You made a claim that you know that homosexual behavior is immoral. I asked you how you reach that conclusion, you replied "It's a value instilled by my religious/cultural system" . So I want to know how do you know that the values instilled by your religious system are moral. You somehow, play a game and answer with a question.

You make a claim "homosexual behavior" is immoral because your religious system tells you so, how do you know that your religious system isn't broken and it doesn't misguide you on what is moral and what is not.

I did? Can you please quote me?

"I do think that the homosexual behavior is immoral."

You've fairly consistently stated this viewpoint and I think it is fundamentally mistaken about the nature of rights. I think you have a right to decide how you live your own life, seek your own peace, and seek your own personal forms of compromise (within certain constraints of course). However, criticism or condemnation of the decisions you end up at do not interfere with this right. What constitutes a violation of your rights would be when there are laws that prevent you from making your own decisions.

Since the political activists in question do not try to make laws that prevent you from making your own decisions about how to live (quite the opposite in fact), but rather are criticizing the views of those like Bill Hybels, they are not violating anyone's rights, nor advocating for violating anyone's rights.

Of course it's relevant. One might be justified in telling someone who is harming others to change one's behavior. Causing less harm is a goal we all more or less agree we should work towards. If the behavior is causing no harm, on what basis do you think should they change it? "It goes against my religion?"? Tough Imo.

So to "think" that something is true is the same as "knowing" something is true to you? That's why I asked you what sense of 'knowing' you were referring to.

No it is not, you are correct. But at the same time if you think of something and reach a conclusion and decide that something is immoral that conclusion must be based on some type of knowledge. You don't just wake up one day and claim eating roaches is immoral based on ZERO thinking. So on what knowledge do you base your conclusion and tell yourself, I think homosexual behavior is immoral.

To be clear, the application of change of behavior is being applied to those within the church, not those outside of the church.

For participation within in-group activities.

The standard of "harm" is also very nebulous. I think that people who are excessively talky are not doing "harm" yet I think that it would "benefit" them to be less talky.

Okay, you were the one who introduced the "mean person" analogy. As for the rest of what you say--it seems to me that mostly it is just you speculating about the attitudes of those who condemn the anti-gay rhetoric of Bill Hybels and others. Your speculations about their views might be correct, but I don't see how it is an implication of saying that someone is "anti-gay" that they have those attitudes.

I don't know that I think it is offensive, but I certain do think that the prudish attitude of American Christianity towards premarital sex is leads to immoral actions and should be condemned as well.

The further examples you use here about lying, honesty, etc. were addressed in the rest of my prior post. We are not condemning Hybels because we think he is acting out of evil intentions or because he is trying to change people's behaviors. Rather we are condemning his actions because we think he is encouraging people to act immorally or in ways that damage their own lives, and he is doing so when he should know better. Thus, your analogy doesn't work.

Okay.

Yes. It's grounded in cultural/religious system.

Most of what you believe about the world is not the result of "thinking." Instead, there is a somewhat passive accumulation of experiences and information which lead to the beliefs that you hold.

It is the knowledge that is grounded in my cultural-religious experiences.

I foresee this conversation going in circles because you're driving at a form of knowing which is not the one that is normally applied to moral conversations.

If you're trying to gun at some sort of "knowing" like a scientific knowing of morality, then you're going to fall short in the same way that Sam Harris falls short.

Most of the time, morality conversations do involve some cultural component. Culture is not a type of "knowledge" in most senses. There is not a "fact" of culture that you use to ground information. Culture *IS* the grounding.

Is it really though? I know we can break it down and have a very long "what really constitutes harm" discussion, but I'm speaking of harm in the way it is generally understood, physical or mental/emotional damage.

You may think it would benefit people to be less talky, but that's very subjective on your part. Members of society not causing each other harm have objective benefits

So you are aware that your cultural/religious systems could misguide you to think about something as immoral but it isn't so.

I disagree , but whatever...

I don't think it needs to be, either. But this topic, as with many highly controversial ones, the language carries connotations that may not be intended (in both directions). The phrasing "anti-gay" in this conversation is not specific enough to carry enough the precise meaning in this conversation without that explicit clarification.

In the language of the video, he seems to make it fairly explicit of the acceptance of people into the church, while also pointing out that the church teaches people to aspire to certain behaviors. Do you hear something different?

Remind me... you're using "immoral" as meaning "in a way that hurts someone else," right? That is, you're saying the same thing before the "or" as afterwards. Is this correct?

Sure. Did I ever claim to have absolute and infallible knowledge of anything?

You're welcome to jump into any of the multiple Sam Harris threads in SMP.

what specific knowledge that you received from your cultural-religious experiences, brings you to the belief that homosexuality is immoral? You must be able to answer this, you dont answer every question on your beliefs with "my cultural-religious experiences". Just seems like avoiding the question to me

First, I'm not sure that it really constitutes "acceptance" of homosexuals if you condemn homosexual acts. However, even if you do think so, I don't see why it matters. I don't have a problem with Hybels teaching people to aspire to certain behaviors. I have a problem with Hybels teaching people to aspire to the specific anti-gay behaviors that he describes in the video (i.e. refraining from homosexual sex). As I said before, he might love and accept homosexuals as people while still counseling them on the basis of his false beliefs to act in either immoral or deeply damaging ways.

No, there's a difference. For instance, when he encourages a homosexual person to refrain from sexual activity with a person of the same sex, he is encouraging that person to act in a way that will likely damage their ability to live a full and contented life. However, there is not really anything immoral (on my view at least) in a homosexual person who decides to not engage in homosexual sex.

On the other hand, I think he (probably--I don't actually know much specific about his pastoring) encourages his members to act in immoral ways towards their homosexual children and towards other homosexual members of society. Towards their children, this would involve causing them to deny their own identity as a homosexual, punishing them for engaging in homosexual acts, etc. Towards others, this would involve voting against laws that would allow homosexuals the ability to marry their partners.

Immoral?

I think sin is missing God's mark. In the case of gays they miss the mark of using their bodies as God designed them to be used.

This is from a naturally occurring weakness though.

All human weakness comes from Adam's Sin but everyone today thinks he will play politics and fool around with human perception and change legal definitions instead of letting gays think for themselves and make their own fate decisions because now they are grouping together to pursue "their rights" as if your right of redemption by God wasn't your most important right.

Quote:

We come now to a study on the effects of Adam's sin upon the souls of his descendants. The question we must first deal with is this: Did Adam's sin cause us to have sinful souls or mortal souls? This question sounds purely academic, but it has an enormous effect upon our lives. It is one of the most important questions in the Bible. We must of necessity become somewhat technical in our writing at this point; but I strongly urge you to read this section until you understand it thoroughly.

It is extremely important for us also to recognize that no man is born with a "sinful soul" or a "sin nature." In Romans 5:12 Paul explains this principle very clearly, though many church theologians have missed it:

12Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because [eph' ho, "on which"] all sinned-

Paul says here that sin first entered the world through Adam's sin. But what did "all men" inherit from Adam? Was it Adam's SIN that was passed down into all men? NO. It was death, the liability for Adam's sin.

In other words, man did not inherit a sin nature from Adam. He merely inherited the liability for Adam's sin. The reason we are mortal is because we are liable for a sin that Adam committed. And so we die, not as a result of our own sins, but as a result of Adam's original sin. Sinful souls are not passed down from generation to generation by procreation. The only thing passed down is MORTALITY, or Death.

We are not mortal because we sin. We sin because we are mortal. Which is the cause, and which is the result? Paul says at the end of Romans 5:12 that "DEATH spread to all men," ON WHICH we ourselves sin. Death is the cause; our personal sins are committed as the result of death in us.

And so, the sequence of events is this: (1) Adam's original sin gave us (2) death, and this mortality is our weakness and the cause of (3) our individual sins.

The New American Standard Version of Romans 5:12 (quoted above) is simply incorrect. It reads: "and so death spread to all men, because all sinned." The translators would have us believe that death (mortality) spread to all men BECAUSE we sin. As if no man is mortal until he sins! We can point to millions of abortions to prove that babies are mortal BEFORE they sin.

Quote from CHAPTER 9:
The Effect of Adam's Sin on Man's Nature

http://gods-kingdom-ministries.org/B...s/Chapter9.cfm

god designed them, god designed them as gay, so they are using their bodies as god designed them to be used

It's true that I don't answer all questions that way. But the fact that I can answer some questions differently does not imply that I must therefore be able to answer all such questions differently.

Perhaps this question may be enlightening: Do you consider cultural-religious perspectives to be the starting point or the ending point?

so, basically, your answer is, "because the bible says so", and you know this wont hold up to the light?

Do i consider cultural-religious perspectives to be the starting point or ending point of what?

This is a question worth contemplating. Do you only accept people into your life who fit completely identically with your belief/behavioral system? Probably not. You can "accept" people without believing that everything they do is "correct" or even "compliant" with whatever standard of "rightness" you happen to hold.

What is your understanding of a "full and contented life"?

If a homosexual person decides not to engage in homosexual sex after the encouragement of Bill Hybels, has what Bill Hybels done immoral? I guess I don't really understand what you're communicating with this.

I have no direct affiliation with his church, so I do not know how their children's ministry address the question (if it addresses them at all on the matter).

I'm also still unclear on your concept of morality.

Fun Fact:


> 50% of all new HIV/AIDS cases in the US are found in
gay males, even though they constitute only 2% of the population.

June 2011 report from US Gov Center on Disease Control

It includes Biblical teaching, but I don't think that that's the only thing that feeds into that belief. There are other cultures which view homosexual sex negatively. It would be wrong to say that they believe what they do because of Biblical teaching. I think that there's something larger at work which informs both cultures' beliefs.

I think it's a fundamental error to try to draw too many lines on the religious/cultural map of one's belief system. There's a lot of stuff that falls into the mushy middle.

What is "the light"?

In this conversation, the context is with respect to moral judgment. Do you think moral judgment flows out of cultural-religious perspective or do you think that cultural-religious perspective flows out of moral judgments?

Absolutely, but I would be accepting of difference as well. I wouldn't be counseling them to change their ways, unless of course, I felt they were doing real harm to others.

The "harm" principle seems overplayed ITT.

Let's take something simple, like cursing. I don't think there's any inherent "harm" in cursing. I don't think that there's any harm in children cursing. But I don't think that such behaviors are befitting of adults, and I especially don't think it's befitting of children. And I would counsel people, especially children, to not curse, if I had an appropriate forum in which to counsel them on the matter. And I think they would somehow be "better" as a result of this, despite the fact that there's no "real harm" to their use of language.

Is such a suggestion therefore immoral?