Ichthys said
Tossing this into the mix to see how the different parties respond:
To preface this post I want to note that I agree with Brovo that a lot of these questions are based on false assumptions and are thus quite flawed, but since he's already covered that angle I'll just play along and answer the questions rather than focusing on why I dislike some of them. Actually, after finishing and posting this, I realized that's not very true and I do talk about why some of the questions are bad. Whoops.
Ichthys said
I see a lot of biblical referencing in this debate with people recounting stories/events in the Bible to prove if something is right or wrong. This leads to the following questions: If something is mentioned in the BIble, does that directly mean it is acceptable or unacceptable, considering some of these stories/events never actually comment on whether the act was good/bad? In other words, is it merely a historical event and just that or is it an example of what is/isn't allowable? Also something to consider is who committed the acts in each situation: was the person who did such things, like rape, supposed to be someone good or bad? To put it in biblical terms, does that fact that either a "saved" or "unsaved" person committed the act change anything?
The only context in which the Bible quoting is valid for determination of right or wrong is when you're talking to someone who thinks it is a book of literal truth and the word of God and so forth. To any other believer, and to any non-believer, it is very simple to cast down such things by saying "but that's just allegory to illustrate a point" or something similar. So in the broadest sense, no, no story in the Bible directly shows why something is acceptable or not, regardless of whether they are blessed or a random schmuck, and regardless of whether or not they are punished for whatever they do. You can pick and choose things that exemplify a reasonable morality system from the book, but using it as an actual rulebook is extremely flawed if you think it to be absolute truth.
Now, in the context of someone who believes the Bible is divine law, the questions do need to be answered individually. When something happens in the Bible, if you assume it to be divinely inspired or maybe even the direct word of your deity, then any indication of approval or any order from God to do a thing means that it is an approved behavior. There's certainly leeway for the recording of history idea, but then again why wouldn't God smite the sinners if they were truly acting against his wishes? This is especially true in the Old Testament, where he was very active in the whole smiting and punishment thing. You can totally bypass those conundrums as a true believer though, simply decide their punishment came from eternal hellfire so God didn't have to bother doing stuff, no big deal. But when you have instances of orders direct from God or from his chosen messengers saying to go murder heathens, or adulterers, or those who break the Sabbath, or kids who make fun of bald guys, well, that's pretty clearly an approval of murder in those circumstances. So I would say that to one who believes the Bible is literal truth, yes, anything given as a direct rule or law or order to commit a horrible act can indeed be seen as good and just act regardless of the laws of man, because they would feel that the laws of God supersede them. Saying otherwise would be to contradict the supposedly infallible truth of the Bible, after all.
I could go on a bit of a diatribe about how this is ridiculous, but I see a question a little further on dealing with the supposed divinity of the Bible that would be a better place for it.
Ichthys said
I see that the statement that If someone acts a certain way, then it must mean that they thought it first. Therefore, thinking and doing are the same thing. ~~~ That said, does thinking one thing really equate to enacting that behavior? If someone has the thought of killing someone but never acts on it, are they still a murderer? What is murder without an actual, well, murder?
I think you're getting this idea from a misunderstanding of previous points made in this thread. Shy said that anti-homosexual quotes (listed by Magic Magnum) in the Bible were in fact condemning homosexual
acts, not homosexual
people. I then responded by saying that, when it comes to sexuality, having a particular sexuality is inextricably tied to acts of expression of that sexuality, thus condemning one is as good as condemning others; an analogy to this is that if someone thinks eating meat is murder and thus evil, then those who eat meat are also evil because they do the evil thing. This was in no way and from no person a point saying thoughts are equal to actions, it was about whether or not condemning an action is equal to condemning the person who commits the act.
The short answer to your posed questions is that no, a thought is not equal to an action. Thinking of murder, no matter how detailed the thought is, does not make you a murderer.
Ichthys said
Not to mention, some Psychologists have theorized that personality can actually be changed under the right circumstances (source: http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-10-18/henry-kellerman-personality-how-it-forms; I suggest listening to the whole podcast), so if this theory is true, then is sexual orientation, if taken as a facet of personality, a valid argument against what a person is vs what they do? Does someone's mere actions dictate who they are as a whole, is it their thoughts only, is it both thought and behavior or is there more involved, especially if personality (which is defined as the pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving by the APA) can, in fact, be changed? To put it another way, if personality can change and sexual orientation is a part of personality, can the orientation be changed or not? Is it ultimately a choice? And if it is a choice, is that enough to say
Brovo already covered the "yeah no, sexuality is heavily linked to genetics things" argument, which is very solid, so I'll take another angle here.
Personality is complex enough that it's impossible to peg down "who a person is" with just thoughts or just actions. Both of them together is what makes up a person's personality, so looking at one or the either is horribly limiting. Trying to determine exactly what makes up a person's personality is made even harder due to the fact that it is changeable. Psychological studies are all well and good, but you can find examples of changes in personality in everyday life, though admittedly they make up anecdotal evidence at best. Some people behave very differently after experiencing a major loss; some people think very differently after delving into the world of philosophy; some people change over the years (adult years, formative years are volatile enough with changes that they're not worth focusing on) without any major paradigm shift in their life. The very nature of personality being so complex is what makes it possible to change, because ways of thinking can be changed with new information and behaviors can be modified (extensive psychological research on this has been done, so much so that there's a special psychological term for it: conditioning), thus altering the overall picture of personality that is comprised of thoughts and behaviors.
Now, assuming that sexuality is a part of personality just like any other (which I do not agree with, but for the sake of the argument I'll work with it), this would mean that it could hypothetically be changed. I say hypothetically because this is not a sure thing; for instance, just because it is
possible to condition someone into being extremely aggressive does not mean it will actually work in practice, or that the conditioned behavior will not fade away after it stops being reinforced. Even so, let's say it's really possible, that someone came up with a perfect sexuality reprogramming method. Now we get into the topic of choice, which is where things get far more hazy.
Is something truly a choice if that is just how your personality works? Let's take a look at instincts for an analogy: say your instinctual response to being threatened is to run away from the danger (the flight side of fight or flight); if someone pulls a knife on you and you run, did you truly
choose to run away? If there was no conscious decision making going on, if your body went on auto-pilot and you ran, was it truly a choice? I would say no. Personality things work very much in the same way. If your response to someone being rude to you, based upon your personality, is to shrug it off and pay it no heed, it is generally done as an automatic response rather than something you consciously think about. So if someone calls you a mean name and you shrug it off as usual, did you make that choice? Again, I would say no. The word "choice" implies that something was selected from a number of alternatives, but when it comes to most facets of personality, just as with instincts, there is very rarely any kind of thought put into it that would merit calling it a choice. Sexuality works this way as well: there is no conscious thought, no choice made, in who or what you are attracted to.
With the question of change brought into it, since you can choose to undergo conditioning to change a facet of your personality, does that make all of your natural personality driven actions a choice because an alternative exists? Yet again, I would say no, because choice implies that conscious thought and decision making goes into each instance of your thoughts or actions. If you were to undergo therapy to make your neutral mood reaction to rudeness instead be to snap at the offender and be rude to them in turn, I would then say responses of such a nature done without conscious thought are still not choices. Saying that thoughts or actions driven by your personality are choices just because they can be changed would be like saying I chose to have black hair because dyes exist. I may be consciously making the choice not to change it, but that does not mean my having black hair is in fact a choice. I have a beard and choose not to use any of the various methods to remove it, but that does not mean the fact that I grow facial hair is a choice (even when taking into consideration the laser surgery that can be done to prevent hair growth). Just because alternatives exist does not mean the default thing is automatically a choice. Personality is the same, sexuality is the same; even if it's hypothetically possible to change them, that does not mean you are making a choice every time you do something based on your personality or sexuality.
That argument would have been far stronger if I also included the stuff about how sexuality is far more hardwired that personality, but I made the conscious choice not to go down that road because Brovo had already used it.
Ichthys said
On the topic of biblical theology and all that: First off, I notice most scriptural references are from the Old Testament, but wasn't some of the Old Testament, in terms of some of the rules in it, made null because of Jesus Christ? If this is true, what parts of it are still applicable and which ones are void?
There are a few answers to this, an as with the first question it very much depends on who is doing the answering. Atheists like myself would say none of it is true and thus none of it should really be applied to modern life. Jews would say this Jesus fellow was mistaken the Torah is still where it's at. Muslims would say whatever agrees with the Quran is accurate and the rest is lies. Other answers are more interesting.
For a true Christian, meaning one who follows the word of Jesus Christ above all other prophets, the answer should be that almost none of the Old Testament is actually applicable nowadays. Earlier in the thread, mdk linked a passage that's rather important to this:
Jesus said the two most important laws were to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. Logically, if those are the two most important things according to Jesus, anything that goes counter to that is no longer applicable. Everything in the Old Testament about killing people for breaking the Sabbath or eating pork or wearing clothes of mixed cloth is totally out, because you wouldn't want to be killed for such silly nonsense. Honestly, so far as one truly following the teachings of Jesus should be concerned, nothing in the Old Testament actually need apply unless he specifically said that it did. Dude was pretty chill about rules though, just said that people should love God and be good to one another, and so a Christian that's all about the Christ part of their religion really needn't bother with the stuff that came before him.
For Christians as they are in reality, the sad truth is that cherry picking is the case. They don't even follow a lot of what Jesus said about not being judgmental assholes, about giving to the poor, and about that whole golden rule thing of treating others as you would want to be treated. When it comes to Old Testament, they tend to go with whatever their local clergyman or their social circle says is the stuff that matters. Slavery being totally cool in the Old Testament? Nah, archaic stuff, doesn't count now. No mixed fabrics? Pfft. No pork? Hahaha, really funny old misled guys who wrote that part, I'm keeping my bacon and ham, thanks. Condemnations of homosexuality? Sure, why not, let's keep those bits. It's a total crap shoot, no real rhyme or reason.
For Christians who say the Bible is the absolute truth, well, they
should be following most of the Old Testament stuff. They can wiggle around some things by saying that it was just a historical account of how things were or that it was only ever meant to apply to a particular city or group of people, but in reality it comes down to the same cherry picking. From what I've seen, they just seem to be more favorable about pulling various things from the Old Testament than the Christians who don't believe the Bible to be infallible. It's the same nonsense methodology in both cases though.
Ichthys said
As there are many Judeo-Christian denominations, doesn't the fact that there are so many different beliefs under the same religion make the religion unreliable? What makes one different from another? Is it the same God? The same religion? And related to this topic, what is the point of using different translations? If the BIble is supposed to be eternal and "God's word", then does believing in solely one translation prove that the previous claim is false? What makes on translation correct and not another? Are they all correct?
Well yeah, that's one of the things that makes it unreliable. If you had a mathematical formula to solve a simple algebra equations and it gave you tens of thousands of possible answers, you'd probably call it unreliable. Same goes with the various denominations, the very fact that there are so many variations means that the religion is essentially useless if you're trying to find the right answer. Their differences range from major issues like papal authority or which books and translation of the Bible to use to minor ones like interpretations of certain passages or matters of ceremony. Some denominations are so similar that it seems pointless for them to even be separate. It's all ostensibly the same God and religion, but then again, if you have two identical make and model cars but they each have a different stereo system, are they really the same car? If you believe in the religious stuff you'd probably say they're all worshipping the same God in different ways, but as an atheist I'd say they've modified the character to suit their own purposes so it's kind of like pondering whether a character from a certain TV show is the same exact character when they're written into a fanfic where they do things they never would on the show.
Now, for the stuff about the Bible, this is the perfect place for that diatribe I mentioned at the end of the first set of questions. That part about the Bible being God's word? Yeah, that's not a real thing. The book itself doesn't even claim to be so in most translations. Some stuff claims to be divinely inspired, but those are isolated incidents. There is nothing in there that says "God said all of this book is true." That was an addition to Christian dogma in the 1700s, after the scientific advancements of the Enlightenment, when some theologians started to question whether or not the Bible was actual literal truth. Before then, the explanation for varying interpretations and translations was that the word of God was infinite and could take as many forms as he saw fit. Strictly allegorical interpretations of the Bible in earlier times were just as accepted in theological circles as traditional interpretations that so and so laws should be followed else punishment happens. It was all about the interpretation, which remains the truth today. The whole "the Bible is God's divine word and law" shtick is very new, and very strange considering that the book itself never makes the claim.
In my personal opinion, varying translations and interpretations are all of equal value and validity, just the same as varying interpretations or translations of any other piece of classic fiction. For religious people, the folks who don't see the Bible as literal truth should probably see the variances as cool new interpretations that all may or may not have value, because aside from those core things of loving God and not being a dick, whatever they take from the Bible is done through interpretation to begin with. This, like the issue of what is right or wrong in the Bible, is only an actual issue for those who believe that it is the literal word of God and that it is a purely accurate historical account of the world. For them, the issue of translation is a major problem, because if something changes from the original then it has changed the word of God and thus made it inaccurate. Well, I should clarify that: it
should be a major problem for them, but in my experience they tend to just say that whatever version they grew up with is the right one. I'm sure there are some out there who research different translations and actually make a decision about which one is right, and good for them for not being lazy about it, but they are a small minority as far as I'm aware.
Ichthys said
Since, according to the fundamental principles of evolution, the primary goal of any living species is to pass on the best genes for survival and reproduce (survival of the fittest and all that), and since Homosexuality is, in essence, a "mutation" (if it even is a mutation) that works against survival of the fittest, is that enough ground to discriminate against them from a strictly scientific perspective? What about from a moral one? In other words, can the argument be made that if Homosexuality is not compliant to evolution, it a deterrent to the advancement of the human race?
Er, evolution doesn't have a goal, actually. I know Brovo already explained this, but I feel compelled to do so anyway. Evolution explains how changes in living things occur over time, that's all. It does not outline any goal; there is no perfect version of an animal that is being worked toward with successive generations. The concept of survival of the fittest is not that the species
tries to pass on the best genes for survival, it's that those with the best
chance to survive and reproduce are more likely to do so, and that those varying chances are derived from genetic mutations. Darwin's famous example with finches was that longer and thinner beaks were best for getting bugs from the trees in their area. This didn't mean that the birds had a little huddle and decided to go for some finch eugenics to promote long and thin beaks, it means those that happened to have mutations that caused longer and thinner beaks were less likely to starve and more likely to be able to feed their offspring, thus their genes had a greater chance to be passed on than those from birds with less beneficial mutations. Over many generations in a limited gene pool, this causes a population to slowly change toward having this trait that happens to suit their environment. The goal of the finches was not to have cool beaks, they were just doing the normal animal thing of surviving and mating, and mutations and their environment took care of the rest. Okay, lecture over, on to the questions.
From a strictly scientific perspective, particularly a biological perspective, homosexuality is grounds for discrimination in theory, yeah. In practice, the only thing that should actually take homosexuality into account in biological matters is genetically guided reproduction. If at some point in the future some population of humans were to decide to give eugenics a go with a program where they force being to get together and have kids based on their genes, then sure, I'd say it'd be reasonable for them to say homosexuals aren't desirable for their reproduction program if the goal is to better the gene pool of humanity, since homosexuality goes counter to the whole mating part of the program. Ironically enough, this could be a good thing for homosexuals because they likely wouldn't want to go through with the forced reproduction program thing anyway. However, if it were done with fully artificial insemination, and maybe even artificial wombs instead of making the women actually be pregnant because fuck it why not use cool science things, then sexuality would actually be irrelevant. Those who run the eugenics program would probably actually see homosexuality as a good thing, because then there's less risk of the people with good genes going and having unauthorized babies with someone who has bad genes. Aside from hypothetical eugenics programs though, no, there's nothing in science that would actually care about homosexuality or warrant discrimination against homosexuals.
From a moral perspective, no. First off, most morality systems tend to say that you should be nice to people regardless of who they are. Discriminating (in the negative treatment meaning of the word) against any group at all sounds pretty immoral to me. Secondly, why would this mutation be grounds for moral choices? You may as well base your morality on hair or eye color for all such a morality system would be worth. Finally, morality tends to be about your own actions and what is good or bad for you to do. If a morality system says hurting and hating people is bad, there shouldn't be any caveats just because the person is Asian or homosexual or has green eyes. A moral code based on treating others based on their physical or sexual or mental characteristics is pretty fucked up.
If homosexuality actually were a deterrent to the continuance (biologically and genetically) or advancement (a word I would only use in terms of science and technology, as applying it to genetics makes it sound like there's some end goal or that evolution always makes things bigger or stronger or smarter, which are both false) of humanity, we would have far bigger problems than homosexuality to deal with. See, as we are now with over 7 billion people living today all over the world in all manner of environments with science and technology advancing just fine, a small minority of the population being homosexual isn't a problem. If something happened tomorrow that made half of the world's population homosexual, big deal, the human race would be fine. Artificial insemination is as reliable (if not more so) as trying the natural method of baby making, and given the general worldwide hatred for homosexuality many of those people would go on through their life denying it or pretending to be straight (see the various conservative male politicians in the US and elsewhere who have a wife and kids and then are caught screwing a dude and then admit they're actually gay for a high profile example of this in action), so there probably wouldn't be much of a dip in the population of the next couple generations. Being gay doesn't prevent someone from contributing to the science and technology fields, so no problem there at all. The only way we might get to a point where homosexuality is an actual threat to the survival of humanity would be if there's some apocalyptic event that wipes out the vast majority of all humans, and at that point we'd probably be more concerned about the survival thing than we would be about forcing people to make babies. In this day and age there is absolutely zero harm done to humanity by someone being homosexual, end of story.
Ichthys said
That should be enough to keep you guys thinking. Remember, in debate, the winner (if you can even claim there is a winner) is the one who debates the best. That does not mean they were persuasive. The point of Debate is not to persuade the other or to blatantly shoot someone down, but to effectively defend your own stance (like in English class). "Winning" (and that term is used loosely) does not mean you are correct, just as "losing" (also used loosely) doesn't mean you are wrong. Merely it is a competition of who can defend better, not attack. Overall, its really just a way to see other people's points of view and letting that affect you in whatever way it does, whether it makes you stronger in your original beliefs or adopt new ones.
You seem to be operating under the mistaken assumption that formal debate rules matter outside of formal debates.
