelty by the church that came after Paul.

Well, let’s look at what he doesn’t condemn. He doesn’t condemn men living with men (or women living with women) in a committed, loving relationship. The Church has formalized this lack of condemnation in the reality of religious orders. What’s more, it has encouraged religious orders and the religious life despite the obvious fact that it can indirectly result in homosexual activity. Obviously, then, the major goal (and the goal intended by the Scriptures) is not to prevent the activity quantitatively, but rather to foster meaningful committed relationships in a context in which selfishness is kept to a minimum.

The question then becomes: in what cases does sexual behavior deprive us of virtue? The Catholic position – roughly, that any sexual act that uses people as a mere means to an end (pleasure) deprives us of virtue – makes sense to me. Does this exclude homosexual acts? Paul thinks so, probably because he saw “sex for pleasure” as hedonism, using our own bodies as a mere means to an end. Likewise, “sex for unity” only makes sense when unity will be enhanced by the sexual act, not impaired. Here we come to a fully empirical question: can unity be enhanced by sexual acts in committed homosexual relationships?

You say yes, I imagine. I say I don’t know. What about Paul? Well,I imagine, if you saw only the homosexual relationships Paul saw, you would understand why he came to the conclusion he came to.

Well, such a man is still constrained by desires, it’s just a distinction is being made between base desires (“empirical interests”) and higher desires (e.g. justice).

Well, the idea is that the “base” desires go away. And this is the way the world works: if you stop doing some bad thing, you stop wanting it, after a long enough period of time (unless you develop a psychological complex, because you are being legalistic about it). At any rate, every rational person wants the *effects *of his actions to be constrained (so that he doesn’t hurt others, for example), although he does not want the affect (inward disposition) to be constrained. The freedom of the disciple is the freedom that allows our unfettered inward dispositions to result in external goods, because we have been transformed back into the image of God.

As James implied earlier, your lack of belief in God makes you see the above statements as euphemisms for totalitarianism. But, if God exists, your criticism does not stand. Thus, the question of whether Jesus’ teachings are good, from your standpoint, seems to reduce to the question of whether God exists.

The argument is NOT pinned to a commitment to immediate or base desires, but crucially centered on the problematic nature of what “good” means in Christianity. Reduced to its core, “good” is “what God wants”. And that’s a very low view of “good” for humans, in my view. And a dangerous one, prone to atrocities, at that. History confirms this.

If God wants something, then it is good. Absolutely – this is a necessary truth. But the inverse, “if something is good, then God wants it” is, if true, a contingent truth. No dogma or doctrine I am aware of says otherwise.

But, say, for the sake of argument that God’s will and goodness were analytically identical, in Christian teaching. Would this be dangerous? Not unless people went around claiming that they knew exactly what God wanted, and they were wrong. Of course, we can see that people do exactly that; Christians call them false prophets. But the Church cannot be blamed for those who lead others astray, only for those whom the Church itself leads astray. And if Church teaching were extraordinarily prone to atrocities, I hardly would expect to see as much pure-hearted goodness among Catholics as you yourself acknowledge.

I’m not sure what to make of that in the context of this post. But, as in all things, things are what they are. Whatever the science reveals, we should be informed by and incorporate into our model, not just our mechanical model of how things work in the real world, but into our moral/ethical model.

I agree. My point was that science seems to be telling us that sexual attractions are extremely elastic; their object can change dramatically with circumstances and experiences. The common connection between sexual preference and child abuse is no coincidence. This weakens the claim that people are “born gay”, although it may also weaken the claim that people are born straight. Sexuality confounds our ability to understand it. Whatever the facts are, it’s clear that the Church ought to deal with the issue of homosexuality with much more compassion than it currently does.

It seems a very weak defense if one says, “well, we aren’t committing atrocities anymore!”. Perhaps not, but that’s really a very low bar for the champion of cosmic truth and goodness, is it not?

Unfair attack, mon ennemi!

Your claim was that “this is a kind of utopian thinking that tends to produce horrors and atrocities in spite of itself”. Your parody of my comment made it out that I was saying that “lack of atrocity → best ethical system”. But I was just saying that your statement was, on its face, implausible.

 

[Touchstone]

I agree with P_S, but making you a target is certainly not my intention here.{/quote]I don’t feel a target.

Demonstration is the affirmation of theory and is the foundation of Science.

 

[Touchstone]

Well, let’s look at what he doesn’t condemn. He doesn’t condemn men living with men (or women living with women) in a committed, loving relationship. The Church has formalized this lack of condemnation in the reality of religious orders. What’s more, it has encouraged religious orders and the religious life despite the obvious fact that it can indirectly result in homosexual activity.

Huh. Ok, that’s something I did not know.

Obviously, then, the major goal (and the goal intended by the Scriptures) is not to prevent the activity quantitatively, but rather to foster meaningful committed relationships in a context in which selfishness is kept to a minimum.

Well, if that’s the case, it seems like homosexuality is off the hook, and not a problem categorically. The Church would only discourage, as it does with heterosexuals, selfish engagements, actions that are not wrong because of the physical contact per se, but because they are exploitive, abusive, etc.

But that’s not where the Church is. Right? From the words of Paul right on down, the prohibition is categorical, described in terms of what physical bodies do, not the selfishness or moral dimensions that animate those actions, good or bad. In Romans 1, Paul informs us that those actions are the proof that that homosexuals have committed the most grievous mental sins, and the result is “that which is against nature” (v26) and “worthy of death” (v32).

That’s very hard to resolve against the idea of a gay man being intimate with another gay man in an intimate, unselfish, mutually affirming, giving and supportive way, similar to the intimate way I might engage my wife. The Church is embarrassingly hung up on body parts and orifices at the expense of what is going on in less superficial ways - what is happening in the minds and hearts of the participants.

The question then becomes: in what cases does sexual behavior deprive us of virtue? The Catholic position – roughly, that any sexual act that uses people as a mere means to an end (pleasure) deprives us of virtue – makes sense to me. Does this exclude homosexual acts? Paul thinks so, probably because he saw “sex for pleasure” as hedonism, using our own bodies as a mere means to an end.

Yes, but if that’s what is, there’s a colossal error that’s been canonized in their somewhere, because “sex for pleasure” in only a hedonistic sense is a nonsense representation of homosexual relations. It’s a cruel misrepresentation of the whole, just as bad as saying heterosexual sex is only and inherently vicious or hedonistic.

Likewise, “sex for unity” only makes sense when unity will be enhanced by the sexual act, not impaired. Here we come to a fully empirical question: can unity be enhanced by sexual acts in committed homosexual relationships?

I think that is a good question, and I think if you ask them, and ask people who make a professional point of studying them, the answer is, in many cases, “Yes!”

You say yes, I imagine. I say I don’t know. What about Paul? Well,I imagine, if you saw only the homosexual relationships Paul saw, you would understand why he came to the conclusion he came to.

Yes, I can understand that. But we aren’t talking about some Jewish guy just going on a rant because he’s offended by what he sees around him. This got elevated to the Word of God, a set of statements carrying cosmic authority, to hear Christians tell it. It’s understandable as a rant, and that’s that. As a screed that launched 2,000 of shame, humiliation, scorn, hatred and violence – ostracization and alienation are severe and agonizing forms of social sanction – just because Paul couldn’t think a little more broadly than the object of his fulimination at that point… that’s a ginormous trainwreck of human history.

This makes good sense in atheist terms. Paul is pretty transparent in that section as well as many others in his own immorality and ethical failures. That’s people for ya. But as something that received God’s stamp of approval, or something “breathed of God” directly (depending on what “inspiration model” for scripture you prefer), it makes no sense at all. If God is real, on those grounds he’s a being a moral man should curse and defy if he wants to keep his conscience intact.

Much more compelling as an explanation, of course, is the former idea, that this is men being men in a godless world.

-TS

 

[James_S_Saint]

So another on your list of ethics is;

#) never group

So as long as there is any group, you are going to consider them unethical and rebel against them. Of course, that keeps you always an individual and necessarily always weak in comparison. By you maintaining your weakness, you inherently keep them stronger. Eventually they will always displace you.

But of course, if they aren’t a good enough group, they will always produce more of you to displace again. On and on.

But they stay forever on top, merely because they had sense enough to group even if they didn’t have good ethics.

So your actual complaint is not even that Catholics don’t truly follow the ethics of Jesus or any set of good ethics, but that they are “unjust, wicked, and perverse” merely because they are the grouped adversary that you must always attack and accuse for any reason or excuse you can think up.

Why would I want to be one of you? Of course, you wouldn’t want for me to be one of you because that would be “grouping” and necessarily evil. But then I guess that means that you can’t want anyone to really be as you except by accident and necessarily not promoting the ethics.

Of course, if you do not promote good ethics, then you are in effect, promoting bad ethics because by not doing the good, the bad is all that is left to replace the “doing nothing”. “I have the perfect cure for cancer, but I’m not going to tell anyone. That is against my ethics.” If good ethics are not the cure for the disease, then why are we concerned about them at all? And if your ethic is to never support your ethics [by grouping], then I would say you aren’t doing yourself any favor, but are helping to ensure that the lesser ethics group remains strong.

So in the long run, your effect on Earth is to support the strength of those you complain of by ensuring that you never become more than an individual - complaining.

 

[Touchstone]

Well, the idea is that the “base” desires go away. And this is the way the world works: if you stop doing some bad thing, you stop wanting it, after a long enough period of time (unless you develop a psychological complex, because you are being legalistic about it). At any rate, every rational person wants the *effects *of his actions to be constrained (so that he doesn’t hurt others, for example), although he does not want the affect (inward disposition) to be constrained. The freedom of the disciple is the freedom that allows our unfettered inward dispositions to result in external goods, because we have been transformed back into the image of God.

Well, the idea may be that the base desires go away. But to the last man you’d care to examine, that idea is thoroughly falsified. No man gets rid of his base desires. He may master them and achieve his goals of self control and restraint, but man’s selfishness and vanity and interest in cutting himself favors at the expense of others goes to his grave with him, just as intact as they were when he was born.

As James implied earlier, your lack of belief in God makes you see the above statements as euphemisms for totalitarianism. But, if God exists, your criticism does not stand. Thus, the question of whether Jesus’ teachings are good, from your standpoint, seems to reduce to the question of whether God exists.

Well, I think the totalitarian nature of God as sovereign would obtain whether he exists or not. In the Christian model, God is a totalitarian ruler, and man as so much “potter’s clay” has perfectly no recourse to God as plenopotentiary. I think what you are saying is that if God exists, that totalitarian regime is a good one, because then God’s demands are real and binding, rather than just imaginary. I agree that the effects are much different… perhaps an actual ‘afterlife’ obtains in that scenario, for example, but it’s the worst possible case in terms of totalitarianism. If God is imaginary, then all this totalitarianism is just so much psychological masochism, a device we may find appealing to sate our lusts to be slaves.

But in the real world, we aren’t doomed to a totalitarian despot as the ruler of all, in that case.

If God wants something, then it is good. Absolutely – this is a necessary truth. But the inverse, “if something is good, then God wants it” is, if true, a contingent truth. No dogma or doctrine I am aware of says otherwise.

Heh. This points right back to our “Euthyphro” discussion in the Plato and Paul thread. I agree, in the Christian model we find voluntarism – what God wills as good is good by definition (and not the reverse!). But I can’t think of a more terrifying, or more morally problematic concession to make for a human. This is an apology for any horror. If Yahweh had been imagined in such a way that the first born son of every family was to be slaughtered on an altar on his seventh birthday, as propitiation, your moral commitments here, as stated, bless that. If Yahweh’s decree was that unbelievers were to be summarily put to the sword after being given an hour to convert to the worship of Yahweh, same thing. God is good, by definition. There is NO DEPRAVED OR EVIL ACT you cannot redeem with your claim here. If God wills cannibalism – then cannibalism is good. Child rape? ditto. On and on.

Saying “God is good” by definition signals the renunciation of one’s one moral bearings. As it happens, this is why I don’t accept these claims as honest ones from Christians, A god that demand the bloody sacrifice of their eldest son or ritual child rape, etc. would provoke the real humanity in people, so egregious would God’s offense against man be. As it is, his offense is simply tolerable to some, and as I said, slavery has great appeal for many. But to say “God is good” by definition, no qualifications, is really an outrageously wicked moral position. I think better of you than to believe that, seriously.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Prodigal Son:

But, say, for the sake of argument that God’s will and goodness were analytically identical, in Christian teaching. Would this be dangerous?

It would be a fine setup for God, I’m sure. But heck yeah it would dangerous for man. God, man’s creator, is now his worst enemy, an insuperable mortal threat. Nothing if all of man’s experience would compare with the terrible misfortune of finding themselves as the “children” of such a being. Man is completely left out of the picture as a stakeholder in that view.

Not unless people went around claiming that they knew exactly what God wanted, and they were wrong. Of course, we can see that people do exactly that; Christians call them false prophets.

On the Christian view, though, the true prophets do that, too. It’s a problem even there.

But the Church cannot be blamed for those who lead others astray, only for those whom the Church itself leads astray. And if Church teaching were extraordinarily prone to atrocities, I hardly would expect to see as much pure-hearted goodness among Catholics as you yourself acknowledge.

Sure it can, and it should. The Church is in the business of legitimizing the very idea of prophets and prophecies. If it was a moral, reponsible organization it would just admit that it was being reckless in advancing the idea of prophecy at all, and that their actions have enabled and facilitated charlatans, abusers, and exploiters of every stripe by institutionalizing gullibility and irrespsonsible credulity.

Think about people who attack scientific medicine and promote “new age medicine”. Are they responsible for the quackery and abuse that gets launched from that base? Heck ya, it’s on them, in part. They are part of the racket. A responsible advocate would condemn all that voodoo as voodoo in the first place. Even if they didn’t sell the harmful scam medicines that actually inflicted the harm, the built the culture that enables the abuse. The Catholic church has been in the business of promoting gullibility, credulity, and anti-knowledge. It’s hands are not clean regarding all the deception and abuse that grows out of the ground it has tilled.

I agree. My point was that science seems to be telling us that sexual attractions are extremely elastic; their object can change dramatically with circumstances and experiences. The common connection between sexual preference and child abuse is no coincidence. This weakens the claim that people are “born gay”, although it may also weaken the claim that people are born straight. Sexuality confounds our ability to understand it. Whatever the facts are, it’s clear that the Church ought to deal with the issue of homosexuality with much more compassion than it currently does.

Well, Catholics in practice do better than most other Christians, in my experience, so credit where its due, there. But it’s not the practice I’m focusing on, all throughout here, it’s the moral failure of the doctrine itself. Unless and until the doctrine renounces its wicked basis, it won’t help much. Being more compassionate is good, but marginal in contrast to the doctrine itself.

On the science, it seems at first glance we can agree, and say, ‘well, wherever the science takes us, it takes us’. We don’t know what will be discovered, tested and embraced as knowledge in the future. But my ethic is teachable; I can adjust to the idea that sexuality is totally non-genetic on one extreme, or totally genetic on the other, or anywhere in between, because I haven’t defiled myself with dogma. For all your reasonable interactions here, you are so saddled. If science does isolate pathways where some homosexuals are as genetically determined to be homosexual as they are to have two legs, you still must maintain that such a determined orientation is “against nature” when they embrace that nature (engage in sex), even as it is perfectly natural.

Dogma isn’t corrigible, or it ain’t dogma, right? You are stuck. If science starts to conflict with the dogma, now you are in a moral pressure cooker, and religion becomes actively corrosive to your soul. You must lie, deny, twist, evade, spin and obfuscate to preserve your dogma, and deal with your cognitive dissonance. Don’t believe me? Talk to some of your young-earth believing brothers. That’s you someday, on this issue, perhaps. Don’t think you are made of better stuff than them and won’t make you as wicked as they. That’s a conceit.

Unfair attack, mon ennemi!

Your claim was that “this is a kind of utopian thinking that tends to produce horrors and atrocities in spite of itself”. Your parody of my comment made it out that I was saying that “lack of atrocity → best ethical system”. But I was just saying that your statement was, on its face, implausible.

Ok, that’s a fair criticism. I retract that conclusion as unwarranted and apologize for stating it that way. That was, indeed, unfair of me, reading it back. I’m sorry.

-TS

 

[LCMS_No_More]

Consider homosexuality. What did Jesus have to say on the subject? Nothing at all directly, so far as I’m aware. But he did make it quite clear how important the “inner” issues were in terms of the heart, and one’s intentions, goals and the consequences of that in moral terms were fundamentally more important than the outward, superficial forms.

Actually, while He never said, “thou shalt not have homosexual sex,” He did state the divine plan where it comes to marriage and family in Matt 19:4-6.

But Catholicism has institutionalized the demonization of homosexuality in Paul’s word, canonizing a vicious hatred for homosexuality, not as an act that exploits another, like rape or child molestation or some other abuse of power and advantage, but even homosexuality that is loving, caring, sacrificial, and mutually edifying and supportive. Real love, in other words, declared as evil.

Actually, as a person who is same-sex attracted, I can tell you for certain that most “gay” sex is not love, it’s not even lust (which is what most people mistakenly believe). There are deeper issues that have been eroticized that a person is trying to work out. Unfortunately, sex isn’t the way to heal the wounds, other methods are far more effective and necessary.

As an aside, I don’t believe that everyone should try to “reorient” their sexuality, but I do believe that those who want to can and should be able to (and be supported in their endeavor) and everyone try to live by what is right in allc ases.

 

[James_S_Saint]

There are deeper issues that have been eroticized that a person is trying to work out. Unfortunately, sex isn’t the way to heal the wounds, other methods are far more effective and necessary.

That would be an interesting topic for another thread although I’m sure the “depth” would require more than most are willing to give.

 

[James_S_Saint]

Well, the idea may be that the base desires go away. But to the last man you’d care to examine, that idea is thoroughly falsified. No man gets rid of his base desires. He may master them and achieve his goals of self control and restraint, but man’s selfishness and vanity and interest in cutting himself favors at the expense of others goes to his grave with him, just as intact as they were when he was born.

The point has never been to be rid of instinctive desires (despite what some probably preach). The point has always been to balance ALL desires into rational harmony. The desires that cannot be harmonious for whatever reason are the “bad desires” only because they are selfishly intolerant of the other desires and the need to balance them all.

What do you do with the man who simply wants to murder? He doesn’t care why and as far as anyone can tell, he was genetically born that way, perhaps man-made. Do you respect his fundamental desire to murder and let him have his opportunity for freedom? Or do you balance the needs of everyone and actually never allow that man his opportunity to act on his base desire?

Balance and harmony are the issues to survival, not whether everyone gets to do whatever they might have been programmed to desire. If the mind cannot balance the desires, the person will always be in error and eventually perish regardless of any enemy. If a governing body cannot balance and harmonize the desires of its people, it will fall - every time.

The point has always been only one of cooperatively harmonizing the true needs, not merely choosing the ones that someone likes or the ones most popular.