Archive for August, 2009
The Gospel of Hip Hop
I thought it would be nice to go into the weekend on the lighter side of religion. Check out this story on the Gospel of Hip Hop.
I wrote a book called ‘The Gospel Of Hip Hop’ to free from all this nonsense garbage right now.
Word. Still, Mr. Krs-One, I’m forced to ask, “To what God are you referring?” You make references to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, but you wrote a new bible? If you happen to believe in their God, I don’t think you can throw out the sacred texts like that.
So what do you think? Publicity stunt? Attempt to launder his rap earnings through a non-profit organization? Delusions of being God’s messenger?
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More (dis)Proof of God
Being somewhat of a math-head, I tend to like proofs. When done well, they’re inescapable. However, philosophical proofs almost invariably leave me unsatisfied (yes, on both sides of the God-debate). But I still like pointing out where they are lacking, because it keeps people from touting them as actual proof. It’s almost funny when a theist comes with the idea that atheists just want logical proof or evidence, and they must not have heard this perfect argument yet. It’s not that we haven’t heard it; it’s that it isn’t nearly as convincing as you think. So, cue phase two of my commentary on the usual suspects in the ‘Proof for God’.
Last time, I discussed the ‘prime mover‘ argument, specifically the formulation put forth by Aquinas, since his annoys me more than most (it’s the way he asserts the Christian god at the end that does it, I think). But I got an interesting comment that reminds me why mathematical proofs are so satisfying to me. The commenter mentioned the idea, “What’s infinity times zero?” So what does math have to say about this? My response was this:
Strictly math-speaking, you simply cannot do that operation because infinity is not a number. It’s tantamount to saying “what is zero times chair?” Infinity is a tricky thing to get a hold of anyway. For example, there are an infinite number of integers. This is a class of infinity called “countably infinite”. But there’s another class called “uncountably infinite”, for example the real numbers. Take my set of numbers here (1.2, 1.22, 1.222, 1.2222, …) You can see how I’m constructing them. I could continue this series forever, always increasing and never reach 1.3. You could not assign an integer in a 1:1 fashion to the real numbers. So is uncountably infinite greater than countably infinite? They’re both infinity…
But it’s even more fun, because I can illustrate a good (dis)proof and play with infinity at the same time. I’m disproving this claim “Infinity is a number”, and using the common understanding of a number as an element of an ordered set that behaves under the usual arithmetic (+-*/). Also, I’m using the understanding that <inf> + x = <inf> (ie, adding anything to infinity is still infinity).
So, if <inf> is a number that behaves like a number,
<inf>/<inf> = 1
(<inf>/<inf>) + <inf> = 1 + <inf>
(<inf>/<inf>) + <inf> = <inf>
<inf> / <inf> = 0
1 = 0
See how satisfying that is? I made a claim, if infinity is a number, then the following must be true… 1=0. One very much does not equal zero, so our premise is false. Now let’s take a look at another proof for God. It’s the standard Ontological Argument (meaning a priori, quite a claim), put forth (I believe originally) by St. Anselm. It roughly follows this path:
- God, by definition is the greatest being imaginable. You cannot imagine anything greater.
- A being that exists is greater than a being that does not exist
- Therefore, God must exist
Now see how unstatisfying that is? It kind of ties in with another of Aquinas’ proofs (number 4) . His follows this logic:
- Things that exist have certain qualities to greater or lesser degrees
- greater and lesser are relative terms, which relate to the maximum
- Something must have the maximum possible of every quality
- That’s God.
One criticism of this I’ve read is that he says nothing that proves that one single object must have the maximum possible of all qualities, but I think this is too easily dismissed. Let’s just add a step, 2.5 that says “One quality you can have is having qualities”.
There, fixed, right? No, they’re both still very flawed. In the first proof, we make no distinction between imagining something and existence when it is actually a very deep divide. How about this?
- I can imagine no greater proof than the proof against God’s existence.
- A real proof is greater than an imaginary proof.
- Lucky me, it’s real and I’m almost done writing it.
- Therefore, no God.
It’s exactly the same as our infinity proof. I said “If your proof is true, then so is mine, so God exists and God does not exist.” A logical contradiction, therefore our assumptions were wrong. The proof cannot be valid.
The problem that arises from Aquinas’ proof is that he does not prove that because we can determine relative relationships between qualities two things possess, we know that something must have to have the extreme of this quality. He says ‘maximum’ and uses it as ‘infinite’. In his text, he uses concepts like goodness, truth, and nobility. But we are not required to believe in an infinitely good being. His proof merely says that for us to use goodness in a relative way, there must be a ‘most good’ and a ‘least good’. We can conceive of infinite goodness, but it is not required to relate the relative goodness between two real objects. We need only something with some amount of goodness as a reference point, and say that there exists something with more good than anything else that exists (but that my not be infinite goodness).
Again this will tie into our discussion of infinity (see what I did there). There are numbers that are greater and lesser than others. For instance 2 < 3. 15,204 > -10. We know their relative “greatness”, and we can conceive of the idea that there is a “greatest”. We call this concept infinity. But infinity is not a number, and the fact that we can use the idea of a “greatest number” does not mean that there is one. In fact, I can prove there is not.
For an arbitrarily large number x,
x < x+1
But since x is arbitrarily large, there can be no largest number.
Now if they would just actually define “God” we could find a similar argument and be done with it….
In the Atheist Closet
I’m sure many people have heard about Hemant’s recent issues with the Illinois Family Institute. The latetest update to this story can be found here. And I completely applaud his ability to juggle a professional life and an atheist-blogging life with such confidence.
The truth is, many atheists don’t feel they can do so. I’ve read some non-atheist (don’t really know the word to use without singling out some group) writers almost mocking atheists that complain about this, like they’re making moutains out of molehills. We make parallels between being an “out” atheist and being gay. I don’t feel like it makes light of the situation either has to deal with, and personally I prefer to not broadcast myself the way that some, like Hemant, can. I have very real concerns about being open and out about my beliefs.
Primarily, I think what keeps atheists “in the closet” is the politics involved in their job. Professionally, I avoid the topics at all costs, not because I think that they’re unimportant, but because I know absolutely that my job would be affected. Both now and previously, I have had managers that were plainly religious, and spoke some of these beliefs to me. I know some of their contemporaries (that don’t need to worry about being liked) who have had conversations about it, and if they disagree it can become quite heated. So, I feel that I would have a lot to lose if it was common knowledge that I didn’t believe what they did. Like it or not, office politics is a powerful thing. Do you think if a promotion came up and it were between me and a Christian who were otherwise nearly equally qualified that my manager would push harder for the Christian? There’s still a stigma around atheism that plays us as immoral or value-less.
And maybe it wouldn’t affect anything. Hemant has very understanding employers, and of course the official policy of any employer I’ve had would be that it doesn’t matter. But how would you ever know? If my manager just didn’t think I was right for something in his gut, there’s no way to determine what swayed his decision. Or perhaps I don’t get the chance to get in good with my boss because he doesn’t want to have a friendly relationship with an atheist. Most of the time, that’s probably not the case, but the issue for me is that it’s just not worth the risk. I don’t lie, and if asked directly I would be honest. But I’ll keep them separate for as long as I can. Groups like the IFI give Christianity a bad name, and until more people see why, we won’t see people being honest with each other. Is this their tactic, to bully people into anonymity and submission? Maybe not officially, but it seems to be what they do.
And they call us “immoral”.
Failure of the Aquinas Proofs of God
Despite 12 years of Catholic school, the first time I really encountered Aquinas was in a Western Civilization course in college. I remembered reading his “proofs” of the existence of God and wondering if this was really a proof to anyone. As it turns out, his logic is trotted out all the time, and I’ve always found it thoroughly unconvincing. So I’d like to take some time to explain why. For some quick background, you can read up on them here. They’re in Article III.
There are 5 of these proofs, but I really will only spend any time on 2 of them. The last 3 are, even under his own admission, more convoluted and, to me, even harder to follow than the first (which I’m rejecting anyway). You will recognize the arguments in these proofs by the very common “first cause” argument. Really, I’m throwing the two together, because they’re pretty much the same. He simply uses motion specifically in the first, and more general cause/effect in the second. A brief summary of the argument is this: Things are currently in motion. For something to be in motion, it must be moved by something. That something must, in turn, be moved by something. This logic must continue until you reach a first mover, something that moves things, but is not moved itself. In more general terms, for something to be in effect, it must have a cause. There cannot be an infinite regression of causes, for that would mean there’s no first cause, therefore, there must be a first cause that is uncaused, with the kicker, “– and this all men know as God”.
Well, first of all all men do not know this as God. That’s quite a leap to make, even assuming I accept your logic before, which I don’t. So I understand what he’s thinking here. Let’s picture a ball in space moving along. For this ball to be moving, something else had to run into it to cause it to move. But that ball was moving already. In order for that to happen, something had to run into that ball, and so on. But this view of the natural world is outdated. Our understanding of the forces at work makes this not nearly as convincing as it was when he wrote it. For example, let’s consider gravity. Two objects, some distance apart, need no prior motion in order to fall together. Gravity acts upon them simply because they exist and nothing more. If the universe consisted of a bunch of static objects, the simple fact that gravity attracts all matter would cause them to move, and once the chain is started, we have no more need for the idea of God as the first cause.
The argument I anticipate at this point is that we haven’t explained where all this stuff came from. Sure, if it popped into existence all still, we can deduce that it would move, but what does it mean to pop into existence? First of all, I think it’s harder to imagine non-existence than people give credit to. What would it mean for nothing to exist? Not that there is a big empty universe (Really, not that. Quantum physics has some great results about how empty space really isn’t empty at all). The empty space wouldn’t exist. Time wouldn’t exist. What does that actually mean? I challenge you to explain it. If there were no existence at all, we couldn’t ask the question “What if nothing existed?” So why is it so hard to accept an infinite past? To claim that God created everything out of nothing is really just claiming that there is some other plane of existence that we don’t comprehend. It actually solves nothing, because we would just redefine “existence” to that new thing we discovered, and ask the same question.
The other real problem with these kinds of questions is the extremely unintuitive nature of time. Time and space are completely interwoven. We talk about the theory of the big bang, and how everything was scrunched down so small and exploded. But to talk like this conversationally is a little misleading. The fantastic density at this moment just “before” the big bang would have rendered time and space completely meaningless. They would both have been stretched and warped more than any black hole in existence now. And the way that such high gravitational force warps space and time, nothing can escape. This means that absolutely all information is lost once it falls into this gravitational well. Everything. We can’t “look deeper” and glean information from before the big bang.
And here’s my point. What does “infinitely old” really mean when old is just a time-relative term, and time is so dubious? It’s not the flat line extending infinitely into the past and future that it seems to us in our day to day lives. There was no “moment of creation”, because moments can’t mean anything without existence. We don’t have the tools to comprehend all of the universe, but that’s ok. We make progress all the time. Nothing yet has said that we can’t understand, just that we don’t yet. God isn’t necessary, just convenient. Give us some time: we’ve had a good history of figuring things out.
Mock “debates” convice no one
You know what I get very tired of? Fake debates where the writer has the conclusion in mind (and they all do). It could be that they just need a way to get their points across, and cheesy dialogue was the first thing that came to mind. But I have never, ever read or watched something of this format and thought anything other than “this is entirely unconvincing.”
Have you heard of, read, or seen the story Dinner with a Perfect Stranger? It’s about a woman who has dinner with a guy that says he’s Jesus. She’s skeptical at first, but eventually he convinces her and it’s the most life-changing event she’s ever experienced. I’ve seen the movie, and through the whole thing I’m sure the author expected me to think, “Oh, wow, he’s got me at every turn!” But instead, my thoughts went like this, “Why did she say that? I wouldn’t have asked that. I would have said this.” And so on.
And I got to thinking that there is almost no way that any kind of conversation like this where you make up the dialogue for the other side of the argument could ever convince someone that doesn’t already agree with you. No matter how well you anticipate the arguments of the other side, you’re going to miss what someone would have said. Check that, what everyone except possibly one person with that exact viewpoint would have said. People can’t be pidgeon-holed like that. It reminds me why I like real debates. Because you have the chance to voice your actual objections to any point. If at any point in a mock-debate you think “I don’t accept that point, but they didn’t question it,” you won’t accept anything built on it. It’s an utterly useless tool for anything other than story telling.
Anyone who can point me to a counter-example would be much appreciated. But until then, I say stop with this. It’s a lazy literary device that at best is useless for your point, and at worst is counter-productive.
Simpsons take on religion
I thought I’d start this week out a little more light-heartedly. With that in mind, (and a recent post I found over on Friendly Atheist) I’d like to take this opportunity to tell everyone out there that The Simpsons is one of the greatest shows ever put on TV. I understand that it can be hard to get into with their 350+ episodes. You never know what you’re getting into, but trust me. It’s a smart, topical yet timeless, and hilarious show.
Since this is an atheist-themed blog, I’ll trot out a few of my favorite religion-based episodes or quotes. They don’t always have quite the edge to them that I might have used (didn’t want to risk the ratings hit?), I still love it.
Lisa: Why are you dedicating your life to blasphemy?
Homer: Don’t worry, sweetheart. If I’m wrong, I’ll recant on my deathbed.
– “Homer the Heretic”
Bart: I’m opting for the life of sin followed by a presto-chango deathbed repentence.
– “Faith Off”
I like these. They poke some fun at the idea that is in a lot of old Christian stories, and seems to be a pretty good loophole to living a good life. You can be forgiven any time you truly repent. Why not just wait until it’s about to matter?
Ned: Homer, God didn’t set your house on fire.
Rev. Lovejoy: No, but He was working in the hearts of your friends and neighbors when they came to your aid, be they [points to Ned] Christian, [Krusty] Jew, or [Apu] … miscellaneous.
Apu: Hindu! There <are> 700 million of us.
Rev. Lovejoy: Aw, that’s super.
– “Homer the Heretic”
Lovejoy: Marge, you are a real timesaver. Do you know, thanks to you,
that I discovered a form of shame that’s gone unused for 700
years?
– “In Marge We Trust”
Skinner: Mother’s gone too far — she’s put cardboard over her half of
the television. We rented “Man Without a Face” — I didn’t
even know we had a problem! What should I do?
Lovejoy: Well, maybe you should read your Bible.
Skinner: Um, any particular passage?
Lovejoy: Oh, it’s all good.
– “In Marge We Trust”
Flanders: They’re telling people we’re descended from a pack of apes even though there’s nothing about it in the bible!
Rev. Lovejoy: Ned, you’ve gotta take this thing with a grain of salt, I mean, heh, come on…
– “The Monkey Suit”
Lovejoy cracks me up. He’s the stereotypical jaded preacher.
Lisa: [uncovers wingson a skeleton] Oh my goodness.
Millhouse: What is it Lisa?
Lisa: It looks like a human skeleton, but these other bones almost look like wings.
Ned: You mean like an angel!
Lisa: Well obvioiusly that’s impossible–
Moe: Yeah, Lisa’s right, It’s an angel!
–”Lisa the Skeptic”
Chief Wiggum: Yeah Lisa, everybody’s heard of angels, but who’s heard of a neanderthal!
– “Lisa the Skeptic”
Lisa: Excuse me, I took a piece of this skeleton for scientific ananalys, soon you will have all the facts.
All: You did what? Stupid! [boos are heard].
Homer: Facts are meaningless, you can use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true! Facts, schmacks.
– “Lisa the Skeptic”
Lovejoy: Well, It appears science has failed again, in the face of overwhelming religious evidence.
– “Lisa the Skeptic”
Ned: Science is like a blabber mouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. Well I say that there are some things we don’t wanna know. Important things!
– “Lisa the Skeptic”
It’s funny how people don’t want to accept something that contradicts their beliefs, even to the point of active resistance. Also, confirmation bias is a powerful thing, isn’t it?
Todd: Daddy, was Mommy a monkey? I can’t remember.
Ned: No one was ever a monkey! Everything is what it was and always will be! God put us here and that’s that!
Todd: But you said a stork brought me.
Ned: Umm…that was God disguised as a stork.
Rod: Then who brings baby storks?
Ned: There’s no such thing as storks! It’s all God!
Todd: (Kneeling beside a statue of a stork) Please bless Daddy and Roddy…
Ned: Stop praying to that stork!
– “The Monkey Suit”
It’s hard to keep answering real questions from your kids and not get tied up by your own biased beliefs isn’t it?
Bart: Easy on the zeal churchos, I’ve got something to say. Don’t you get it? It’s all Christianity people! The little stupid differences are nothing next to the big stupid similarities!
Ned: That’s right! Can’t we all just get together and focus on our real enemies: monogamous gays and stem cells…
– “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star”
This is just a great line. I think the best part is about “monogamous gays”. It’s hilarious how much they will fight against gay marriage and claim some family-destroying promiscuity, when actually the ones who want to marry obviously want to be monogamous.
Father Sean: I was laying in the gutter picking up me teeth when St. Peter himself appears before me. ‘Sean, yah wanker’, he says, ‘repent of your wicked ways or sod off!’. Then he gobbed in my face and turned back into a streetlight.
– “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star”
Something about this one just makes me laugh. He’s having a halucination that seems so un-divine, and it prompts him to become a priest.
These last couple of episodes are some of my favorites, but there are tons of little gems all throughout the show. Really, I have to just cut myself off, or this post would be way too long. Maybe I’ll do follow ups to this post as I remember more that I like. I’ll leave you with one parting thought:
“Prayer has no place in the public schools, just like facts have no place in organized religion.” – Superintendent Chalmers
Follow up to atheist morals
I just read a painful post about A Christian Analysis of Atheism. I don’t know what I might have expected with a title like that, but the ideas in this misguided commentary make me cringe. I’m embarrassed for both of us. You because you don’t understand a lot of things, and me because we aren’t explaining it well (apparently).
This reminded me of a recent post I made about atheists and morals. This is, apparently, what some Christians think of when they hear the term “atheist”:
According to Chuck Colson in Against The Night: Living In The New Dark Ages, in the arena where relativism reigns supreme in opposition to the law of God, there is no legitimate ground in which one can exclude the arguments and proposals of Nazis, serial killers, and pedophiles (47). From today’s headlines, the nation is coming to realize in the most brutal of ways that these ideas do not confine themselves to academic journals or newspaper opinion pages. And in the case of school shootings such as Columbine High, this radical antipathy towards God can in fact turn deadly.
If the lawlessness of atheism can wreak havoc upon individual lives, just imagine its affects (sic) magnified across entire societies. The major dictatorships of the twentieth century testify to this blood-soaked historical truth. Founded upon assorted atheistic ideologies, these totalitarian regimes promised secular heavens on earth but instead dragged their nations down to the very borders of hell.
Unfettered by eternal external standards, those holding the reins of power in such societies had nothing to hamper the implementation of their most extreme policy whims, not even the value of innocent human lives.
Oh no. Really? The “lawlessness of atheism”? I get so tired of this argument. There is no lawlessness necessitated by atheism. Read that past post of mine for more of that. Atrocities have been committed in the name of many things, including CHRISTIANITY. Some people may try to blame the religion for them, but in general, I do not. It’s the people using what they can to rationalize what they want, nothing more. Blaming atheism for the Columbine shooting? I seem to remember that they picked that day to coincide with Hitler’s birthday (and lest we forget, he made numerous mentions of his Christian beliefs and motivations). So just drop it! Atheism is not about abandoning morality because you don’t have to answer to anyone. Would Mr. Meekins go on a shooting rampage if he wasn’t worried that he would be punished by an invisible man in the sky? Let’s hope not.
But my main point is this: Atheism is not inconsistent with morality, and it’s completely orthogonal. The discussion of belief in a god has nothing to do with if we lose our morality or not. It’s a complete non sequitur. Saying, “Christianity must be true, otherwise people will kill each other” is not arguing any point of truth about Christianity, it’s appealing to the emotions of listeners who don’t really want to die.
And I’m not done with this commentary. He wants to bring up science, so I’m happy to oblige.
The Laws of Thermodynamics declare that, left to themselves, systems degrade to the maximum level of entropy; or in laymen’s terms, things wear out. Employing this principle, one is forced to conclude that, if the universe is an infinitely-old closed system those like Sagan claim it to be, then the universe would have already wound down in eons past. Therefore, the universe must have had a beginning. And since something finite cannot come from nothing, the hypothesis of a divine creator provides the most plausible alternative.
Now, my thermodynamics is a little rusty, but if I remember from college, thermodynamics deals very heavily in probabilities. That is to say, all of the molecules of air in this room could rush to one corner all of a sudden, but that isn’t very likely. The laws of thermodynamics make predictions based on the fact that, over time, things tend to follow certain rules, because the probabilities of them not doing so are so small. But IF the universe is an infinitely-old closed system, you would need zero probability for an event before you could say it won’t ever happen. Don’t underestimate infinity, it’s quite a long time. I’m not claiming that this is true, but consider the possibility. Some 13.5 billion years ago was the last time that all the matter in the universe happened to get to a state that it was crunched down together so tightly and exploded. Can you say with certainty that this hasn’t happened before, or will again? In another 20 billion years? 20 billion billion? (20 billion billion)^(20 billion billion)?
One more comment on the cosmological argument in general, while we’re talking science and math. The argument is more or less a failure of semantics. We start with a premise: everything in motion has a cause. So, that cause must then have a cause, and so forth until we get to a “First Cause”, which must be God. There is a fallacy here that is less than obvious: you can’t use a timeline argument to discuss something that is not temporal. Give it some time to roll around in your brain. If you want to ask “What happened before time began?” you have already used language to make any answer meaningless. What does “before time began” mean? You’re asking what temporal relation something had when there was no measure of time at all. Time is a tricky thing to think about, but watch out for this mistake. “Before time” is meaningless.
It’s too bad so many people misunderstand these things. But I’ll keep doing my part, one post at a time.
Intelligent Design: What has history taught us?
No, I’m not surprised. But it’s certainly worth pointing out, because this kind of “missing the forest for the trees” is a common mistake. This commentary comes from an intelligent design writer who begs the very apt question, “What has history taught us?” Feel free to read through to see his view on abiogenesis, but it boils down to this: We’ve seen in history that abiogenesis doesn’t really seem probable, and scientists haven’t come up with any proof, so abandon the idea. So first of all, I’d like to make a quick point about an intelligent design advocate missing the point of the scientific process (the one actually used, not the rigid sequence taught to 6th graders to get them used to the idea). Putting forth an idea for something we hope to discover, what he calls “philosophical faith”, has nothing to do with faith. Science makes progress like this: observe, attempt to explain, use explaination to predict, look for prediction, reformulate theory, repeat. It has nothing to do with any kind of faith. The whole point is that you try to explain it the best you can, and when you get more information, you use that to help your explanation. The fact that an idea has been around for some time without evidence either way does not mean abandon it for religious based theories.
But what makes me almost laugh about this commentary is the way he seems to bring up a good point, and ignore the elephant in the room. Exactly what has history taught us about religiously backed explanations for natural phenomena? I’ll tell you: in every instance, EVERY single instance, the religious explanation has been shown to be wrong. It is a crutch during times that we didn’t have the knowledge to actually explain it. Ancient people cowering at the lightning, thinking that Zeus was angry with them look pretty silly to us today don’t they? How can you ask the question “What has history taught us?” and igonore the obvious end to your question? History has taught us that when we think we know, we don’t. The difference between science (real science, not intelligent design) and religion is that science expects to be wrong and has mechanisms to absorb new information and evolve (pun intended). Religion fights it with all its might. Whether it’s today, next year or in 500 years, this one will too. The evidence will pile up until it is overwhelming and we will come up with something new. The common component is science, humming along in the background, making itself better and better all the time. You can try to fight it, or you can swallow your pride and let go of outdated superstitions.
Learn from history: you’re fighting a losing battle.
My biggest issues with Christianity (vol 1)
I’ve had an idea rolling around in my head for a while now, and I’ve decided to make it happen. A while ago, I realized that I was getting tired of the same old arguments, from both sides. The problem is that atheists and theists (to somewhat over simplify the two sides) go back and forth with the same old reasoning and never get anywhere. And the problem, I think, is that out here on the internet, there’s no authority. So when some anonymous theist says something like, “Christians believe that Jesus rode dinosaurs to get around,” and I point out the stupidity there, another may just come up and say “No we don’t. Here’s what we really believe.” And the cycle continues.
We all know the basics of Christianity, but there are so many controversial points with a countless number of arguments that we just get lost in semantics most of the time. This is literal, that is not. This is part of my core belief, that is not. This part of the bible is dubious, that part is the word of god. It’s enough to make your head spin. With the accessability of the internet growing every day, the number of Christian “denominations” is growing to meet the number of people who have an opinion.
So I got tired of it. In the interest of information gathering and sharing, I am setting out on a project. I’ve done my research, compiled a list of the most hotly debated topics that we deal with, and I’m going to find out what the authorities think. I’m requesting that local church leaders find an hour or so to sit down with me and discuss these things, not because I want to try to argue them into submission, but because it’s important to know what they actually teach. I don’t care what the crackpot on the street says about the rapture coming in 17 days. Christian denominations have assemblies of large numbers of theologians that determine exactly what their church teaches. I want to know what that really is. What are these people hearing in the sermons every week?
Let me stress again that this is not a confrontational “interview”. I’m a sucker for a good debate, so I will probably bring up some of my personal questions regarding some of these issues, but in no way do I intend to make it combatative. It is simply that I know very well what kinds of questions a lot of people already have, and I want to discuss them with someone who is well versed in the official teachings of his/her church.
In this light, I’d like anyone who would like to leave a comment regarding any issue you want me to bring up. I have already hit the big obvious ones, so you don’t need to worry about those. But if there is something that you’ve never gotten an adequate answer on, let me know. I will do the research as much as I can, and then raise it to the church leaders.
Stay posted for updates. I think this will be a very interesting and enlightening project.
Lutherans vote to allow gay ministers
Apparently, this is becoming such a big issue that it’s creating a divide in the Christian denomination as a whole, and others are facing the same issue. My question is: How is this an issue? Not because I have reservations about gay rights, but because I really wonder about the people that are discriminated against and stick with the church! The original article states that the current ban prohibits gay people from being appointed as ministers unless they vow to be celibate (which I guess is not a requirement if you’re straight).
So is it just people clinging to their beliefs? I would think that people who are gay, with their church telling them it is sinful from the start, would not even want to be a minister, much less enough of them that it’s dividing their organization. Maybe I just don’t understand the details very well.
But can I take a quick moment to raise some points about the gay rights issues in Christian denominations? First, I challenge someone to give me bible verses that show that this is really the teaching of your religion, rather than people trying to justify their prejudice. You want to quote me Leviticus?
Leviticus 18:22 – “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.”
Fine, then I get to quote Leviticus too:
Leviticus 25:44-46 – “Thy bond-men and thy bond-maids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you: of them shall ye buy bond-men and bond-maids…. And they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession, they shall be your bond-man forever.”
I guess our hands are tied. We get to have slaves. How convenient that the bible commands this one too, or do you just want to pick out the passage that suits your current beliefs? Or, we can use the one from Deuteronomy:
Deuteronomy 23:17-18 - “There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel.”
My turn again:
Deuteronomy 23:2 – “A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD. ”
Deuteronomy 21:15-16 – “If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated: then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn.”
So it would seem we also can take multiple wives, and we need to turn away people who were born out of wedlock from praying with us. Better get some good church bouncers if you’re going to stick to the bible! There’s also some fun stuff about not letting any man whose genitals have been crushed into your church. How do you plan on enforcing that one?
Either follow the bible or don’t. You can’t call it a sacred text when you want to interpret it literally, and then ignore the parts that seem wrong for this age when you want that. Give me a break.
