Cool! Iām a linux freak myself, although after 20 years of working with RDBMSes, if I never have to work SQL again, it will be be too soon.I am taking UNIX and SQL right now in school.
For the same reason that children raised in a dysfunctional family carry their dysfunctions into married life. We bring forward what we learn.
Sometimes it can take decades before the full effect of the damage done by living in a dysfunctional home comes to light, and sometimes the people who marry manage to work it out IN SPITE OF the obstacles presented by growing up in a dysfunctional home.
I would deny that Iām in denial - but that just proves Iām in denial, doesnāt it?
We agree.
Sure, the child can find alternate heroes - but those heroes do not live in the home and are not providing the 24 hour 7 day a week example that is needed. Also, just to be clear - there is not a single child in existence with two dads or two moms. To say otherwise is to deny reality. That child has a biological father and a biological mother. You ought to know better than that.
Would you place those children in the loving arms of an alcoholic? or a professed suicidal? or a drug addict? Would you call them better off in that situation? How about a home where the partners are as stable as a radioactive isotope?
I am moved to tears by the plight of these children, but putting them in such homes will not alleviate their problems. Itās substituting one form of abuse for another.
What is irrational and inhumane and barbaric dogma is pretending that homosexual relationships are good for people when the evidence says otherwise.
Well, I think they all work in concert here. Maybe āJesus at the moneychanging tables at the Templeā would be an example youād accept ā righteous and passionate indignation, based on reason. These are human beings your doctrine is mistreating, dehumanizing.
Itās much more a disorder ā homosexuality is not a disorder, and itās a barbaric stance to take in saying it is.
Casting a homosexual orientation as a deficiency or disability is the problem.
Well, this is the source of the barbaric teaching. Iām not saying that you go out and kick the nearest gay man you can find. But your support for doctrines that cast homosexuality as inherently sinful or āa disorderā, or dismissive of love, sacrifice, affection, joy, and mutual support between two people of the same sex is unconscionable. It takes dogma to get good people to do bad things, and this is how it happens. Iām sure youāve got good intentions, but youāve signed on to wicked teachings in embracing this.
Humanity is no danger of extinction from homosexuality. And I do think about the science, here, and have gay friends who simply wonāt let me ignore this subject for more than a week at a time.
(my emphasis)
Do you suppose homosexuals would generally affirm this claim?
Itās profoundly different. Itās the equivalent of telling a heterosexual s/he must be celibate his or her whole life, not by choice, but by fiat, and that that person cannot ever participate in the most intimate and profound kinds of loving sexual intimacy, becauseā¦ well, because thatās what a barbaric God wants.
No. We are not our genes. We are not bound to just be slaves to instinct. Our minds afford us all sorts of other options, and we can choose and pursue goals that totally flout biological urges. The rational mind, the product of our evolution, enables us to consider, and work right against other urges and instincts that obtain from our biology, if we so desire.
Have you asked homsexuals if they find those relationships beneficial? Every one of my homosexual friends is adamant that this is so, and thatās a sizeable sample. Do you suppose this consensus is at odds with homosexuals everywhere?
Well, itās a tragic irony, because Catholic demonization of homosexuals just contributes to the traumatic and hostile environment that a homosexual in our culture must contend with. I wonder what the stress levels were for Jews in Germany in medieval times? Do you suppose the procession of pogroms against the Jews might have had some negative effect on the life of the medieval Jew in Germany?
Yet you exclude those with same sex attraction from this ability to go against their urges and instincts to choose something better for them?
Does the alcoholic, if asked, not find his lifestyle beneficial and the tyrant the same? Yet I am guessing - perhaps incorrectly - that you would not agree with their lifestyle being beneficial. I know from experience that people who are deeply depressed and miserable will claim to be ājust fineā or āperfectly happyā with their life when nothing is further from the truth.
Demonization of homosexuals? Not at all. I condemn the sin, not the sinner. The person committing that sin is a beautiful person worthy of being loved in truth but does not know how to appropriately obtain the love they seek.
So, because I stand opposed to it I must necessarily hate the people doing it, is that the gist of your argument? Let me ask you something - if I saw someone doing something which I knew would lead them to death would it be hatred if I tried to stop them from doing it? You may not agree with the Churchās teachings, but it isnāt hate that motivates me. I love them. I donāt want them doing something that will lead them into Hell. I want them to be with me in Heaven, as many of them as I can bring with me. I am willing to be mistaken for a bigot, chastised as being full of hatred, and crucified in any way I must be if even one may be saved by my doing so.
Touchstone, their stories are every bit as touching and tragic as the stories of the drug addict, the alcoholic, the abuser, the pedophile, the thief, and the murderer. All of them have stories that would break your heart. However, that doesnāt stop me from calling them to change and to transform their lives from one of sorrow and pain into something that is healing and even good. I have plenty of heartbreak in my own story - but I was called out of that life by love and into greater love I am walking now. I want that for them, too.
First, You are not your biology as you pointed out earlier. You may have a gene which predisposes you toward drinking - that doesnāt excuse you from allowing yourself to become an alcoholic or for failing to seek treatment if you have become one. Second, as I have said before there is evidence to suggest it isnāt biological at all but psychological and treatable, stemming from trauma.
Not at all. But itās not my call to make, or yours ā itās theirs. If they want to be celibate, Iām fine with that, so long as they are doing so of their own accord, for their own reasons. Same thing goes for heterosexuals. But to declare the disposition or any expression of homosexual love ā love offered in a stable, self-sacrificing, healthy way ā as sinful is to condemn what is natural and good.
Well, āalcoholicā by definition implies that alcohol is interfering with maintaining a functional life ā sustaining relationships, fulfilling work responsibilities, staying healthy, etc. And certainly many alcoholics acknowledge their problem and want help. But medically and psychologically, alcoholism produces obstacles to functional living that are objectively problematic.
Yeah, you donāt know of what you speak, and certainly are in no position to speak for homosexuals. If they are building and sustaining healthy relationships, working, doing all the things we look at as functional parts of life that alcoholism or drug addiction interferes with, and they say theyāre happy, who are you to know better?
Sexuality is not like theft, or drinking. It goes to the core of a personās identity to the lowest levels of their self-conception and expression. Demonizing that, their most fundamental orientation about love and intimacy and connection to other humans, is just trivialized with trite bumper-sticker slogans like that.
If you talk to homosexuals, they will tell you this themselves ā a little Googling on this is sufficient ā if you are not in a bubble, you will understand how declaring their basic orientation, their urge to love and be intimate with someone of the same sex, as sinful, an abomination even, the changing of ānatural use into that which is against natureā as Paul said. Thatās just as deeply hostile to person as one can be without violence. And maybe more, in some ways.
If you had no reasonable justification to think it would lead them to death, absolutely. Your interference would be more reprehensible than any objection I might raise for a gay man who is minding his own business. Itās no business of yours, and unless you have evidence that would convince a reasonable person, a judge hearing your case, say, you are the major problem, you are the one making life more hellish for everyone.
You donāt care enough about homosexuals to be reasonable and compassionate in thinking about them. You value your pathetic irrational dogmas more than your fellow human beings. People say āReligion helps us do good thingsā, and thatās often right, but here your hubris brings suffering and hardship to the lives of many good, decent, loving human beings. You love yourself and your authoritarian intuitions more than your neighbor.
You have a good, rational basis for identifying problems with an alcoholic, who, by definition of the term, is a sustained commitment to alcohol use even as it causes damage and negative consequences. But what do you say to the homosexual who is in a happy, stable, monogamous relationship, has a good career, a warm and satisifying set of relationships with friends and family, and works at the local food shelter two nights a week, because heās doing well, and wants to help out?
There is no evidence that suggests its not biological at all. Evidence for social influences, which most certainly obtain in some from does not disappear the genetic and epigenetic evidence thatās out there.
Quantum theory is, after all is said and done, a reduction based on evidence available at this moment, and depends on the mathematics we have at the moment. It may just represent the limit to our ability to mathematize, that is, to āseeā the world by that means. As to intuition, that term refers to something basic to human thought but which cannot be defined, maybe because we are so locked into mathematics. Or because we donāt 'know" whether mathematics is intrinsic to nature or simply our tool. Heisenberg and Goedel took the wind out of the sails of scientism, and if I may say so, it is just now coasting on intuitions, as the term is usually understood. Darwinism, after all, is really no more than an intuition that what he saw was the whole history of life āin a bottleā so to speak. Genetics, on the other hand, has much the same foundation as the very science of chemistry, where proportions are reduced to unit for computational purposes. It gains immensely by the science of electromagnetism, by the discovery of radioactivity which introduces us to the āsmall worldsā that seem to comprise our own.
Most of us think about homosexuals the way we feel about other deformed persons or the insane. Especially the latter today, at least those who have organized themselves politically. They, like many atheists, have decided that Christianity is an evil, and that society is best rid of its influence. Most āgays,ā so I gather, are just libertines who want to be free of restraint. No different, really from other libertines. But the political ones are full of hate. They are organized to reform the law. Like the Benthamites they want to refound the law. They want, of course to retain the forms of law, but want its substance to be independent of nature.
Huh? Where is this coming from? What credit? Which critics and which proponents? Which facile premises? Exegesis is the problem? ā¦that caused what error? Slow down pardner! You got some splaininā to do. Youāre running roughshod and messing up the gym floor, so to speak - this is not being a team player.
āā¦demand for qualificationā¦ā? (It does? Okay, but first what does this mean? Do you mean verification? ā¦or substantiation? Qualification??)
ā¦of course it might, and therefore such methods of falsification might be inappropriate, since they may well misunderstand the basis for the claim that is being attacked (this would be called a straw man argument).
What makes you think this canāt be done? Unless by astrology you mean something trivial like reading your horoscope in the paper. Astrology has a much more respectable cognitive pedigree than that (from what I understand). Obvious method of falsification: there is an alleged conflict of this doctrine or its consequences with other doctrines; something has to go; team sport of theology weeds out the weak member of the herd. (Obvious, right?)
Hmmā¦ Not what you originally claimed, I think.
(āthatā = what? I donāt know what youāre getting at here.)
It doesnāt āintroduceā something, after the fact - it is essential. It is the lifeblood of cognition. And it generally is thrown into oblivion. Oblivion of the essential role of interpretation, IMO, makes possible many of your more dogmatic claims, and specifically, their obvious disregard for the hermeneutic situation and the need for the kind of rigor that makes productive dialogue (i.e., a āteamā dynamic) possible. Hence my curiosity at what appears to me to be your hypocritical praise of team cognition.
Sorry, yes, I was speaking about exegetical and theological critiques ā absent your explicit identification of the āobjections to dogmaā here, thatās all I could think you to have meant.
Some method of testing whereby some objective means of error detection is possible (at least in principle).
Perhaps, but I donāt think the testing need be done by hostile parties. Itās enough that a procedure is in place that provides an objective feedback loop, with ādisinterestā or āindependentā as problematic as you will get in terms of straw-men burning down. You can see how problematic that is, even then, all straw men, aside, non? Perhaps the straw man objection was itself a straw man!
Where are these assertions coming from? Seriously, could you slow down and try to posit your views more cautiously? I can only guess at your reason for believing these claims: youāve had an intuition about it. But if so, I disagree with your intuition - I have had many experiences that indicate very clearly that your assertions are obviously false! So what - do we simply have a stalemate here, too? Or do you imagine you win by default for some unnamed reason in this case? I think the problem is not at all the inevitability of stalemate, but with your making unfounded assertions that could only be construed as appeals to authority, i.e., the apparently highly arbitrary authority of your own intuitions.
So what? Bumped into the background does not mean eliminated as a partially independent ground of contention. Anyway, similar kinds of hermeneutic shifts happen in the natural sciences too.
That obviously depends on the context!
Iād rather not get into a tu quoque straw man fight (especially not one involving entirely unsubstantiated āperhapsā-straw men)! Iād rather you just wrote something clear and substantive that we could discuss reasonably. I donāt know where this āhostile partiesā business is coming from. I certainly made no suggestion that hostile parties were necessary or helpful. That said I canāt follow the sense of most of what youāve written here.Perhaps, but I donāt think the testing need be done by hostile parties. Itās enough that a procedure is in place that provides an objective feedback loop, with ādisinterestā or āindependentā as problematic as you will get in terms of straw-men burning down. You can see how problematic that is, even then, all straw men, aside, non? Perhaps the straw man objection was itself a straw man!
Thereās no basket that youāre aware of, you mean? Or that you care about? Or there is no basket at all? When you make an apparently metaphysical claim like this, Iād like for you to offer some substantiation of it, not just make a dogmatic assertion and expect me to see it as obvious. You speak here as if youāre a kind of nihilist. But nihilism can be falsified too. If you donāt understand how this is possible, I suspect youāre confusing issues of subjective vs. objective, political vs. empirical supposing these terms to be mutually exclusive. (Thatās perhaps also why you offer such silly critiques of idealism.)
So you are suggesting that when a theologian comes up with an idea, we should measure how many people find āhappinessā when they agree with this idea?
Exegesis, like theology in general, has no feedback loop, no mechanism for objective calibration or error checking. You could be way off, and youād have no way to know. You could be right on the money, and youād never know that either. Youāre just as right as you suppose you are, as is the next guy, and he totally disagrees with you. Do you suppose Iāve missed that calibration method, and theology has been grounded in some objective feedback loop after all?
Hermeneutic complication??? That is an outsided euphemism if there ever was one. This is epistemic incoherence. Protestants say ā*sola fideā. *Catholics say āNot even!ā And the sides form according to their tribes and intuitoin, and thatās as far as the epistemology goes ā nowhere. All it admits is a subjective appeal to oneās intuition, an intution which informs the presuppositions which control any exegesis thatās going to trotted out as an argument one way or another.
Yes, but a scientist will tell you that when things drift that way, the situation is very bad, indeed. When thereās no empirical way to settle the matter, even in principle, it might as well be put aside ā itās theology at that point. String theory, one of my favorite physics subjects, has fallen into just this problem at points, and when it does, itās a terrible thing for the enterprise.
What I mean there was that science operates on a shared epistemology, and one that gives empirical evidence primacy, and puts a premium on objectivity. Thereās plenty of debate in science, but itās amenable to resolution and knowledge building out of those controversies. Everyone is on the same āteamā in that sense, scientifically. Susskind was right, and Hawking was wrong on black holes, and itās now clear to everyone, and everyone is the better for it, and Susskind and Hawking are good-natured grown-ups about it. This is conspicuously at odds with how theology proceeds. The āteamsā are committed to different epistemologies, epistemologies which do not share common ground around objective resolutions to questions at hand.
I mean astrology as the ancient tradition ā the study of the movements and positions of celestial bodies affecting and informing our daily lives here on earth. I donāt think it can be falsified any more than theology can ā these are ideas that exist and subsist in their unfalsifiability. They can be shown to be superfluous and irrelevant to significant degrees, and it can be pointed out that the positive cases for each are weak. But as for how astrology and theology would falsify their own claims, Iām stumped. I canāt think how that would be done. There is no circumstances which would preclude the positing of an invisible, supernatural God, and neither are there circumstances that would show the positions and movements of the planets donāt in some way affect our personal lives here on earth.
No. Like theology, it survives because itās perfectly immune to falsification. Thereās not state of affairs that can prove it false. The most we can hope for is showing that is weak in a positive sense, and superfluous to a working knowledge of the world around us.
Thereās no independent means of verifying a ābasketā ā a real fact about, say, the merits of a solafidian take on salvation. Are you aware of one? Iām not. So, if you suppose youāve āmade a basketā in presenting a well-articulated argument against it (as Iāve attempted many times myself), youāve no way to judge whether you āmade the shotā or not. All you have is your subjective feelings about how great your argument is. There is no test to put it to, no objective standard that will clue you in if you are out to lunch. You are completely adrift. Thatās not an a priori exclusion, but a conclusion based on experience, on looking long and hard for something, anything that provides more than self-congratulation of oneās intuitions by way of verification and falsification. If you have some method of doing this, I stand to be corrected!
Well, hereās your chance. How are ideas falsified in your model? What has to happen for your model to declare a claim āfalsifiedā?
Not hardly. If one accepts, for theological reasons, the authority of the Bible, or the Catholic Church, that totally explains the aversion or demurral to homosexual practice. It isnāt dispositive to the merits of SSA in their own right, if any. This moral theologian learns nothing more from such resistance than that āmortal sinā and shame generated by other moral theologians is sufficient to override and interfere.
There is a uggestion here, despite your use of the term ārecordsā that Christianity somehow condones this law. You and I both know that this is not tue.
To your first question, that depends on the case in question. Dwelling in abstractions, talking as if all questions were the same in the respect in question, is not realistic or helpful. To your second question, I donāt know nearly enough about Hindu morality or theology to answer in a responsible way (I suspect you donāt either).