Category Archives: Morality
Question from a Christian About Law and Grace
A member of the Christian Apologetics Alliance recently asked:
Question: In the old testament God outlines an entire list of dos and do nots for the Jews to follow. Among them is dietary regulation (Kosher food=♥).
In the New Testament Christ says,”until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”
Does that include dietary restrictions? Paul suggests in 1 Corintians 8, “But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. ” And Christ Himself says, “What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ‘unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean.’
So my question is thus, if Christ said that not a letter of the law would be removed until heaven and earth disappear and everything is accomplished but says also that what we eat doesn’t necessarily matter because it can’t make us unclean, is he contradicting Himself since in Leviticus 11 God dictates what Israelites were and weren’t suppose to eat?
I’ve heard this objection from 1000 different atheists, worded exactly the way this girl just framed it. What most people fail to take away from Matthew 5:17-20 is one little snippet in v. 18, which qualifies the otherwise sweeping statement of nothing in the Law will pass away “until all is fulfilled.” So, what is the fulfillment of the Law? Christ himself.
Christ fulfilled the righteous requirement of the Law, so that means that we don’t have to. We now live by faith, not by works of Law. Which means the short answer to this inquiry is, “No, we’re not held to dietary restrictions.”
The long answer is a matter of context. Read the rest of this entry
Fallacious Argument Against Homosexuality
Author of Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire, Jennifer Wright Knust has written an article on CNN’s Belief Blog that uses a really fallacious argument against the sin of homosexuality. Several fallacious arguments, actually.
Okay, every argument she presents is fallacious, but I’m not going to get into that right now because I’m going to be reviewing her book in its entirety very shortly. I need a break from atheism, so I thought I’d briefly turn to liberal Christianity.
The argument I wish to highlight is:
“I love gay people, but the Bible forces me to condemn them” is a poor excuse that attempts to avoid accountability by wrapping a very particular and narrow interpretation of a few biblical passages in a cloak of divinely inspired respectability.
You may as well say “I love murderers, but the Bible forces me to condemn them.” “I love liars, but the Bible forces me to condemn them.” “I love rapists, but the Bible forces me to condemn them.” The Bible doesn’t force you to condemn anyone; the fact that what they are doing is against God and nature is why you condemn them. Not every single human behavior is (or should be) acceptable.
No, the Bible has specific reasons for condemning homosexuality. (Bookmark that article; I’ll be referring to it throughout my review of Dr. Knust’s book.)
The hole? The argument assumes that homosexuality is natural, perhaps even desirable. But, history tells us that is not the case. Few (if any) cultures accepted homosexuality. Some turned a blind eye (the Greeks and the Romans, for example, “trained” young men by letting an older man “adopt” him and do sexual things to him), but it wasn’t just “normal” in any but the most depraved societies. Marriage has always been between the sexes, a man to a woman (or sometimes man to women or woman to men).
If Dr. Knust wants homosexuality to be okay, she has to prove that it is. Her argument is just another reason why Christians can’t have a meaningful debate about homosexuality. We’re just backwards bigots, don’t you know?
An Interesting Philosophical Conundrum
The Christian band Texas in July is going on tour with numerous other acts to raise money for a website called sexetc.org. According to Bryan Kemper, this website is staunchly pro-abortion despite purporting to present a “balanced view.” In fact, it only provides links to organizations that encourage abortions, and derides pro-life organizations in blanket statements.
Basically, the site promotes values contrary to Christianity and shouldn’t be supported by persons who call themselves Christians. Yet, Texas in July is a very vocal supporter.
A commenter to Kemper’s article, Jordan W., raises an interesting philosophical question:
As if any of you -author included- knows what’s best for the band. It’s pretty clear that this tour is serving the purpose of getting their name out there and promoting One Reality. I love this band, and I am a faithful Christian as well. Who are we to judge what they do? If you want to actually support the band, support them by going to shows.
Need I remind you that August Burns Red went on this exact tour with The Human Abstract a few years back? Cmon now, be supportive and quit your judging.
Kemper didn’t even touch on a philosophical response to what was raised here, but I wish he would have. He talked about the practical implications, responding that Texas in July was actually raising funds for sexetc.org, where the other Christian bands mentioned weren’t specifically doing that. Jordan kept up the “Stop judging!” reply, which isn’t really what Kemper was doing. He was, as he put it, “It is not about being offended, it is about calling out an injustice.”
But, the broader and more philosophical question not pondered is, “Can I do what’s best for me, even if it spits on the face of the God I claim to serve?” Read the rest of this entry
Monica’s Longer Arguments No Better Than the Tweets, part 3
Yesterday, I promised that we would see how shallow the typical atheist seems to read the Bible. I actually learned that long ago with my failed foray into the forums of Why Won’t God Heal Amputees. It didn’t take long for the crew to harp on one of their favorite passages in the Bible, where Jesus says that if we pray for a mountain to move, that it will get up and move (Mt 17:20).
Obviously, if I pray for Mt. Everest to levitate over the ocean and land in the Appalachian Mountains, we know that won’t happen. Which leads to two general conclusions about that passage. Either Jesus was speaking metaphorically, or the Bible is total bull. WWGHA concludes the latter without even considering the former.
If a Christian argues that Jesus was speaking metaphorically, then the whole forum membership throws a collective fit and claims it is impossible to discern metaphors and literary devices in the Bible from the literal parts. Which leads them to believe that the entire Bible is to be taken at 100% face value, no matter what.
The TV series Police Squad! was a straight-laced cop drama that took place in an alternate universe where there is no such thing as figurative language. If someone said that a name “rings a bell,” then a distant bell would ring. A running gag was for Lt. Drebin to offer a witness a cigarette by holding it to them and simply saying it’s name.
“Cigarette?” he would ask.
The witness would make eye contact with Drebin and reply, “Yes, it is!”
This is how the atheists of WWGHA read the Bible–as though it were absent figurative language. This atheist looks at an obvious example of metaphor and says, “Well, the Almighty God said it, he would be clear about it, so it must be true that you can move a mountain as Jesus says here!” They realize that you can’t, because no one can move a mountain like that. So, they force the conclusion that the Bible is completely false, based only upon their erroneous interpretation of the text.
This is an example of the same sort of fallacy. Here, Monica (Twitter user @Monicks) is reading and interpreting a passage correctly. However, she isn’t thinking deeply enough about what the ramifications of it really are. Read the rest of this entry
Dumbest Tweet I’ve Read in a While
I’ve complained that arguing via Twitter is a bad idea. The problem is that you get 140 characters to make your point, and that’s it. So reading a tweet that’s truly stupid, but requires more than 140 characters to respond to, creates a dilemma. There’s TwitLonger for some of those cases, or I can link it up to my blog as I’m doing in this case, but there’s no way to know how many people will actually read the reply.
Another issue is, while you might reply to the person that said it, and you include “@” + their Twitter name so they will see it, not everyone who read the tweet will see it. This is complicated by the fact that users can retweet posts that they like, spreading the message (but no replies) far and wide.
And, there are far more atheists using Twitter than theists. Which means that, when an atheist says something that’s plain ignorant but is catchy nonetheless, it is going to get read and retweeted dozens of times. Even if a theist writes a reply, the damage is already done. Few (if any) will see the reply.
Twitter user Monicks (whose real name appears to be Monica), has the ignorant tweet of (perhaps) the year. Maybe not, since we’re only in April (the best month of the year, and yesterday was the best day of the year). But it’s still pretty ignorant. Monica says:
http://twitter.com/#!/Monicks/status/56898751595413504
I’m not subscribed to Monica, so the only reason I saw it is because she was retweeted by ThinkAtheist, who I do subscribe to. Monica has 5,609 subscribers and ThinkAtheist has 8,934 subscribers. That particular tweet was retweeted by at least 12 other users, so it looks like way more people have seen that tweet than will ever see this reply. But I wanted to try anyway. Read the rest of this entry
Why Aren’t Christians Better People?
C. Michael Patton began a series on questions he hopes no one will ask, which relates to my own series on DaGoodS’s questions that Christians hope no one will ask. I examined a few of his questions in brief already, and I had intended to continue examining them as he posted more. In the interest of time, I wanted to just write a small snippet on each and combine several in a single post.
That didn’t happen with the question of why Christians aren’t better people. Read the rest of this entry
When I’m Wrong, I’m Wrong
It appears as though I made a sweeping generalization in my last post that was unwarranted. I claimed that atheists lauded this idiot, who made a homeless person jump through hoops for his own amusement before he would give the needy man $20.
I found the video via ex-Christian.net. The comments section on ex-C.net contained things like this:
- Actually the film maker didn’t seem arrogant or particularly condescending to me. It did make the man uncomfortable (although not the woman to my eyes), but its never comfortable when our deepest held values and beliefs are up for public scrutiny by someone who disbelieves them. Maybe it will give him the impetus to do some self-examination. Certainly if someone had just given them $20 without the discussion, these parents would have seen it as “a gift from the Lard!” & “God’s provisioning!”
- Hey, if it’s OK to casually ask for money on the side of the road (and guilt people into donating using “God”), then what’s wrong with casually asking someone to cross out a word in exchange for money?
- The christbots still found and jumped through a loophole to get the money. I really wish the film maker had had ten thousand dollars in cash to really “test” their faith.
- Does anyone really believe that if he had a million bucks, as opposed to 20, that they wouldn’t have accepted? Please.
- Exactly! And if by some slim-to-none chance they wouldn’t have taken the million bucks, that alone would prove the extent of their brainwashing… or sheer stupidity.
- Sad, there they are living in an RV homeless and yet somehow think god is for them? So sad. Sadder even I used to be that stupid. Then I did what the guy in the video said, took accountability for my life. TADA!!!!! It worked! Well what do you know? Read the rest of this entry
The Moral Bankruptcy of Atheism
Let’s try this thought experiment:
On the side of the road is a man, his wife, and a child. They are holding up a sign that reads, “We lost our home. Help would be appreciated.”
Moved by their plight, I’m compelled to help them. I pull my car over to an out-of-the way place. I exit the vehicle and approach the family.
“Hi,” I call to them.
“Hello,” the man says. His wife and daughter remain silent, though his wife offers me a tenative smile.
“I feel for your plight, sir,” I say. “I’m going to give you $20.”
“Thank you,” the man says. His wife smiles more broadly this time, and she extends a hand to thank me.
“But first,” I say, dangling a twenty dollar bill from my fingertips, “I want you to do a little something.”
The woman drops her hand to her side. The man looks at me, while the woman raises a quizzical eyebrow.
Then I propose my deal. “I have a hula hoop, clown shoes, and a colored wig in my trunk. I want you to strip all of your clothes off–totally naked–and wear nothing but the wig and clown shoes. Then, I want you to spin the hula hoop as many times as you can while chanting, ‘I can’t provide for the basic needs of my family, so I’m begging people for money instead of looking for a job!'”
Awkward silence. I dangle the twenty dollar bill even closer to the man’s face. “I don’t think so,” the man growls.
“I’ll make it $50 if you do this at the busiest mall in town,” I say.
The man just shakes his head vigorously. His wife won’t look at me anymore.
In this example, I think that we can confidently conclude that I’m an asshole who should be shot. Making the homeless jump through hoops for my own amusement is reprehensible behavior. People who engage in it deserve the label “asshole.”
Well, what have we here:
Though no one would praise my actions in the itallicized example, folks on ex-Christian.net are applauding the actions of the maker of that video. Had the asshole done what I did above in the thought experiment, they (hopefully) would have universally condemned him. Yet, when he asks the homeless person to deny God for money, that somehow is awesome.
To recap:
- Make a homeless person jump through sadistic hoops for money = immoral.
- Make a homeless person deny his Creator for money = strong commentary on religion.
Conclusion: Atheists have little moral compass, especially when it comes to making religion look bad. Anything goes. This is so disgusting that I can’t even come up with words for it.
Remember, the spirit is more important than the flesh. Denying God has spiritual consequences greater than the physical consequences of turning down $20 from a complete asshole:
If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Phil 3:4-11)
And:
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. (Mt 10:29, 31-33)
Ignorance of Pro-Choice
I had planned to write a post yesterday refuting two common Bible verses that pro-choice advocates cite to “prove” that the Bible is actually pro-choice. Of course, if the choicers understood the historical and cultural context of those verses, they’d be singing a different tune. Or at least not using them to undermine the Bible’s clear pro-life position.
For more, check the blog fellow apologist and brother in Christ, Dave Armstrong, who has listed numerous verses on why the Bible is pro-life.
If I had scheduled that post to appear today, that would have left me free to read and research on the scientific and philosophical reflections on what makes a life alive. That would have been posted tomorrow. And then I’d have the weekend free to finish my series on DaGoodS’s questions that Christians hope no one asks.
But I got unexpectedly busy yesterday, and that busyness continued through today, which means I wasn’t as active in “Ask Them What They Mean by Choice” Day, the pro-life countermeasure to Blog for Choice Day, as I wanted to be.
But I still wanted to do something for it, so I found @juliewashere, a Twitter user and founder the Golden Coat Hanger, a blog on feminist and abortion issues, and I decided to use her tweets to show how extraordinarily inconsistent her pro-choice position actually is. It’s inconsistent to the point of frightening. Let’s look.
Twitter user @KatyPundit (who is male and named David; so much for my uncanny ability to guess gender using forum aliases) told Julie “You gave consent when you spread em open.” Julie responded:
that’s consent to sex, and ONLY sex.
Which is a perfect example of why sex education in America is failing. Pregnancy results from sex. Not every time, but it is a looming possibility each and every time a man and a woman lay down together. So, if you have sex, you’d best be prepared for pregnancy.
David reminds her of this fact: “LOL, Sex makes babies. At least that’s how MY kids got here… U came by Stork?” And Julie responds with a disconnect between sex and pregnancy:
no, pregnancy makes babies, and it takes several months.
Nice, genius. What do you think makes a person pregnant? I think this line of reasoning comes from someone who wants to have sex with any given partner at any given time and not have to worry about a potential pregnancy. In other words, sex isn’t for intimacy and love; it has no spiritual dimension, nor should it always be connected with bringing new life into this world. Sex is purely for the enjoyment of the two people doing it.
Yet another instance of people wanting to give into the flesh and jettison anything to do with higher, spiritual decisions. It can’t be about self-control and discipline! Sex feels too good to be disciplined about it, right? I heard Brian Sapient of the Rational Response Squad argue that pre-marital sex was a right belonging to all human beings that has been co-opted by religion. I guess Julie would agree with that line of reasoning.
Jack Yoest (@JackYoest) said, “The mothers went in to get a dead baby,” of Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s patients. Julie responded:
No, they went in to get rid of fetuses.
What does she think a fetus is? Not a person, as she tweets:
Fetuses are real, they just aren’t people. Learn to read.
And:
I was never a fetus just like I was never a sperm. There was simply no me yet.
First, notice that there was no “her” in either the sperm or the fetus. That will become important later. Now, look at this contradictory tweet:
Live doesn’t begin at conception, it was already present before that. You fail biology.
And Julie fails the argument. Abortion takes a human life unjustly, which is the textbook definition of murder. She just admitted that life was present before conception, therefore it follows life is also present during the pregnancy and development of the unborn child (she denies the existence of an “unborn child” in another tweet). However, if she denies that a fetus is a human life, she must explain when it becomes one.
Julie defines human life in this tweet:
children are sentient, sapient, non-parasitic human beings. Nothing magic about it. Welcome to reality.
Julie’s previous tweets show us that she understands (though she may not acknowledge it) that the mind and the brain are separate. This tweet essentially confirms that position. I’ve established in this post that the brain and major organs function in a fetus prior to 10 weeks. Julie explains that while in the womb, before and after conception, there was no “her.” She believes that it is the mind that makes a person a person. That is evidenced by the fact she has tweeted “Women are people. There is just no compromising that point” and “bio fact: fetuses are non-sentient.”
Yet the mind and the brain are inexorably connected. When the brain ceases to function, the mind loses its ties to this material existence. Without my Christian faith, I couldn’t answer for certain what happens then. The problem Julie has is that she must explain when the mind begins to exist in order to definitively argue that the act of abortion isn’t murder. She never does that; she is basing her pro-choice position, then, on the unproven assumption that the fetus has no mind. Yet it has a brain that functions.
Back Rome Again 