Have you committed an "abomination" today?

I'd say these explanations are completely compelling.

A complaint was made join the club.

Good post Will.

Wiilliam:

You say that if the Bible is to be drawn into debates about controversial social and moral issues, then it is important to do justice to what it says. Indeed; but the implication of your analysis is pretty devastating to the evangelical/fundamentalist.

What you are saying is that on this issue the morals and customs of the ancient Middle East are not relevant today. The Bible is therefore not the immutable, unerring word of God; it is relative to the time and place.

To say that 'abomination' or 'unclean' doesn't mean 'physically disgusting' but that it merely means 'insulting to the macho male sex' is to accept that there is nothing wrong with gay sex in itself but only with its effect on an ancient male ego.

It seems to me, and I refer to the 'Can you love the sinner and hate the sin' thread, that some Christians want to have their biblical cake and eat it.

They want to say that it is literally the word of God, while ignoring or playing down some of its more nasty elements.

The biblical objection to homosexuality is, in my view, pretty clear. Saying that gays 'shall surely be put to death' (Leviticus 20:13) is pretty clear.

The point is that when Christianity was more powerful in western societies, gays WERE put to death. And they still are in some Muslim countries because of similar injunctions in the Koran.

If Christians are now going to say: "Oh, the Bible didn't really mean all that and that attitude to gay sex is just a matter of cultural attitudes", then would they please acknowledge the past crimes of religion on this (and other issues)?

Have I committed an abomination? Well frankly I think that's a rather personal question but if you insist on knowing the answer is yes. But if I hadn't, I'd probably have taken a laxative :-)

Brian, you ask some good questions. I don't think it follows from what I've written that the Bible is irrelevant today; merely that those who appeal to the Bible should be careful about which parts of it they appeal to and what they do with it. The implications you suggest in respect of the nature of the Bible should also be examined carefully by fundamentalist readers of the Bible.

Mr. Crawley, how fundimentally flawed can a document that purports to be the message of the creator of the universe and everything in it and his message to his creation of how and why it and they were created be, that it is so vague there are countless interpretations of what it says and what it means? Surely if this was such a message of a supreme creator it would be so explicit and unambiguous that there would be no denying its exact meaning and intent. I therefore propose that the only logical alternative is that it is not such a message at all but an obvious fraud created exclusively by mortal men for their own purposes.

Mr Aurelius, I don't think your question is directed at me. I am for arguing for any particular theological view on the nature of the Bible or its place in the world -- that is for others to do. Instead, I am asking questions about how we should read this ancient text. Like every other significant text in the world's literature, the Bible may in interpreted in many ways. The diversity of interpretation does not reduce a text to meaninglessness or pointlessness. How to read and interpret the US Constitution is a question that divides lawyers and politicians today and will continue to stimulate debate. Your other point about whether the Bible is the word of God (in the sense of a document in some sense authored by God through the agency of human beings) is not an issue I have explored here, but you are right to raise the question. In fact, I accept that your question takes us deeper into the heart of some recent disputes. Others may wish to respond to this.

Mark:

'Fraud' might be too strong a word; I prefer 'self-deception'. Certainly, gay people are bullied and beaten. One was beaten almost to death by three men just before Iris Robinson's Nolan interview. Now, the people who beat him up were actually more lenient with him than the Bible suggests, because they left him alive!

This is the connection in Northern Ireland between words and deeds. We've had it for 30 years of the Troubles. Iris Robinson can say she loves the young man till she is blue in the face, but she cannot escape from the fact that her reference to the Bible about gay sex as an abomination is provocatively 'tending' to legitimise what was done to him, especially since the punishment is stated as death in the same Book from which she quotes.

Either Christians dissociate themselves completely from this biblical reference to putting gays to death, and accept that homosexuality is not an 'abomination', or they must bear some responsibility for the bullying and vicious treatment of gays in NI.

The fact of the matter is that fundamentalist Christianity has been a major factor in creating widespread homophobia in the province.

Mr. Crawley, there is a fundimental difference between the bible and all other documents (except its counterparts like the Koran.) Other documents like the Constitution of the United States don't purport to be the immutable everlasting unshakable truth handed down by the creator of the universe and man through his chosen individuals. The US constitution is a living document meant to be interpreted (the function of the supreme court) and periodically amended. That is its function in democracy. The bible purports to be among Christians and Jews the immutable word of God handed down as the unchangeable law and the justification for rigid theocracy. It seems to me you either read it that way or you just don't believe in it and you read it like a work of fiction. If you think it is the word of God, you cannot read it selectively and only pick those parts of it you want to believe while ignoring others you don't. It's not a like a menu in a Chinese restaurant, one from column A, 2 from column B

Mr Auelius,

You argue that we must read the Bible as the immutable word of God or merely as a work of fiction. That's a curious either-or.

One could deny that the Bible is God's words dictated to human beings and still maintain that this collection of literature is not merely fiction (though it clearly includes some fiction/mythology). The bible also includes law books which reveal aspects of ancient cultures and historical material that scholars of the ancient near east regard as significant. Many theologians deny that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant word of God; they see these texts as key documents in the emerging story of religious faith.

It is possible to approach the bible with a critical-historical eye, without dismissing the collection of books as ancient fiction that is irrelevant to modern times. These books are clearly not irrelevant to modern times given that so many people -- including US presidents and British politicians -- construct social and moral policies on the basis of their reading of the Bible.

Good question Mr. Crawley. But if it is not the immutable word of God, it seems to me that it becomes a very flimsy basis for any religious dogma which claims infallabilitiy like those of the Christian and Jewish sects do. As an historical document, perhaps it does have some value and perhaps it does contain some insight into human nature and human behavior but then it must stand up to the scrutiny of modern standards of evaluation and testing. Since it is a collection, I suppose each part has to be taken as a separate entity. Archeologists do look for artifacts to confirm or refute the stories in the bible. So far they have come up empty handed on Noah's ark. But by any modern account, the story of Noah makes no logical sense. Recall that I did a mathematical analysis showing that if every molecule of existing H2O on earth were in the form of water, sea level would rise no more than 30 feet and at least some areas, many areas would not have been destroyed by flood. The theological retort contributed here was that aftewoods, somehow many millions of cubic miles of water mysteriously disappeared off the planet. Where? How? Into outer space? And nobody noticed a thing!

Point of information. It's Dr Crawley

This is the best thing I have read in quite a while.

"those who appeal to the Bible should be careful about which parts of it they appeal to and what they do with it".

I could not agree more and you have just provided the perfect example.

To MarcusAurelius- if you cannot read the Bible selectively, as you are suggesting, what do you do about that never-ending contradictions. Clearly God did not do an effective job of passing on his words. This is important because you contrast the Bible with the US constitution which you claim is "a living document meant to be interpreted". Yet when it comes to the contradictions littered throughout the Bible "interpretation" is rife. In fact just as you claim it is the job of the supreme court to interpret the constitution, it is the job of the clergy and other biblical scholars to interpret the Bible (due to the almost uncountable amount of contradictions). No?

Leviticus 18:22
tow`ebah, to-ay-baw'; feminine active participle of ta`ab, taw-ab'; a primitive root; to loathe, i.e. (morally) detest: — (make to be) abhor(-red), (be, commit more, do) abominable(-y), X utterly.; properly, something disgusting
(morally), i.e. (as noun) an abhorrence; especially idolatry or
(concretely) an idol: — abominable (custom, thing), abomination.

Leviticus 11:10
sheqets, sheh'-kets; from shaqats, shaw-kats'; a primitive root; to be filthy, i.e. (intensively) to loathe, pollute: — abhor, make abominable, have in abomination, detest, X utterly.; filth, i.e. (figuratively and specifically) an idolatrous object: — abominable(-tion).

SOURCE: Strongs backed up by Vines and Wilsons

The Puritan;
Baw Baw black sheep have you any wool? Haw Haw. Hee Haw. Tee Hee Hee.

If the presumed Democratic candidate gets elected President, will America become an Obama-nation?

What I think we have here is a clear cut illegal racist discussion which violates the rights of the Abominable Snowman. Clearly a violation of EU laws protecting the rights of ethnic (and species) minorities. I think a major case for the ICC.

Homo Erectus 11:10
Smokey the Bear says; "Only YOU can prevent forest fires."

Source; Cook's California Champagne (exactly what it says on the bottle) backed up by vines and www.cookschampagne.com Vintage; last Tuesday. About 6 dollars (3 pounds sterling) in most liquor stores in NJ (there are cheaper.) It is illegal to use the name Champagne on products made in Switzerland in a town called that name since the 10th century according to European courts (as reported by BBC) but they have no jurisdiction in the US. Freedom of speech. The French defenders of the Champagne trademark say they don't want to see a product like Champagne brand toilet paper. Now there's an idea for a novel product. What an abomination! :-)

yes, i have committed sins today.

RatzoRizzo
Where does it say in the bible that it shoulld be interpreted by Priests? Is god not explicit? Is his meaning not clear? What kind of god can't communicate his immutable laws without ambiguity to his own creation? If you were really interested in understanding it, you would become fluent in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic and not risk whatever the consequences of disobeying his laws are by accepting imprecise translations and interpetations by others. If he wanted you to understand it in English, he would have chosen someone who spoke English to deliver his message. So where does that leave you? No better I'd say than someone who got a third hand rumor. If you truely believe the bible is the word of god, I'd spend the rest of my life if I were you studying those languages so you could get the exact meaning and not inadvertently risk spending all eternity in hell with the evil one.

I on the other hand have accepted that if there is an afterlife and a hell, I am going there. And if I'm going to do the time, I might just as well commit the crime. The way I understand it, you go to the same hell for committing one sin you are not absolved of as committing 10,000. Why do we commit sin? Because it is fun. Where I come from we have a saying; everything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.

I agree with the post entirely. Puritan gives us definitions of the word from fundamentalist bible dictionaries (!), but the point is: you cannot define words in ancient texts by looking them up in a dictionary! You need to place the word in the context of the passage and cultural background. Will is right to say that this term toevah is found in the "holiness code" of Leviticus and scholars locate its meaning in the context of ritualistic practices. Puritan demonstrates the danger of non-scholars of Hebrew thinking they can define words with off-the-shelf dictionaries. Would that life were so simple in the scholarship of the ancient world!

Augustine_of_Clippo
So I either learn Hebrew so I understand what toevah means or I go to hell. OK, let's say I make it to heaven with the select few and after a few million years I get bored with the neighbors? After all, most people probably won't make it since the qualifications are so tough (how many of the 2 1/2 billion between the Chinese and Indians do you think even know they're supposed to learn Hebrew?) So, I've gotten to know everyone and I get tired of them. It isn't like they are going anywhere. At least in Boca Raton Florida they die off and new ones come in but in heaven, you're already dead so that's it, you're stuck with what you've got until more people die. But by that time human beings might be extinct or have figured out how to live forever. Can I get up and go visit hell just for a vacation? (that's the only other choice since purgatory was shut down by the Catholic Church in a cost cutting move.) I think I could take the heat for awhile at least. After all, I've always enjoyed a tropical beach. Just as long as there is an air conditioned bar nearby with good Scotch Whiskey :-)

MarcusAurelius- why cant you just reply to my post directly. You ask is his meaning not clear? In my previous post I clearly stated that his meaning is not clear considering the unlimited amount of contradictions contained in the bible. You go round and round in circles in everyone of your posts. Are you for real?

"If im gonna do the time I may as well do the crime"- how moral of you. Just for that ridiculous statement I will never ever reply to your posts again and I urge everyone else to ignore you.

That someone like Marcus is attempting to claim that 66 books written in 3 languages by many different authors over centuries of composition for many different purposes in many different genres of writing including poetry, history, song, eyewitness account, letter and prophecy must be either X or Y is indicative of his lack of thoughtfulness about the subject.

RatzoRizzo

Anyone who read even a small percentage of my postings knows I have been an atheist all of my life and have no "spiritual" feelings. As for my morality, I don't have any. I simply try to obey the law and stay out of jail. It is not me who goes round and round in circles, it is those who believe...and their bible that goes round in circles. You just as much as said so.

John_Wright
I never claimed anything for the bible. It is those who purport to say it is the true word of god who make those claims. I'm just pointing out how absurd that claim is on the face of it.

Iris Robinson was right. Scripture is clear that homosexual behaviour is abominable. (By the way, as regards the eating of certain kinds of seafood there is no need to comment. That was all part of the ceremonial law - conditions for participation in rituals which were specific and exclusive to the Israelite community during a particular time in their history). Let's not stop there though. Equally abominable is every action or attitude which issues from the choice which humankind collectively made to set themselves up as arbiters of their morality, their sexuality, their response to God and to their fellow human-being. Equally abominable, therefore, is our wanton ravishing of the planet the care of which we were entrusted with. Equally abominable is my singling out any particular human being or group as particularly deserving of God's wrath, and of my abuse and hatred. Equally abominable is it for me to anticipate God's judgement on any particular individual and treat him or her as if their journey were over and the final manifestation of God's judgement were already a foregone conclusion. Equally abominable is it for me to luxuriate in heterosexual lust. Equally abominable is it for me to fail to show God's love for my fellow human being every time I have an opportunity do do so. Equally abominable is it for me to allow anger and resentment and hostility to consume me from within and poison my relationships with the people among whom God has placed me. An the list is endless ..

Yes, a man or woman "lying with" someone of the same sex (note that the Bible does not use the word "know", which it reserves for heterosexual intercourse) has committed an "abominable act". But how many of us have not committed an abomination of one kind or another. Let us be less concerned with other people's "abominations", at least until we have begun to deeply engage with God on the question of our own. "Let he among you who is without sin e the first to cast a stone at her(him)."

John:

The Bible is indeed a mixture, but that doesn't alter the fact that much of it is absurd and irrelevant, as Mark(us) suggests. This is particularly true of its list of ancient taboos, such as the 'abominations' of eating shellfish and gay sex.

In reply to Gandalf, these are not abominations (Woody Allen said that sex is dirty only when it's done right, and presumably the same applies to eating shellfish).
If an adult couple want to have gay sex with each other, that is a good thing, not a bad thing. And that needs to be said. Some Christians must not be permitted to think that they can control the terms of this debate. There is nothing wrong with gay sex. Period.

As for saying that sex is only for procreation, no Christian really believes this. The average number of children produced by a couple in the UK is now barely two. The average number of sexual acts in an average 'Christian' lifetime is... thousands!

On the other hand, Mark(us) is displaying his usual Yankee bravado in claiming that he has no morality. He says he simply tries to obey the law and stay out of jail. He doesn't say how he reacts when he thinks the law is wrong, e.g. he doesn't agree with
the Supreme Court ruling on Guantanamo Bay. Obviously, some laws are right and some are wrong, even for self-styled amoral Mark(us).

I find it hard to see how any remotely intelligent educated person could believe in the divine inspiration of the biblical texts unless possessed of a quite overpowering need for certainty, security, and continuity in a world perceived as hostile and/or random. (Such a condition should, however, respond to appropriate therapy).

The Bible is nonetheless a source of unending fascination as a collection of accounts of man's search for meaning and transcendence in existence. It is, too, instructional: not only for the insights of great teachers but also for showing over and over again how the pursuit of 'god' can go horribly wrong and lead to the most monstrous evil masquerading as upright and good.

This is a lesson our society has been slow to learn and the refusal of church leaders and ministers here to name wicked the bigotry, intolerance, and ignorance which calls itself Christian exhibits a 'niceness' and reticence which the rabbi Jesus would have held in the deepest contempt and scorn.

Christianity is failed at the deepest level, not by those who can blithely condemn 'sin' while ignoring the self-aggrandisement and enrichment of their religious and community leaders, but by those who, seeing what is truly vile and evil, use words like inadvisable, injudicious, and unwise to describe it.

In reply to Brian, the Bible may seem to be a list of taboos and a compendium of arcane but irrelevant "wisdom". That is the mpression that a CURSORY reading of, say, Leviticus might give. But that is manifestly not the case. It is very dangerous to dismiss the content of it only on the basis of a cursory reading. It is crucially important to see how books like Leviticus mesh with the ew Testament. For example, it is clear from the book of Acts, specifically from chapter 10 where Peter's vision of "clean and unclean" animals is recorded, that the regulations regarding certain kinds of food were obsolete and had to be set aside. As regards homosecual activity, by contrast, Paul includes it in a list (1 Corinthians 6 vv 9-10) of sins which still exclude people from the presence of God. Interestingly, the same list also includes "adulterers ... the greedy, swindlers, thieves, drunkards ....". Conclusion? a) Yes homosexual activity is wrong, and so are all these other things. b) the people Paul was writing to included people whose behaviour had been unacceptable to God in each and every one of these senses (maybe that was why he hose this list - because he was thinking of flesh and blood examples). But they had become entirely ad ompletely acceptable to God "in the name of "the Lord Jesus Christ". They had, in other words, been forgiven, ad given a fresh start.

We are on very dangerous ground when we say about any of these things: "there is nothing wrong with ..." That was precisely where the whole thing got screwed up in the first place. Adam and Eve took it upon themselves to decide what actions were "to be desired to make one wise", among other appealing charectistics that taking the forbidden fruit offered. From then on their "progeny" have been defining their morality and their identities in defiance of their Creator, in a "rich variety (??)" off means (homosexuality is one of many). Our only hope is to get back to efore Eve started to listen to the voice of God's (and her) enemy, and accept God's definition of what is right and wrong, and also his provision rather than our own (fig-leaves) for our having screwed up. But I must stress that there is nothing special about homosexuality in that respect.

Sorry a few typos from my post needed correcting. Here it is again.

In reply to Brian, the Bible may seem to be a list of taboos and a compendium of arcane but irrelevant "wisdom". That is the impression that a CURSORY reading of, say, Leviticus might give. But that is manifestly not the case. It is very dangerous to dismiss the content of Scripture only on the basis of a cursory reading or on the basis of hearsay. It is crucially important to see how books like Leviticus mesh with the New Testament. For example, it is clear from the book of Acts, specifically from chapter 10 where Peter's vision of "clean and unclean" animals is recorded, that the regulations regarding certain kinds of food were obsolete and had to be set aside. As regards homosexual activity, by contrast, Paul includes it in a list (1 Corinthians 6 vv 9-10) of sins which still exclude people from the presence of God. Interestingly, the same list also includes "adulterers ... the greedy, swindlers, thieves, drunkards ....". Conclusion? a) Yes homosexual activity is wrong, and so are all these other things. b) the people Paul was writing to included people whose behaviour had been unacceptable to God in each and every one of these senses (maybe that was why he chose this list - because he was thinking of flesh and blood examples). But they had become entirely and completely acceptable to God "in the name of "the Lord Jesus Christ". They had, in other words, been forgiven, and given a fresh start.

We are on very dangerous ground when we say about any of these things: "there is nothing wrong with ..." That was precisely where the whole thing got screwed up in the first place. Adam and Eve took it upon themselves to decide what actions were "to be desired to make one wise", among other appealing charectistics that taking the forbidden fruit offered. From then on their "progeny" have been defining their morality and their identities in defiance of their Creator, in a "rich variety (??)" off means (homosexuality is one of many). Our only hope is to get back to before Eve started to listen to the voice of God's (and her) enemy, and accept God's definition of what is right and wrong, and also his provision rather than our own (fig-leaves) for our having screwed up. But I must stress that there is nothing special about homosexuality in that respect.

CATHOLIC INTEPRETATION OF 'HOMOSEXUAL' SCRIPTURES

Any views on the following extract from the online Catholic Catechism?

(See https://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a6.htm

Chastity and homosexuality

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

Well, having had some time to reflect on what I said, the logical conclusion is that if you are a homosexual man and practice homosexuality, and you believe in the bible, you have unquestioningly accepted that you are condemned. Unless there is something very wrong with the translation, it seems pretty explicit to me. Not any room for interpretation. Of course you are in good company because if you are not Kosher, you are equally condemned. I don't read anything in the bible that says one abomination is any more or less punishable than any other. I think that also goes for all of you who have lusted after your neighbor's wife. It doesn't matter what you did or didn't do, as Jimmy Carter said "I had lust in my heart." I guess he is condemned too. I wonder if Mother Theresa was condemned.

Funny how so many try to dance around the fact that they can't or won't obey all of the laws spelled out in the bible. They don't accept that when you are a believer you have bought into the entire package. They rationalize ignoring the laws they don't like. All except for the Catholics who get absolution. Now where does it say that you can commit even one abomination let along countless abominations and be pardoned for it simply by making a periodic visit to a confessional? It seems to me one amomination is enough to be condemned. After all, wasn't Moses condemned never to enter the land of Israel just for committing the one abomination of getting water out of a rock? This after he had obeyed all of God's commandments to get the people of Israel out of Egypt and to climb Mount Sinai to get the ten commandments, the law god laid down and had him deliver to the Israelites. Now that's gratitude for you. Even this didn't completely absolve him, so why should a few minutes in a confessional absolve anyone when they break these laws over and over again? Heaven must be an awfully lonely place. What do you think its population is? Hell on the other hand is unquestionably very crowded.

BTW, it seems to me that the passage in Leviticus is very explicit about condemning men lying together but not women. I don't see any reference to Lesbianism. Yet according to Jewish theology, god favors men. In one blessing (brucha) it says; "Dear god lord of the universe, thank you for not making me a woman." And if that is not true, may I be struck down dead by lightning. (We had a huge electrical storm in NJ last night, power out for several hours. One lightning stroke was probably within a quarter mile or less. EMP fried some electrical equipment, tripped breakers to loads not even turned on, and knocked out the phones. His aim is getting better. Or maybe it was just a warning to me about my internet postings :-)

Gandalf:

There is no point in telling me what I can and cannot say since I don’t believe in a god and therefore it follows that I do not believe that the Bible is the inspired word of a god.

It is hardly suprising that Paul says something different from Leviticus, since we are talking about a gap of a thousand years or more. Religious taboos evolve within cultures and, like law and language, they vary in detail between different eras and geographical locations. The Bible is therefore a bundle of contradictions.

Some of them aren't even far apart in time or place. For example: 'God' himself apparently contradicts the sixth, "Thou shalt not kill" (Deut 5:17) when, a few short verses later (Deut 7:1-2), he instructs the Jews: "thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them: thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them". So this Commandment obviously applies only to killing Jews, and it's open season on the rest of the human race.

I will repeat: "Consensual adult gay sex is good". There is nothing wrong with putting it positively. In fact, it is necessary in order to counter all the biblically inspired negativity about sex. It has dominated Irish morality for far too long, at the expense of more important matters. Sex is a good and a joyous thing, whether straight or gay. Some Christians will just have to learn that.

Perhaps they might also put more effort into a cure for the bigotry and intolerance which makes many more of us feel 'sick' and 'nauseous', instead of chasing their tails and trying to defend the indefensible words of ancient desert scrolls.

Brian said "There is no point in telling me what I can and cannot say since I don?t believe in a god and therefore it follows that I do not believe that the Bible is the inspired word of a god."

It's obvious that if you do not believe the Bible is inspired by God then you are going to feel free to make up your own mind about what is "good" and "bad". In which case there is obviously no point in me arguing with you from Scripture. I would just like to point out though , according to the Biblical narrative of the fall, that was precisely what Eve is recorded as doing in response to the temptation. She "saw" that the fruit that had been forbidden was "good", "pleasant to the eye", "to be desired to make one wise". She came to this conclusion having been "persuaded" that even if "God" had spoken (which she was led to doubt) he meant something different from what he had said. She was not going to let herself be dictated to by Someone who really only wanted to spoil her fun. She therefore felt free to make up her own mind (and Adam followed suit) about what was good for her.

Your post is laced with moralistic language about bigotry and intolerance. Fair enough. The thing is, on what basis can you establish what it is legitimate for Iris Robinson to say? I'm not saying that Iris Robinson was right to speak as she did. But if the definition of what is right and wrong is up for grabs, which it must be if you dismiss such per se external or objective criteria, then you have no right to complain about someone else using language or resorting to actions which you happen to find unacceptable. Or maybe there are objective criteria according to which Robinson's language can be judged to be "unacceptable". Fine. What are they? Where do they come from? Which document or consensus to you invoke? Whatever it is, why can it not be trumped by an alternative paradigm?

The question of shellfish is a very simple one and easily explained if the Bible is read as a whole and not a part taken out of context which the liberals and the hyper critics are well versed in doing in their rationalism whether they be Jewish or Christian they fail to engage the rules of interpretation properly, they reason the meaning out of the context because of their motives to devalue Scripture as the infallible Word of God “all Scripture is binding today UNLESS Scripture cancels, limits or modifies what it prescribes, which has happened in the eating of certain foods that were once set down as unclean, Christians are no longer bound by the food laws of the OT because our Lord and Saviour made all meat clean, Mark 7:19, and this was rubber stamped in the book of Acts 10: 11-16 . The sexual abomination of Leviticus 18 is supported by Paul in the books of Romans 1, 1 Cor 6.

The Puritan

Hi William

I am not a Hebrew scholar, nor anything close, but what I will say is this. We're not going to understand the the law (and it is the law of Moses, singular, rather than laws of Moses, plural) by considering one word out of five books, that would be like assuming the world was flat because I could see the horizon from my window. It would be like suggesting I understood 'Crime and Punishment' because I knew Raskolnikov lived in St. Petersburg.

If we are to understand the part, we must understand the whole. This book is set in the context of the first five (and in the context of 66 books altogether) and within that context it deals with how God's people ought to approach Him after He has first approached them and freed them from slavery. (Exodus) It told them how they might find a way to God, (sacrifices, rituals and festivals) and how they ought to live in light of that (worship and daily life). The differences therefore, if there are any, between being ritually unclean and generally unclean are largely irrelevant. The biblical point, again and again is that God is holy and we are not. The point at which we break the law is irrelevant too, for, like a string of beads, once broken, the beads will scatter. Holiness means wholeness, and the world we live in is broken.

God is not asking us to do our best to keep a few laws, or as many as we can, He's asking us to keep 'the Law', all of it. In this Marcus is correct. Indeed Marcus has been correct about quite a lot recently. 'Be holy as I am holy' is on almost every page of this book. And as if Leviticus wasn't difficult enough, along comes Jesus and says, well if you've ever worried about anything, you've fallen short too. Indeed Jesus actually raised the bar in terms of personal morality and holiness. Therefore to ask the question, "have you committed an abomination today" is pointless. Indeed it gets worse for us, not only does God tell us that our bad deeds will separate us from Him, He also tells us that our good deeds aren't good enough. In other words, in and of ourselves, we haven't a hope because only the absolutely pure can approach the absolutely pure.

This is what is so 'abominable' about christians pointing the finger at others, or about any of us trying to convince ourselves that if only we could do better tomorrow, or reinterpret the law in order to allow for a bit of flexibility, or turn up at church and follow the/a/any ritual, or pray enough, or get saved enough, or whatever enough, then we'd be OK. Because unfortunately all that boils down to pride and self-justification. It boils down to me thinking I'm better than you. Christians are no purer than others, and trying to keep 'the rules' will never be enough.

And all of this means we can't discuss Leviticus without discussing Jesus. And here is where Marcus and I part company. The relevancy of the bible is that it points us to God demonstrated in Jesus. It is Jesus who is the hero of the story. It is Jesus who is holy. It is Jesus who kept the law and it is Jesus (God in dusty sandals) who is our only hope. It is Jesus who is the perfect sacrifice and the perfect approach to God, and it is Jesus who is perfectly righteous. In the end the book of Leviticus, like every book, is really about Jesus. Jesus is the unifying factor in all of the bible.

Biblical christianity isn't about 'good' people trying to be better, or 'bad' people trying to be moral. Christianity isn't about us doing our best to keep the rules and the rituals; Christianity is really about a kind of recycling, new people, new world. It's about making broken things work again, and I for one need remade. Now of course some people don't believe they are broken, that's fine, I'm not setting out to tell people what to believe, I'm only setting out to explain what many Christians believe.

In terms of Leviticus, neither keeping the law of Leviticus, nor trying to write it into the statute book of a 21st Century democracy is going to make us holy, that is not the point. The bible is first and foremost about God and how we relate to him; and we no longer approach God via the ritual cleansing of a hebrew sacrifice or a hebrew priest, rather on the basis of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. This is one of the differences between church and state and it is an important difference to remember, unfortunately it is one that Iris Robinson and other Christians in government seem to have forgotten. I so hope that these people don't think that they can extend the Kingdom of Heaven by being in government, that's just poor.

Brian, whether or not this answers your question from another thread, I don't know, I suspect that I am being too obtuse again for you. I also suspect that you are more concerned with ensuring that there is no discrimination towards anyone by the state. That is understandable, but a different question. This answer is a response to William's specific post, and William, with his theological background, should understand exactly what I'm getting at.

Gandalf,

Your posting is laced with biblical language about what is right and wrong, but others don't have to accept it. I don't give a fig about what Eve supposedly thought or did. It's total nonsense and bad teaching at that because it implies that the thirst for knowledge is wrong.

The Bible is not an objective criteria of morality. I don't know where on earth you acquired that absurd notion. You have already pointed out that it changes from Leviticus to Paul.

I have every right to complain about the language that someone uses if I think it is wrong. Your statement is tantamount to saying that if you don't believe in the Bible, then you have no right to a moral viewpoint. That's ridiculous.

You should ask yourself why does it present the woman as being tempted and not the man? Like the 'abomination' of homosexual sex being an attack on 'feminine' men, it is just another example of sexism in the Bible.

You should also be asking yourself why more Christians aren't condemning bigotry and intolerance but instead trying to wriggle out of their responsibility for the abnormally high level of homophobic attacks in Northern Ireland.

A gay man is beaten up and a born-again Christian politician then says that gay sex is vile and disgusting and quotes a text which a couple of chapters later advocates that gays should be put to death.

I have discussed my moral principles on other postings, where I made it clear that, in my view, morality has nothing whatsoever to do with religion. In fact, religion is often an obstacle to good behaviour. I think the usual negative religious attitude to homosexuality is a nice example of the intolerance and bigotry that religion can generate.

Some religion people just do not know how to live and let live.

Please Brian, I am not denying you the right to complain about anyone's language or behaviour. If course you don't have to believe the Bible to find certain things offensive or unacceptable. I am simply asking you on what grounds you are condemning that which you find to be morally unacceptable, like bigotry and intolerance. Just spell it out. You obviously feel that this language violates a principle or an ideal which is binding on all of us. What is this principle? Where does it come from? Why should anyone bother with it?

By the way, I agree with you that bigotry and prejudice are wrong. The people Jesus lambasted were the bigotted and prejudiced Pharisees. But that was not because they were insisting on obsolete pattern of behaviour. It was because of their hypocrisy and lack of compassion.

But as I say, all this will cut no ice with you if you have dismissed the Bible already as irrelevant. Nevertheless you are concerned about the kind of morally inacceptable language used by "homophobes" like Robinson. I maintain that you could not condemn anything as morally unacceptable if you were not immersed in precisely the moral categories that are the legacy of the judeo-Christian worldview. If the God of the Torah and the New Testament does not exist then nothing is morally unacceptable: neither homosexuality nor homophobic rage.

Gandalf_wise
Where you and I part company is that you believe in god and I don't. However, what I pointed out is that if you do believe in god and if you do believe that the bible is god's message to man, then certain things follow. You can't pick and choose what parts to believe in and obey and what parts to ignore. And you can't try to twist the meanings of things around to suit your preference if their meaning is already fairly clear so that you can weasel out of obeying them. Now if you can get by the fact that it wouldn't seem to make sense that such an important message would be left ambiguous or open to interpretation by those it is targeted at then you can reconcile that seeming contradiction and be perfectly happy with it. But that that is only the logical conclusion of human beings, who knows what should go through the mind of god. Perhaps he only wants those of high intelligence and determination to be able to understand the law so that they can obey it. Perhaps heaven is supposed to become some kind of think tank for the smart righteous. I said it is probaby a relatively lonely place. I'll be much happier with the other one if that is my fate. After all, misery loves company :-)

Gandalf:

You wrongly maintain that I could not condemn anything as morally unacceptable if I were not immersed in precisely the moral categories that are the legacy of the judeo-Christian worldview.

As I have already outlined elsewhere, the inevitably secular origin of morality was indicated by Epicurus and moral guidelines such as the Golden Rule pre-date Judaeo-Christianity and can be found in, for example, Confucius.

You would think, to read you, that moral values didn't exist before Judaeo-Christianity. On the contrary, in many respects they were distorted by them. Read The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, by Charles Freeman.

Judaeo-Christianity is obsessed with 'sin', which is a collection of petty, often sexual, taboos. This is not proper morality at all.

Mark(us):

I totally agree. See you in the other place, which I hope is not like either NI or the US.

A Legal Perspective on Free Speech

Thank you for providing us (the listeners) with a legal opinion on Free Speech and incitement to hatred in relation to Homophobia.

Rosemary Craig's contribution certainly sets the arguement in perspective. It is Diffickult in law to prove intention to incite hatred. She sets out clearly and comprehensively where the law stands on this matter.

'It is very difficult in law to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that that person had the intention that they were motivated wholy or partly by hostility towards members or presumed members of the group'.

Homophobia is a very sensative moral issue. It is up to individuals to reconsile themselves with where they stand on such a matter but legally it seems that there is no Case to answer here.

Mrs Craig provided us with an historic perspective dating back 3 hundred years right up to the 1987 Order. All Mrs Craig's statements were backed up with sound legal authority.

Rosemary Craig was a very valuable and informative member on your Panel. Let's have more legal perspectives on a regular basis.

Tough Juliette

A Legal Perspective on Free Speech

Thank you for providing us (the listeners) with a legal opinion on Free Speech and incitement to hatred in relation to Homophobia.

Rosemary Craig's contribution certainly sets the argument in perspective. It is Difficult in law to prove intention to incite hatred. She sets out clearly and comprehensively where the law stands on this matter.

'It is very difficult in law to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that that person had the intention that they were motivated wholly or partly by hostility towards members or presumed members of the group'.

Homophobia is a very sensitive moral issue. It is up to individuals to reconcile themselves with where they stand on such a matter but legally it seems that there is no Case to answer here.

Mrs Craig provided us with an historic perspective dating back 3 hundred years right up to the 1987 Order. All Mrs Craig's statements were backed up with sound legal authority.

Rosemary Craig was a very valuable and informative member on your Panel. Let's have more legal perspectives on a regular basis.

Tough Juliette

Peter (#34):

1. "... In the context of 66 books altogether". There are 72 books in the Catholic Bible. In other words, when you talk about the Bible as a whole, you are assuming a unity that doesn’t exist in reality any more than in your imagination. It was churches and religious leaders that decided which holy books should be included and which should be omitted. 'The inspired word of God' is a myth.

2. "The biblical point, again and again, is that God is holy and we are not". But hold on a minute. Is it not God who commands Moses and Joshua to do all those nasty and cruel things like slaughtering the Amalekites and killing all the woman and children in Hazor? Or are you saying that humans only believed god told them these things and that God would never have told them to kill anybody?

And if this is so, how do we distinguish between the infallible word of God in the Bible and human supposition about the word of God as recorded there. Indeed, perhaps he didn’t tell Moses, or whoever wrote Leviticus, that eating shellfish or gay sex was an abomination after all. Perhaps Moses or whoever just heard voices telling him these things and thought they were the voice of god. You seem to be implying that God, being perfect, couldn't possibly have said any of these things, yet you talk about taking the Bible as a unity. I'm baffled, as usual.

3. "Christians are no purer than others". Agreed. Alas, many of them don’t know it.

4. "The book of Leviticus, like every book, is really about Jesus". I’m afraid not. I think, Peter, that there is quite a gap morally between the two. You have to remember that Leviticus was written for Jews who were in the ascendant, whereas Jesus lived at a time of Jewish subjugation. The message of Leviticus is to fight and kill and conquer. The message of Jesus is to turn the other cheek and render unto Caesar his worldly power. There's a world of difference here, not a unity.

5. "Biblical Christianity is not about good' people trying to do better". Well, if it isn’t, then it's worthless.

6. Politics should be about ethical principles, ethical ideologies, ethical structures, ethical decisions decisions, etc. If Biblical Christianity is not about any of these things but just "about God and how we relate to him", then you are welcome to it, for it then has no relevance to anyone or anything in the world in which we live.

Brian
Why are our apostrophes turning into question marks?

Gandalf writes about the events of Genesis 2 as if they might really have happened. While I believe it is absolute folly to attempt to argue rationally on a collection of primitive myths it has always struck me that the premise on which the whole edifice of sin and salvation is based according to that story is fundamentally flawed.

If we take things at face value, as Gandalf appears to do, prior to eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden were without the ability to distinguish right from wrong. How could they then have known that it would be construed as evil to disobey God?

Without the ability to construct a moral framework for decision-making all actions would have been more or less random and the act on which the condemnation of all humanity was based was then merely the result of random happenstance.

I despair of myself for indulging in such nonsense but I despair even more that there are intelligent people who take it seriously.

Brian,
Odd - you seem to insist that the only reasonable way to read Scripture is like a naive fundmentalist. More generous readings are simply forbidden. This is exactly how many Fundamentalists critique the Koran, or the Bhagavad Gita.
So I'll ask you again - what moral and literary merit do you find in the Bible?

Portwyne,
Instead of despairing, it is always interesting to ask why intelligent people hold to ideas that seem absurd to our minds. After all,we're all in the same position.

Graham Veale
Armagh

Portwyne,

There is nothing in what I have said that shows that I take the fall narrative literally in all its details. I do take it literally and very seriously in the sese that I believe that there was an act of rebellion and disobedience on the part of humankind that plunged our world and our nascent civilisation into state of separation from the Creator and the "good" that had been intended for both. Instead of finding rebellion against God to be a liberating experience in which our forefathers had at last thrown off the shackles of metaphysical and moral dependence on an external Divine being they found themselves in a hall of mirrors (so to speak) in which their only references were the distorted and grotesque images of themselves. It was in such a setting that moral categories, personal identities and meanings, the essence of the "good" and the "bad" began to be redefined. As for the narrative details such as the "fruit" and the "serpent" and the "arpon of fig-leaves", these probably were figurative representations of what was going on. But they are vivid and multi-semic metaphors. Rather than being dismissed as nonsense, the meanings and truth contained within them need to be explored. One of the truths that these metaphors articulate is the breakdown of face to face dialogue with the Creator that led to this act of defiance, and to its tragic consequences. Our "imagining" that we can redefine (among other things) our sexuality as we see fit is one of the said consequences, and carries consequences of its own. The only solution in this case as in every other case of such distortion is to get back to dialogue with our Creator where we allow Him and not ourselves to "call the shots" "run the show" or whatever expression you want to use. As the Biblical narrative proceeds we can see that that was what the Incarnation was all about: the Creator coming down and calling us back into a relationship with Himself. This is good news for gays, good news for straights and good news for everyone else. (By the waiy, it's not only "gays" who need to be "straightened out" in this sense.

Graham:

It is not I who insists that:
"the only reasonable way to read Scripture is like a naive fundmentalist. More generous readings are simply forbidden".
It was Peter who wrote about taking it as a unity and seeing Jesus in Leviticus. I am quite happy to regard it as a mixture of good and bad, which is what it is.

Gandalf:

The "breakdown of breakdown of face to face dialogue with the creator" is really a step too far.
You are trying to convince others to believe in your imaginary friend. No go, I'm afraid.

As for your reference to "redefining our sexuality as we see fit" being one of the sad (?) consequences, that sounds suspiciously like a piece a of Christian homophobia to me, dressed up to appear respectable. Perhaps you could elaborate on how the human creature has redefined its sexuality. It take you mean that we have 'exploited' it for our own pleasure (oh, how awful of us!) instead of observing its 'sacred' purpose.

Actually, on the contrary, we have progressed in this area, though there has been less progress in NI than in some other parts of the world. And the main reason is precisely the influence of religious power.

Brian

I'm quite clear on where you see the bad - what would you consider the good to be?

I'm also interested in your comment about my "imaginary friend". Across the world religions there is a common experience of a transcendent personal power. There does seem to be a common core to these experiences (Michael Argyle's "Psychology and Religion" summarises the evidence in chapters 4, 5 and 6). Are you holding to the position that many intelligent, self-critial and self aware individuals are not merely mistaken about their experiences, but are in fact deluded? That they are crazy?

Graham Veale

Graham:

I have said elsewhere that the ethic of forgiveness and pacifism (though Jesus is not consistent) is a good one and a model to try to live up to.

There is also some good poetry in the Bible, especially in the King James translation.

Believing that there is a transcendental being who watches over you, cares for you and sets a standard by which you should live is indeed a delusion. It's a bit like what happened to Dwayne Bravo, the West Indian all-rounder.

In the first test against Australia. The visitors had made 431 in their first innings and the home side only 312. But the West Indies prayed a lot. According to Bravo, "one thing that can stand out is that the team has been praying three times a day, and that’s the most important thing". And, lo and behold, Australia were dismissed for 167 in their second innings. "As a team we were getting close to Him and our prayers are being answered", declared a jubilant Bravo.

Alas, the jubilation was rather short-lived and the Lord continued to move in a mysterious way, for Bravo was bowled out for a duck in the West Indies second innings by the Australian bowler Stuart Clark, who took 5 for 32, helping to dismiss the home team for 191 and wrapping up the match for the tourists.

It looks as though the West Indies will be defeated in the third test as well. Bravo is batting at the moment, but he's in the lap of the gods!

This habit of appealing for divine intervention in sport is morally dubious and tempts fate. "Please God, make my opponent lose" is, on the face of it, a decidedly unchristian attitude. But, then, maybe not. And if God cares who wins a cricket match, then we’re all in a worse state than we imagined.

Brian, please note that in my comments I am NOT singling out homosexuals. The Bible does not do that. When Paul says that homosexuals will be excluded from the kingdom of God he mentions them in a list in which he also refers to adulterers, thieves, swindlers, the greedy. Other similar lists in Paul's writings leave out homosexuals and refer to backbiters, lovers of themselves, slanderers, lovers of money etc. etc. It's not that the Bible is phobic about any of these behaviour patterns. It is just pointing out that they are sins and that anyone who is serious about a relationship with God (which you do not seem to be anyway - in which case being excluded from the kingdom of God is of little or no relevance to you at th moment) will have to have them dealt with. But the good news is that there is forgiveness - absolute total and unconditional forgiveness for each and every one of these sins. Recognising them as sins is the first step towards healing. But let me stress that I am not singling out any one of them over and against the others. There is no rank order of heinousness here. The Bible actually implies that if there is a rank order of any kind top of the list is pride, and especially spiritual pride. It is the most serious because it blinds us to its presence within our own hearts and to the presence of any of the other sins that we may be harbouring there.

You ask about how we have redefined our sexuality. In many ways in fact. Human sexuality is a gift which was intended to be fully enjoyed within the confines of a lifelong monogamous heterosexual relationship. That is the ideal. That being the ideal, anything that deviates from it fall short of what God intended: extramarital sex, "open relationships" where give each other the "freedom" to have sex with other partners, using pornography, one-night stands ... and so on - the idea that "whatever turns you on" is ok for no other reason than that it turns you on. It's not that the Bible has a particular thing about sex, or is against it. You only have to read the Song of Solomon! But in some mysterious way this wholly committed and self-giving intimacy with a lifelong heterosexual partner is a reflection of God's having bound himself to humankind (his Bride - to se a Biblical metaphor again) in a wholly committed lifelong (eternity-long) relationship.

But I must again stress - and here I am sorry about the impression that Iris Robinson gave to the contrary in her interview with Nolan - there is nothing particularly "obnoxious" about homosexuality.

Pandalf:

Many thanks for your clarification. But I'm afraid I do it see as a puritanical attitude to sex. As far as I am concerned, there is nothing particularly moral about lifelong monogamous heteresexuality. The key is mutual consent. If a couple separate by mutual consent, then as far as I can see, there is absolutely nothing nothing with it. It is entirely a matter for them and not a 'sin' in any way.

Some people do live their life in a monogamous relationship. Many Christians, including yourself, say that you are not putting yourselves above others and that Christianity is not about being 'better', but surely those who follow this path ARE implicitly better because they are not sinners, at least in this sense?

Either Christianity is about moral behaviour, or it isn't. It seems to me that many Christians are confused on this score.

Peter says that it isn't at all about being 'better', but you imply that it is. You list many things are 'sinful'. Surely if we stop doing many of them, then we are less sinful, i.e. better people, in your eyes?

I don't think you can avoid some responsibility for homophobia by attempting to 'bury' it among a long list of other 'sins' of which we are all guilty. Anyway, you are wrong: it isn't a sin.

what utter nonsense William

You are a trained Presbyterian minister and you know full well that the church is urged not to follow levitical laws on shellfish etc, as explained in the New Testament.

Remember where God laid down a sheet with all sorts of 'unclean' animals and commanded Peter to eat?

Galations, Romans and Hebrews make this very clear, that the church should not attempt to follow OT law.

However Paul condemned homosexual practise in Romans and Corinthian etc.

And Christ confirmed that he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins.

Funny how hate speech never excercsed William before when Dawkins and his disciples continually on this blog throw all sorts of personal venom at people of faith.

Indeed William gives regular platforms to the humanists here eg when they gave a copy of the God Delusion to all the politicians.

And that book says that believing in God is a mental illness - see the parallels with Iris'/Nolan's comments anyone?


All animals are equal William, but some are more equal than others, eh?

PB

"Some people do live their life in a monogamous relationship. Many Christians, including yourself, say that you are not putting yourselves above others and that Christianity is not about being 'better', but surely those who follow this path ARE implicitly better because they are not sinners, at least in this sense?"

Brian, you assume too much about me! As a matter of fact my own marriage has broken up. Where would that put me on many people's score sheets? I am all too away of what my shortcomings have been and are. I am certainly not in a position to pose as a "model" for anyone. But that is not what my hope is based on. If it were based on my being somehow better than anyone else I would soon be in for a rude awakenin by the way! But it is not. It is based on grace and all-encompassing forgiveness. That is where all reorientation must start (I'm not talking specifically about sexual reorientation by the way - just before you call in the PC brigade).

By the way Brian. It is not for me to try to convince you that homosexuality or anything else is a sin. That is the role of the Holy Spirit. If you don't believe in God it is actually meaningless to talk to you about what might be sin and what is not. Unless you believe in the existence of a moral Arbiter (God is much more by the way) then there is no such thing as sin. The definition of what is right and wrong is therefore very much up for grabs. "One man's (sic) beer is aother man's poison" But then, as I said before, it is meaningless to rail against the supposed "moral unacceptability" of comments such as those made by Iris Robinson.

I'm back from my holiday and the whole country has gone mad.


A lot to say about this and I don't have time, but I wll throw in a few bits.

Whatever the scientists say is one thing, what God's word says is another, and it looks like people are going to have to decide this day whom they will follow (the unchangeing word of God or the fallible word of man).

PB wants to have a go at Crawley, I don't know why, because he didn't start this. BTW PB, Crawley is NOT a presbyterian minister, he used to be and chaplain and theologian but I know for a fact that he is not even a member of the presbyterian church anymore. That's irrelevant anyway.

We would be better talking about the nature of sin and how our society is changing the labels on sins all around us. Do our politicians think they can just reclassify something as NOT a sin when they have a vote? Its not like reclassifying drugs. A sin is a sin is a sin. When you want to find out about drugs, look up a pharmacy handbook, and when you want to find out about sins you can consult the holy word of God.

There are good reasons why God calls something a sin. It is because God wants the best for us. Drinking alcohol is a sin because God doesnt want us to harm our bodies. Look at the state of drinking in this society and tell me that God is happy with that? We are killing ourselves. It is just the same with homsosexuality.

Brian
I like the story! I'm also enjoying our exchanges, but I'm finding it difficult to keep up with the sheer pace of your posts! So,if you don't mind, keep an eye out for me later in the week. And thank-you for the discussion. I now want to find out more about Mussolini!

Graham Veale
Armagh

Hi Brian,

First an easy question. Are you, in post 46, implying that I am a naive fundamentalist?

Second, now it seems that not only am I going to have to reinterpret the bible for you, I'm also going to have to reinterpret my own words as well, because it seems you are misunderstanding me too.

So, a few points for clarification. (I think I'll open itunes first though, and listen while I type, I don't want to go completely mad)

(1) You are quite correct the Roman Catholic bible contains the books of the apocrypha. And you get from that to "The inspired word of God is a myth" OK whatever. You didn't really need the apocrypha to hold that view did you?

(2) I see you want to discuss the character of God again?! Aseity anyone? and we've also been there before with the discussion about God’s fait, surely we’re not going there again?

(3) Great, agreement - good - I'm glad.

(4) OK so you want fight and kill and conquer language, no problem. Dark side, remember? - no problem. Jesus is the Prince of Peace, who brings the Shalom of God through the death of his, and our, greatest enemy death. Remember the cross which we discussed before? He is the one who destroys all, oppression, all poverty, all injustice. His is the Kingdom, the power and the glory, time without end, and he will reign over all powers, all dominions and all authorities. You see you missed the word play again in 'render unto Caesar'. It was a taunt to the duplicitous religious leaders. Remember it was the Roman christians who were martyred for refusing to say 'Caesar is Lord'. So I state it again, Jesus is in every book, He is the focus, the narrative, and the fulfillment of every book, I can do a book by book interpretation for you if you like. Incidentally the post was actually addressed to William, and William as I said, should know all about this, but he's strangely quiet! Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat. (present tense!)

(5) " "Biblical Christianity is not about good 'people trying to do better'. Well, if it isn't, then it's worthless. "

Oh come on Brian, read what I said. I said Christianity is not this and it's not that, what it is about, is people being remade, i.e. being remade morally, another in context word I used was 'pure'. I said better wasn't good enough. i.e. bye bye pride. I didn't say we shouldn't **BE** better. In other words we can never better ourselves enough, rather we need, 'recycled' 'salvaged'. If you really want me to use the sound bite you didn't like, and the one I don't like either, it's about sinners being 'saved'. But if you springboard off this and fail to take all I have said in context, that's up to you, but as I have said before don't accuse me of not giving answers. When I use theological language like aseity it is rejected and when I use contemporary language like 'recycling' it is rejected. At least let's be clear about this.

(6)" If Biblical Christianity is not about any of these things (i.e. ethics etc) but just 'about God and how we relate to him' "

And at what point did I use the word 'just'? Indeed I recall on another thread saying Christianity was *more than* ethics etc. What I said in post 34 was that politics would never make us holy. I said, if you want the padded out version, that rules and regulations will never actually deal with the problems of the human character. And IN CONTEXT I said that it would be foolish of the DUP brigade to think that they could use the offices of power to establish Christian teaching. Being remade has everything to do with this world. The 'ethics' of Jesus which you seem to like are, I suggest, more than mere targets or aspirational ideas, they are far and above anything human beings can hope to reach, they require that we are remade. Loving enemies, for example. I seem to recall that you quoted Ghandi as freeing us up to avoid enemies. I also said that even our good deeds aren't enough, trouble is we all pick and choose when it come to ethics.


Christianity is no walk in the park. That's why the association of christianity with nationalism and finger-pointing and pride and self-righteousness is misplaced. And again, I'm not speaking for anyone else, just me. I need remade, what anyone else thinks is up to them.


And one more thing, you raise objection after objection, after yet more answers, I recall asking a question.

Please establish for me a basis for all of the issues of meaning and personality and language and morality and so on. Emanating from the brain, or whatever it was you said, isn’t good enough; we’re only here by time and chance remember, and that does not require me to be moral.

What’s going to stop any of us hating people? Please give me a reason not to trample over everyone else and live only for myself.

I'm all ears.

Graham - Post 42

Your apostrophes are probably turning into question marks because you are probably writing on a word processor first then copy pasting into the comment box. If you want to avoid this either, type straight in or copy paste in and change all your apostrophes one by one.

This is why the problem is happening to me.

Peter, Graham:

You both speak of sin and the need for redemption. Can I ask you a few simple and direct questions relating to the topic at hand?

1. Is all sex sinful? If so, on what basis? Should there be laws restricting consensual adult sex?

2. Is gay sex sinful? If so, on what basis? Should the law give equality of rights in the matter of gay sex?

Peter:

1. Do I imply that you are a naive fundamentalist? I am not sure. But it does seem to me that you want to have your evangelical cake and eat it. You did question William's interpretation of an alleged sadistic God's punishment in the Flood. Perhaps you can tell me whether there is anything else in the Bible that troubles you. Or is it totally unerring and consistent? Is it entirely the word of God or is it not?

2. My point about the Catholic Bible was simply that there is not one set of texts which can be called the inspired word of god. Indeed, there are other writings which have been rejected by various Christians, e.g. 1st and 2nd Clement, the Letter of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas, or 1st Enoch, adopted by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Many modern Christians haven't even heard of many of the texts rejected by churches and leaders in the past, yet they talk of A Bible and the unerring word of God.

3. Your list of the attributes of Jesus is definitely OTT and sounds pretty evangelical to me.

4. "We can never better ourselves enough". "We need to be remade". This is a bit drastic and extreme for my liking. 'Better' is good enough for me.

5. The basis of meaning, personality, language and morality has nothing to do with religion or belief in a God. Nor does your own idea of a God offer any satisfactory explanation of these things. Yes, they do emanate from our brains, and it's good enough for me. There is, Peter, an Atheist's Prayer who goes something like this:

"Our brains, which art in our heads, treasured be thy name. Thy reasoning come. Thy best you can do be done on earth as it is. Give us this day new insight to help us resolve conflicts and ease pain. And lead us not into supernatural explanations; deliver us from denial of logic. For thine is the kingdom of reason, and even though thou powers are limited, and you're not always glorious thou are the best evolutionary adaptation we have for helping this earth now and forever and ever. So be it".

You say: "Give me a reason not to trample over everything else". But that is precisely what the God of the Bible allegedly told Joshua to do in his conquest of the Promised Land.

You keep avoiding the question: "How can the Bible and its God be a measure of perfect morality when so much of it seems downright immoral? Is this a paradox or what?

I keep insisting that morality is created by us. Moreover, there is in our nature, as in other social animals, an inclination to kindness. Remember the starling. My feeling of empathy for the poor bird is a natural phenomenon and does not require a God or Holy Writ to generate it.

Brian
Short answers
1) No.Scripture and natural law. No, government should not regulate.
2) Yes. Scripture and Natural Law. No government should not regulate. We have a right to Freedom of Conscience, and we have a right to Privacy. Furthermore, anyone exercisng those rights has the right to be protected by the state.

I'll add that sin should never be a legal category. That would put the state in God's place.

Graham Veale

Pete Morrow
Good comments. I agree that we need public reasons to promote a public policy, and it is entirely incorrect to use public office to impose Evangelical Ethics.

By the way, did anyone read Malachi O'Doherty in Friday's Belfast Telegraph? He's trying to draw attention to the DUP's stance on the environment, and argues that Iris is doing a great job of distracting us.

Graham Veale

Hi Graham:

I don't think it needs Malachi O'Doherty to get a lot of Christians excited about homosexuality. They are pretty good at self-arousal on this topic.

Thanks for your answer. You say that homosexuality is a sin, whereas straight sex is not. You say that your view is based on 'scripture' and natural law.

Is it not possible that both are wrong? After all, The Bible and much of Christian theology was written before it was realised that 5-10% of the population are gay or lesbian and long before many experts, including Freud and Kinsey, spoke of the prevalence of bisexuality. Kinsey talked of a scale in which total heterosexuality (0) and total homosexuality (6) are extreme ends of the spectrum occupied by only a small percentage. 50-50 bisexuality (which has not been discussed at all on these threads) is a 3 on this scale.

Thus, for at least 5% or more of people, homosexuality is natural and may well be biologically determined. This was not known in the ancient desert kingdoms of the Middle East.

Do you not accept that knowledge may supersede these ancient desert scrolls and Dark Age monastic musings?

After all, we now know that eating shellfish is no longer unclean or an 'abomination'. Might not the same be true of homosexuality?

Brian

Of course I could be wrong! To ignore conscience is neither right nor safe. I do my best to follow mine, and try to leave others to follow their's. As I've tried to make clear, public policy should be built on public consensus.

I've tried to make it clear that Leviticus itself states that many of the laws are quite arbitrary. It was meant to be a burdensome set of laws. It was also meant to mark a group out as ethnically and religiously different. Many of the laws are not based on moral considerations (in that there was never, and will never be anything morally wrong with eating shellfish).

Kinsey and Freud are a bit dated, aren't they? In any case, I discussed my reading of the Science with William, so I'll refer you to those posts. (We didn't seem to be poles apart in our interpretations. I think we draw different ethical conclusions.)

Did you read the ODoherty article? I thought it was interesting. It would take an awful lot to get evangelicals aroused about Environmental concerns. And it seems that Sammy Wilson believes that his core vote won't mind him denying that carbon emissions contribute to global warming. How did he get away with a statement like this?

Graham Veale

Hi Brian

Post 59

Direct questions - direct answers.

My views are similar to Graham's, although I'm not exactly sure what he means by 'natural law', maybe he will develop his thoughts.

A couple of important points follow however. When it comes to christianity and the issue of sin, I am at pains to point out that there is no hierarchy, one group of people should not be singled out by other human beings as being more 'vile' than another. And if Christians are proved to have acted in a discriminatory manner they should be held accountable. Secondly the subject of 'sin' and 'law' raises the thorny issue of church and state. My view is that it is not the job of the church to legislate, church and state ought to be separate. What follows then is that when it comes to the state, it is up to the state to determine what it means by equality of rights. As a christian I reserve the right to disagree and put my point of view, but if the consensus is different so be it. The whole business then of what the role of the church should be is another matter.

Also it may be helpful to describe the bible's view of sex in positive terms, too often it is put negatively, in this you are correct.

My understanding is this, sex, within the context of heterosexual marriage, is for pleasure and for reproduction. Faithful long term adult relationships, in which children are nurtured by both mother and father, is presented in the bible as the most stable environment for all involved.

In terms of the bible, I really don't think there is any way round this.

Brian
The way I would state it is that the purpose of sex is "family". I think this combines the personal and reproductive aspects of sex. A Christian should use God's gift faithfully. But, obviously, I cannot expect this code to be binding on those who reject traditional Chrsitian morality.
Is tolerance a Christian value? I think so, but I'm from a dissenting tradition of the Church. In any case I can point to an online essay and an online lecture both from mainstream academics, which argue political liberty and human right find their origins in Christian thought.

Graham Veale



("The Idea of Natural Right-Origins and Persistence" by Brian Tierney at https://www.law.northwestern.edu/journals/JIHR/v2/2/2.pdf%29 (Nicholas Wolterstorff's" Are There Christian Foundations for Political Liberty?" at https://www.veritas.org/media/talks/153%29

Hi Graham/Peter:

It is clear that most Christians on this blog disapprove of homosexuality to a greater or less degree. If the 'purpose' of sex is related to family and heterosexual marriage, then gays are misusing it in your view. Presumably you both oppose gay 'marriages' or civil partnerships. Or do you accept that latter because it is not a 'marriage'?

Now we come to the consequences of gay sex. No one has actually suggested that gays should be put to death (at least, there is progress beyond the text there). Neither of you two advocate restriction or punishment over and above that for heterosexual sex. You are both exercising tolerance. That is something, and I suppose that gays should be relieved at that.

It seems to me that you have a big job on your hands trying to combat the verbal bullying, taunting, physical bullying, injurying and killing of those whose behaviour you disapprove of. And all that on top of dealing with the Christian homophobia which goes further than you do.

Graham:

Political liberty and human rights find their origins in the western world in the Greeks. They were snuffed out by the Christian Dark Ages and only recovered by the likes of Voltaire, Paine, Jefferson and co, all of whom were sceptics.

Brian
Well, that is partly what Tierney is disputing - he finds the concept of human rights in many "Dark Age" sources. Wolterstorff goes some way to showing that Voltaire (the anti-semite) Paine and Jefferson etal. cannot take all the credit for the concept of political liberty.
Democracy - no Christianity cannot take the credit for that. But then Democracy on it's own can give you dictatorship by consent. There needs to be legal protection for families, communities, and individuals.
If I try to protect those whose behaviour I disapprove of, doesn't that make me more tolerant than someone who only protects those he/she approves of?

Graham Veale
Armagh

Graham:

Yes, I accept that the concept of human rights can be found in some Christian writers, but generally they were 'going against the grain' and challenging the tenets of the church, sometimes under the mask of anonymity, pseudonyms or allonyms.

I agree with you also about the dangers of 'totalitarian' democracy, which to some extent was what Stormont under Unionist rule was. But the 'liberal' in liberal democracy does owe a lot to sceptics like Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Paine etc and to atheist writers such as Mill and Bentham, as well as to Christians like Locke.


Voltaire was anti-semitic, but then so too were most Christians until recent times. Luther wrote a pamphlet 'On the Jews and their Lies', after all.

Brian
We need to be very careful, or we're going to reach a consensus on a lot of our opinions. Which would be very enlightened of us, but where's the fun?

Graham Veale

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Thank-you Gandalf and Graham for your replies to my comment (No. 43).

I do indeed wonder how intelligent people can hold ideas that I consider not just absurd but perverse. I marvel that anyone can examine the whole Bible, conclude that from Genesis to Revelations it reveals one god, and find that god good, worthy of love and worship, and a fit arbiter of morality.

When I look at the Bible, if I were to conclude that it is an inspired and consistent revelation, then the god so revealed is a figure of the most monstrous evil whom every person with any claim to moral integrity should spurn and actively resist.

It utterly beggars belief that people who can see the horror of the Holocaust and would not hesitate to name its instigator, Hitler, evil can call the God who commanded the wholesale extinction of the Amalekites good.

We can discuss subtle meanings and metaphors but the stark truth is that any reading of the scriptures which presents them as a unified whole takes a devil and names him God.

In terms of sexual behaviour the role of religion in inducing unnecessary guilt and despair in people desiring to engage in perfectly natural behaviour appals me. The love of two people of any gender for each other is a wonderful thing. Acts of informed consensual sex between whatever number of people of whatever gender can also be a wonderful thing!

Hello Portwyne. Believe me, I do understand the difficulties that you have with the God who commanded the eradication of, among others, the Amalekites. Nevertheless I would like you to consider the following. You are condemning the actions of God on straightforwardly moral grounds. If you did not have a very clear conception of what is right and wrong according to which the actions of God are deemed immoral, there would be nothing to complain about. Can I ask you from where you derive this
conception of what is right and wrong? It is obviously not (or is it?) from contemporary culture. Becuse if it is a culturally informed criterion then how can one culture dictate what is right or wrong for an alien culture. No, it is obviously a univeral ethicical norm that you are invoking. I ask again, is this ethical paradigm transcendent? Does it transcend all individuals and cultures and religious cosmologies or worldviews? Then it is an Absolute "good". So, the judeo-Christian God violates this overarching absolute "good", and stands condemned by reference to it. So effectively you have given the status of "God", in terms of moral Arbiter, to this higher principle. The problem is, that when it comes to intervening, to calling men women and gods to account, this "Principle" is inert. It is an abstraction. It can do nothing. It is the impassible, unmoved mover in the Aristotelean sense, if indeed it actually moves anything. It is the Platonic Ideal which never actually impinges on life as it is lived.
The Judeo-Christian God, however, is no suh abstraction. In the face of great evil this God is represented in Scripture as intervening in redemption (if the "accused" will allow themselves to be redeemed) or judgement and destruction if they will not. By all accounts (not only Biblical) the activities that characterised pre-conquest socities in the ANE, were of the kind that would make Milosovitch and Stalin seem benign by comparison. Child sacrifice (sacrifices to Moloch) were the order of the day. Any contemporary society resembling these nations, would incur the powerless indignation of the UN, the Us, the EU and even of the anti-war brigades. We would be out on the streets demanding "intervention" (with or without the presence of oil-fields in these territories).
In the actual rather than hypothetical case of these ANE nations, what did God do? He exercised what is God's and only God's prerogative: He intervened in judgement to wipe out those civilisations which had spurned every opportunity to be redeemed and restored. (He waited 400 years before judging!) And even while judgement was under way, He rescued any individual members of these societies that chose to take refuge in Him and recognised Him as God, repudiating the "gods" in whose names they had slidden into unspeakable barbarity.

Jovial PTL

You have missed the point, Mr Crawley HAS indeed been trained as a Presbterian minister and I understand used to lecture on theology.

The point is that he knows full well that the church is clearly called NOT to follow the OT law. (Galations).


Consequently it is a very mischevous argument he is putting forward as he knows it is a castle in the air.


Also William, why suggest that "fundamentalists" are the only people who disagree with you on this, whoever they are?


Is the Presbyterian church in Ireland fundamentalist William because it disagrees with you, for example?

Fundamentalist as a term only came into existence in the last century but the traditional position on this matter is 2000 years old, apart from a few fringe radicals.

PB

PB,

There does appear to be a Jihad of sorts against mine and others posts here specifically when they concern posts to you.

Now you said...

"Funny how hate speech never excercsed William before when Dawkins and his disciples continually on this blog throw all sorts of personal venom at people of faith."

Now PB this is how it works-we are on a public message board and instead of hitting the complain button why not respond?

Now my opinion is that no personal venom has been thrown at you, other posters are not noticing it-instead it is your paranoia. Indeed Christians on these boards have had a go at you. Now PB over the past year or so you have repeated a litany of lies in defense of Biblical creationism(in fairness to you-I do not believe that you yourself are per se dishonest but you do repeat dishonest arguments). Now when asked very *simple* questions to defend yourself all we get is prevarication and bluster then you run away. PB I can give you the list? This annoys people and we have seen through you and it is very hypocritical and does betray the atypical fundamentalist mindset in which reason and rationale go out the window.

Please remember PB it was you who had to sneak around moderation by posting under another name.

Please note this post is meant in a non-unlawful, harassing, abusive, threatening, obscene, sexually explicit, racially offensive, or otherwise objectionable material.

Regards

DD

PB, I know I am wasting my time trying to reason with you about this, but I will foolishly try in any case.

You write off this post because you say no Christian theologian would say that Christians should not follow the OT law.

Christian theology has a place for the Old testament, and the claim that it does not has been named as a heresy historically. You are right in the strictest sense that Christians are not required to follow ceremonial and ritual OT laws, though the moral law, including the 10 Commandments, still applies.

Instead of attacking William, perhaps you should challenge Iris Robinson. After all, it is she who is quoting the OT law of Leviticus, which, as William points out here, is a ritual law.


You then go off on a rant about the Presbyterian Church, even though William has not mentioned the presbyterian church in the post and has not described that church or anybody as "fundamentalist". I have no idea what you issue is here, but the issue we are discussing is Iris Robinson's use of the Bible. perhaps you would like to address THAT?

Augustine of Clippo

"PB, I know I am wasting my time trying to reason with you about this, but I will foolishly try in any case."

You are wasting your time unfortunately A of C! Please believe me that myself and other long term posters here have tried to reason with PB but to no avail. PB is an unfortunate example of a stereotypical fundamentalist and as such reason and rationale go out the window. In any case welcome to the boards-it is good to get intelligent theistic responses!

Regards

DD

I am a traditional conservative Christian PB but you are not doing that view many favours with your comments on here. Play the ball, not the man. If you are going to attack Crawley, at least don't strip him of his doctors degree!! I would rather you didn't push the debate into personal comments at all, this is all too serious for that. Remember - "Truth with love!!"

Gandalf, thank you for your reply. You have correctly understood me to believe that actions (or indeed inaction) can be judged good, or evil in absolute terms. I would make those judgements on the basis of human reason and emotion classifying compassion, altruism, and honesty as good and hate, selfishness, and deceit as evil.

The standards I set do constitute an idea and an ideal but lack the status of "God" claiming no independent existence, requiring no conformity, and imposing no sanctions for deviation. They are ineffectual and powerless on every level but that of the individual. I believe, however, any honest appraisal of either the nation of Israel or the Christian church throughout history would be forced to conclude that again on every level but the individual they too have been equally inert or ineffectual - where they have not been actively agents of wickedness and corruption.

I do not believe the God of Abraham has any objective existence but I do believe I have every right to judge the deeds and pronouncements of the construct by the same standards I would apply to my neighbour. By those standards that god is arbitrary, petulant, unjust, selective and evil.

I can not be convinced by your portrayal of god as a kind of divine Tony Blair - sanctimoniously intervening in the world when and where it suited according to an agenda of self-interest but cloaked in a mantle of righteousness, leaving equal and greater injustices unaddressed, and generally doing more harm than good. Why should the poor old Amalekites be judged and wiped-out when the equally blood-thirsty Inca and the Maya were tolerated?

Such a god could never command my respect never mind my worship or love!

Good questions Portwyne. As for your Tony Blair comparison, I think you'll ind that the "sactimoniousness" is on Blair's side, not on God's. Blair (and Bush) rather (sanctimoniously indeed) imagine themselves as doing God's work of judging the world.

The moral ideal that you invoke, and by which you judge the actions of th God o the Old Testament, may not seem to you to have the status of "God". But it does have such a status in that, contrary to what you say, it does have an independent existence. If it does not have an independent existence, then what is this ideal dependent upon? Is is or is it not an overarching moral frame of reference to which all people everywher (an dall gods!) are subject? Is it not an externally existent yardstick whereby human (and divine) behaviour is to be measured? If it is not externl then it is mbedded in human culture and society. But which culture? Which society? But ok, let's say for the sake of argument that "God" is not the right term for it. (In a real sense I agree with you because God is not a mere moral or ethical abstraction). It is still, if I follow your line of argumet correctly, an Absolute. I would like you to explain, for the record, what the ontological "grounding" of this objective moral standard is. Christians argue that the fact that such an objective moral standard exists external to human culture(s) is actually a very strong argument in favour of the existence of God. Natural selection can take us some way towards an explanation for humankind's perception of this "moral order", but it cannot explain the origin of moral standards per se. Human reason, which you claim as the basis of morality, likewise has enabled us to understand and see the benefit to ourselves and others of leading morally good lives. But, once again, it is insufficient as an ontological foundation for the moral law itself. Presumably yo would say that it was the "reason" of the first reasoning human beings that constructed their "morality" out of strategies that would further their survival and the survival of the species. But in this case you are saying that moral values are indeed cultural artifacts which are binding only to the extent that they do indeed further the survival of the "tribe" or the species. But which culture? What happens when cultures collide? What is it that human beings, divided into their respective communities, must invoke in order to make sure that justice is done? Or is justice really just a cultural phenomenon too. In which case it is meaningless to protest about the actions attributed to the God of the OT, or those of any dictator, or of the Maya and Aztecs.

Your right of course that the history of the Christian church is littered with example of failure on the part of the "Christian" establishment to fulfil their God-given mandate, which was NOT to establish an earthly theocracy, but to disseminate far and wide the story of God's love and grace embodied in Jesus Christ. Jesus ORDERED his followers to put away their swords, not to use them. When they took up their swords later on it was IN DEFIANCE of his EXPLICIT commandment.

As for the Maya. Yes, barbaric indeed. But it is clear from the "divine purpose" that the OT ascribes to Israel (a purpose they failed again and again to fulfil) was that the "covenant" God had made with them would ultimately be extended to every tribe and nation. This was n ot going to happen overnight. God "chose" to start with the ANE, as that was the cradle of the most prominent civilisations. OK He could have started in China, or in Mexico, but he had to start somewhere, and who are we to say that it was the wrong place to start. If Israel had been faithful to their calling, the covenantal promises, binding humans to God, would, undoubtedly have reached Mexico too. For that to happen, we had to wait for Jesus and the mission he entrusted to his followers.

Gandalf, I believe that human morality has its origins in the structuring of cooperation for the benefit of the organism. It is now, however, much more than that.

The intelligence and ability to reason which brought the competitive advantage of tools brought also the ability to consider the nature of existence. As our reasoning developed and the benefits of society to the individual came to be understood intellectually rather than merely grasped practically, ideas shaped ideas and what might be considered 'bugs' entered the programming: perhaps indeed saints and psychopaths are just two sides of the same aberration.

I suspect that abstracting morality from utility may have resulted from no more than an interesting (perhaps inevitable) glitch in the processes which led to the evolution of mental complexity.

Nonetheless we humans have the ability to pronounce on right and wrong, good and evil. I would hold that my value systems based on experience, consideration, reason, and emotion are universally valid and absolute. They are not, however, in any sense of the word an entity - not the system, not good and not evil. I simply assert my convictions and judge all that I encounter against them. I accept that others will hold different convictions and they are entitled to do - where they differ from mine they are of-course wrong. :)

My morality only shapes my own interaction with others and how I view their interaction with me and the society I inhabit (Humanity): it profoundly affects how I cope with life and how I live it. I do not believe, though, that the world is a moral place - nothing would suggest that a person not given to introspection would ever suffer any ill consequences for undiscovered immoral activity.

I appreciate your gentle reasoning and apologise for what may seem the intemperance of my own comments. I am, however, burning with righteous indignation (as the Bible might put it) at the very real evil I heard voiced as Christianity when I listened to the Nolan-Robinson interview.

I have had repeated contact down the years with gay people from Christian backgrounds who struggle to reconcile their desires and often identity with the faith in which they grew-up. They can be people living lives of despair and deception, existing in quiet desperation, or at the very brink of suicide. For these people the words of Mrs Robinson were incitement to SELF-hatred - not a crime on the statute books but one far more vicious and far more insidious in its effects.

I do not blame Mrs Robinson but I seethe with anger at the system which invented and fosters such vile beliefs. It would not be untrue to say I am repulsed and filled with nausea and disgust at this manifestation of the mindset of fundamentalist Christianity.

"As our reasoning developed and the benefits of society to the individual came to be understood intellectually rather than merely grasped practically, ideas shaped ideas and what might be considered 'bugs' entered the programming: perhaps indeed saints and psychopaths are just two sides of the same aberration."

Portwyne, you have offered a robust defence of utility as a moral framework, but you lament the abstraction of this pragmatic framework into an overarching moral scheme, binding on everyone. And yet you claim that your value system is universally valid, and, presumably, binding.

Obviously I would dispute your opinion that "utility" evolved into "moral absolutism" (or produced objective, absolute moral criteria as a "misfired", deviant outgrowth. (Correct me if my summary is mistaken). I agree, of course, that people had to, in a sense, work things out in the cut and thrust of daily interaction. But they had to "work them out" in much the same way as we work out the answer to a mathematical problem. The answer is there - we do not "invent it", we "discover it". Maybe we listen, and allow it to be revealed to us. We may of course press on, willy nilly, with our own pathways towards the answer - but they ain't going to get us there!

Maybe there was something about the way Iris Robinson expressed her view that actually MERITS your indignation, so don't feel bad about "blaming" her on that account. However, you cannot really argue that any definition of human sexuality (based as it will be, in their case, on the Christian Scriptures) that rules out homosexual activity is "nauseous" or repulsive. In previous posts I have tried to explain the fact the Bible does not make any more of an issue of homosexuality than it does of adultery, of greed, of slander, of swindling. There is no reason for Christians to feel any more "disgust" with regard to homosexuality than with regard to any of these other sins - many of which we will be able to find within ourselves, at least in "attitude" if not in deed.

By the way, the tone of your invective against "fundamentalists" smacks of "fundamentalism". I think "fundamentalism" actually boils down to the strong opinions that do not happen to coincide with our own!

Gandalf, if I may address your comments point by point, I would clarify and expand as follows:

I do not lament the arrival in human consciousness of ideas of morality: I merely observe it .

I use my moral reasoning to arrive at ideas of good and evil which require me to form judgements on people, events and systems. These judgements are, however, in no way binding on anyone. My values inform how I think about the world, they do not and indeed could not constrain anyone else.

Morality is perhaps as like maths and physics as you suggest - I would contend, however, that far from finding truth (something we cannot hope to know) we obtain only working hypotheses which stand the test of observation, experience, and reason.

I did not blame Mrs Robinson (I followed her helpful suggestion to distinguish the sinner from the sin) - I blamed the whole edifice of so-called Christian morality which shapes her opinions.

I most emphatically would argue that "any definition of human sexuality which rules out homosexual activity" is nauseous and repulsive. Such a definition (merely superstitious in origin) needlessly removes guilt-free enjoyment of perfectly natural desires and activities from a considerable section of the human populace. It messes with people's minds, causes untold distress and despair, leads to joyless lives and unnecessary suicides. It sickens me to my very core - it disgusts and repels me!

My complaint with the Bible (on this issue) is not that it makes more of homosexuality than other so-called sins but that it ranks it as a sin at all - that it equates something than can in fact be a great good with harmful and anti-social activities.

My "invective" was against Christian fundamentalists (I would be happy to extend it to Muslim fundamentalists). I suspect where it comes to defending the rights of the weak and marginalised I am as fundamentalist as any.

"I use my moral reasoning to arrive at ideas of good and evil which require me to form judgements on people, events and systems. These judgements are, however, in no way binding on anyone. My values inform how I think about the world, they do not and indeed could not constrain anyone else."

But is that enough Portwyne? Is this not a case of "one man's beer is another man's poison"? Is there then no hope of arriving at a consensual. You say that your values inform how YOU think of the world. That implies that your values are subjective. If your values "do not and could not constrain anyone else", presumably the same thing could be said of everyone else. If everyone's values are simply those which inform how they view the world and do not reflect or relate to any scale of values which is external to the individual, then it is basically "every man (and woman) for themselves)". Surely this is a recipe for anarchy. It also ineluctably leads to a situation in which the fittest prevail over the vulnerable. Justice therefore becomes a mockery. It's true that the law exists to restrain the powerful and protect the weak. But in a world in which those who are appointed to uphold the law are notoriously susceptible to bribery, the law per se offers no guarantee. And what is to be done in those places (we don't hve to travel very far to find them) where the law is weighted in favour of the strong? If everyone is free to construct their own moral values, that is clearly good news for the strong, and very bad news for the weak.

I do think everyone's values are simply those which inform how they view the world and I fear that world is a deeply unfriendly place. The fittest do prevail over the vulnerable, justice is a mockery, there is one law for the rich and another for the poor (in fact if not in theory). This situation is reality but it is a reality I deplore.

I believe it is not an over-arching moral system which prevents anarchy but the advantages a flexible legal system afford the strong. Society benefits both rich and poor - the rich obviously more. Giving rights and liberties to the disadvantaged is an acceptable trade-off against, for example, a motivated and secure labour force.

I believe the Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth correctly understood the nature of the world and the role moral people play in it when he effectively instructed his followers to be the salt of the earth. Those who lead altruistic caring lives balance those whose greed and hate poison society.

No very much hope here Portwyne. Central to Christianity is the belief that in the end the corrupt, the perpetrators of injustice, those who cynically freece the poor and ravish the planet will be called to book. Their activity will not only be "compensated for" by the actions of the altruistic and the caring. Campaigning for justice, upholding and defending the dignity of every human life, is not just "spitting into the wind". It is, iun a sense, fighting on the side of the Resistance when V-day has already taken place, but victory has not yet been fully effected on the ground.

Sorry a few typos:

No very much hope here Portwyne! Central to Christianity is the belief that in the end the corrupt, the perpetrators of injustice, those who cynically fleece the poor and ravish the planet will be called to book. Their activity will not only be "compensated for" by the actions of the altruistic and the caring. Campaigning for justice, upholding and defending the dignity of every human life, is not just "spitting into the wind". It is, in a sense, fighting on the side of the Resistance when V-day has already taken place, but victory has not yet been fully effected on the ground.

Of the faith, hope, and charity trinity I prefer to work on the charity bit.

I feel it a great pity that for most of its history main-stream Christianity has all but ignored the radical calls for social justice of its founder preferring to this day to side with the rich and the powerful and worshipping its god in the beauty of Wren or Michaelangelo rather than holiness.

I often wonder would the world have been different if Christians had taken seriously the words and essentially simple message of Jesus (to which you do refer) instead of devoting so much time and effort to developing a largely academic theology.

Portwyne, there is a lot of truth in your comment. Paul also said "the greatest of these (three) is love".

You're right that mainstream Christianity has often ignores its founders radical calls for social justice. You're right that Christians, to their shame, have often sided with the establishment. "Holiness", as you say, has NOTHING to do with richly decorated temples. It is a very earthy reality in fact. Jesus was actually modelling holiness when he was eating and drinking with the riff-raff of his society, when he was asking a despised Samaritan woman for a drink and then offering her the "living water" that was Himself, when he stormed into the temple with whip in hand and (literally) lashed at those who had turned "religion" into a business and were using it to fleece people.

But Jesus, in doing this, was not only setting an example. He has not a kind of "lone ranger" bravely fighting injustice but then ignominiously succumbing to it. He was not a 1st century Che Gevara. No, he was pointing forward to the end of history. He was, and is, the he accounts will be settled. Injustice, including the injustice that the "Church" has been responsible for, will be dealt with.

Having said that, the message of Jesus remains simple: "whover (whatever their class, rank, politics, gender, sexual proclivities etc.) drinks from the water that I give will thirst no more". Obviously that will have implications for the way we live our lives thereafter. It is not just an offer. It is a potentially life-transforming challenge. Any "theology" that does not begin and end with the simple message of Jesus, and this absolutely crucial encounter with him, is just academic hot air.

Sorry as usual, a number of typos:

Portwyne, there is a lot of truth in your comment. Paul also said "the greatest of these (three) is love".

You're right that mainstream Christianity has often ignores its founders radical calls for social justice. You're right that Christians, to their shame, have often sided with the establishment. "Holiness", as you say, has NOTHING to do with richly decorated temples. It is a very earthy reality in fact. Jesus was actually modelling holiness when he was eating and drinking with the riff-raff of his society, when he was asking a despised Samaritan woman for a drink and then offering her the "living water" that was Himself, when he stormed into the temple with whip in hand and (literally) lashed at those who had turned "religion" into a business and were using it to fleece people.

But Jesus, in doing this, was not only setting an example. He has not a kind of "lone ranger" bravely fighting injustice but then ignominiously succumbing to it. He was not a 1st century Che Guevara. No, he was pointing forward to the end of history. He was, and is, the Creator and Lord of the universe. The accounts will be settled. Injustice, including the injustice that the "Church" has been responsible for, will be dealt with.

Having said that, the message of Jesus remains simple: "whover (whatever their class, rank, politics, gender, sexual proclivities etc.) drinks from the water that I give will thirst no more". Obviously that will have implications for the way we live our lives thereafter. It is not just an offer. It is a potentially life-transforming challenge. Any "theology" that does not begin and end with the simple message of Jesus, and this absolutely crucial encounter with him, is just academic hot air.

I find myself agreeing with a lot of your comments Gandalf - up to a point!

I really wish I could believe that "Injustice, including the injustice that the 'Church' has been responsible for, will be dealt with." - that part of me with which I struggle daily is rather tickled at the thought of Akinola and his cohorts burning (with the abomination that is Rowan Williams) 'where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched'.

Fortunately for us and for them, we will be nobody's judge on the last day. If we are honest with ourselves, we all have our favourite examples of ideal fire-fodder! But that frame of mind is a trap. We must allow God to be our judge now - in the quietness of our hearts and submit to his judgement on our own lives. Akinola and Wiliams, like everone else, will have to answer for themselves. Much as we like to imagine ourselves, in our darker moments, as standing on the brink of the fiery pit with pitchfork in hand, meting out to all our pet-hates their just deserts, it's not going to happen. It's only if we let Christ be our judge now - and our Saviour - that we will not face Him in judgement after our little spell on the stage is over.