Again.... what does the religious definition of marriage have to do with the set of legal contracts that we call a legal marriage?
Nothing.
We know they have nothing to do with each other because there is no religious requirement for getting a legal marriage. Atheists can get married and do so all the time. If they dont believe in God why would they enter into a religious contract? They dont. They enter into a legal contract. It doesnt matter what the damn religious book says because our laws should not be based on a religious text.
Find me one good reason to not let homosexuals get married that is not based on religion and then maybe we can have a discussion but when it comes down to it it does not matter at all whether or not religion supports the law.
That's not what this thread is about, though. I don't care whether gay marriage should be legal in the US--I personally think it should. But the question is whether the Bible opposes it, and while you may not find that question very interesting, those of us here do.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
The question as you put it wasn't relevant to the discussion. I gave an answer that was pertinent to the discussion rather than go off on a tangent.
But let me put it another way: are you for or against perjury laws? Do you think liars should be banned from lying in our fundamental legal proceedings? Do you think liars should be treated as equal and completely accepted by all? And do you think the fact that you have yourself lied in the past has any relevance?
We're all liars. Absolutely everyone lies. There's no "banning liars" from anything, because every single person on Earth is a liar. We ban lying in our legal proceedings. I'm all for that, just like I'm all for banning homosexual sex in church proceedings -- because matters of morality are where sexual immorality is relevant. Marriage is not a matter of morality, it's a matter of legal status, sexual exclusivity, and inheritance -- all of which have moral implications, but are not actually moral matters.
Quote from Senori »
If you agree that Paul is implying this, it means that he understands that to be the case... and if he does, any biblical scholar worth his weight in doctorates would tell you that you ought to interpret any potential uncertainty of grammar (and I disagree with you that there are any in the Greek, but even so) in light of what is clearly understood by the author.
You're not saying anything I disagree with here. We should definitely interpret the grammar in light of what is clearly understood by the author. But that in no way gives you leave to add something that isn't there. Paul's understanding of marriage isn't a definition, period. It's his understanding. It may well be that his understanding was so ingrained in him that he felt no need to define marriage, but that's not relevant. What's relevant is that the word 'marriage' is not defined anywhere in the Bible.
the company of the sexually immoral is not one a Christian is meant to keep.
So don't keep their company -- I literally couldn't care less whose company you keep. But not keeping their company is nowhere near the same thing as actively discriminating against them by preventing them from marrying. There's nothing more to say about this passage. You're reading things into it that you simply cannot support using a literal reading of the text, period.
It tells me nothing of the sort.
That's because you're reading more into the text than is actually there. Let's go through it line by line, which shouldn't be necessary because you're obviously a smart guy, but hey, stubborn sometimes needs to be led through the truth real slow:
Quote from Paul »
9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.
Translation: Don't associate with sexually immoral people. Other immoral types, whatever, you can't escape them, but don't associate with sexually immoral people.
(Painful admission time: I totally read this wrong the first thousand or so times I read it. I missed the part where he specifically separated out sexually immoral people as people to avoid even when they're not in the Church. My bad! Explains a bit of my confoundedness earlier in the thread.)
But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.
Translation: Don't associate with any immoral people who claim to be part of the Church, no matter what form their immorality takes.
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”
Translation: I can't judge people who aren't in the Church. We can judge those in the Church, but God judges those outside the Church. Kick the immoral people out of the Church.
Do you see anything in there that says anything about "let's make immoral people's lives harder by preventing them from taking part in society"?
No. You don't. It's NOT THERE. There is NOTHING WHATSOEVER in this passage or any other in the Bible that gives Christians a divine command, much less the right, to keep gay people from getting married. The only thing this passage tells you is to keep sexually immoral people out of your life (which I do), and to disassocate with people in the Church that are being immoral (which I do). Exactly nothing in this chapter says what you're reading into it. Which means you're inflicting your beliefs onto the Bible rather than allowing the words in the Bible to inspire your beliefs.
... What definition of discriminate are you using exactly? I'm wondering how a person can say that people are wicked and sinful and terrible and abhorrent to God because they have a particular quality and not be, by definition, discriminating against that quality.
This proves to me that you're not actually reading. I've stated outright what I mean by discriminate. Go back and find it yourself.
Despite that it describes marriage as being between a husband and a wife?
No, it doesn't. It doesn't use the word 'marriage' at all. It describes "man" has having a wife ("each man should have sexual relations with his own wife"), and "woman" as having a husband, but then, no one would ever be so stupid as to claim that this means that every man has a wife or every woman has a husband.
It then describes "martial duty" as existing between a husband and wife, but it's equally stupid to assume that every marital duty has a husband and wife. It's the same logical fallacy as the above.
But let's flip the script here. Tell you what? You quote the definition of marriage in this chapter. Show me exactly where it is. You do that, and I will concede the point with awe and honor your mad skillz. (Hint: You can't, because it's not there!)
Well let's use your tactic against you: find me any other passage from Paul in which he states that marriage is anything other than between a husband and wife.
I don't need to. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If it were, we'd all be atheists in the first place.
You don't think Torah has marriage defined?
This is just a pathetic attempt to "win" by redefinition and by throwing a confusing term that has multiple active definitions on the pile. If you mean Torah as in 'the first five books of the Bible', I know for a fact it doesn't. If you mean 'Torah' as in 'the sum total of all Judaic teachings including the Talmud', I couldn't care less unless it's actually in the Bible, which it's not. I don't argue over the Hadith with Islamic people either -- if it's not in the Qu'ran, I don't care. (Islam would be a much cleaner and more respectable religion without the Hadith, by the way, but that's an entirely different discussion.)
I'll broaden by earlier challenge in response: chapter and verse. Show me where in the Bible marriage is actually defined.
Yeah, because homosexuals who abstain from any sex whatsoever are fine.
The people objecting to gay marriage aren't making that distinction. And don't think that there aren't gay kids out there waiting until after they get married to have sex for the first time. They're moving to my city in (small) droves (Ok, so I've met two couples), since we just legalized gay marriage and Olympia has a history of tolerance.
"No, he's saying you should shun gay people within the community, not outside of it," is both wrong and nonsensical.
You're right on this point. Still doesn't keep the larger point -- that there's no excuse to keep gays from marrying -- from being true.
And Paul is advocating both. See also the long tirade about treating people who are wicked differently.
Absolutely false. Paul admonishes people in the Church to avoid people who are wicked. That's not the same thing as trying to, say, use the government to forbid wicked people from enjoying one of society's most important rites. There's a difference between "don't make them part of your life" and "get actively involved in their lives (by trying to sway society against them.)"
Again: Jesus tells us to love everyone. Even the ****s, even the sinners, even the liars and the poor and everyone. There is no exception in Jesus' words for gay people, and Paul knew that. Paul isn't saying "Hey, listen to Jesus in everything except this one thing*." -- he's saying "Hey, don't let sexually impure people or any sinner in the Church into your lives." That's ALL he's saying.
(*Well, maybe he would, because Jesus pretty clearly did some of his miracles to women, who apparently Paul had a problem with. At which point, who are you going to listen to, Paul, or Jesus Christ?)
Unless, of course, you believe that the definition of marriage is specifically between men and women, and not between men and men, and not between women and women. In which case, it becomes a problem of definitions, doesn't it? If something is not marriage, it cannot be called marriage, and to those who follow the Bible, homosexual marriage is not marriage.
You said it yourself, right there: if you believe something -- absolutely anything at all -- you can find something somewhere to back it up. But that's completely not the same thing as actually reading the Bible and basing your beliefs off of it.
I really don't care what those who follow the Bible believe -- but I'm absolutely going to call them out on it when they claim that their beliefs come from the Bible when they clearly do not.
"I wasn't sleeping. I'm a beta-tester for Google Eyelids...I was just taking the opportunity to update my Facebook page." -- Morgan Freeman, accused of napping during a TV interview.
You're not saying anything I disagree with here. We should definitely interpret the grammar in light of what is clearly understood by the author. But that in no way gives you leave to add something that isn't there. Paul's understanding of marriage isn't a definition, period. It's his understanding. It may well be that his understanding was so ingrained in him that he felt no need to define marriage, but that's not relevant. What's relevant is that the word 'marriage' is not defined anywhere in the Bible.
...
Alright, so you agree that Paul is saying that he believes it is God's will that homosexual intercourse is immoral and that marriage is only to be between one man and one woman, yes? But you're arguing that it's only Paul saying that, and not "the Bible."
Well, here's the thing. Every portion of the Bible was written by someone; the Pentateuch traditionally by Moses, the Gospels by their respective Evangelists, the Psalms by David, etc. By your reasoning, you could say--and I suppose in a certain sense you'd be right here--that "the Bible" never says in Leviticus, say, that you can't eat shellfish, that only Moses does. But at that point, in what sense does the Bible say anything at all?
The Bible is a collection of people saying they believe things, which were codified together. The fact that Paul says something is the Bible saying something; to pretend otherwise is to admit the Bible no meaning at all.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
You're not saying anything I disagree with here. We should definitely interpret the grammar in light of what is clearly understood by the author. But that in no way gives you leave to add something that isn't there. Paul's understanding of marriage isn't a definition, period. It's his understanding. It may well be that his understanding was so ingrained in him that he felt no need to define marriage, but that's not relevant. What's relevant is that the word 'marriage' is not defined anywhere in the Bible.
...
Alright, so you agree that Paul is saying that he believes it is God's will that homosexual intercourse is immoral and that marriage is only to be between one man and one woman, yes? But you're arguing that it's only Paul saying that, and not "the Bible."
NO. I'm saying that Paul's understanding is not the same thing as a definition. Paul's understanding of marriage being between one man and one woman may very well have been because there was simply no such thing as a committed, monogamus homosexual relationship in the spacetime that Paul occupied. It may very well have never occurred to Paul that such an arrangement would ever exist; so why would he ever talk about it? It's the same reason that the Bible doesn't mention corn-based chemical additives in it's various food strictures.
Add that to the fact that an "understanding" and a "definition" are not at all the same thing, and you have absolutely no basis to claim that Paul "defined marriage" in any way, shape, or form. I understand that GMO wheat scared the Chinese so much that they stopped importing it from the USA, but no definition of 'GMO wheat' in any dictionary anywhere would ever include that fact. Also, the whole 'not all men have wives' argument from my last post.
I'll say it one more time: there is no definition of any terms in that scripture. At all. There are a lot of terms used, and a lot can be implied by that scripture, but there are no definitions whatsoever. The strongest argument you can make from that chapter is "Paul understood marriage to be between a man and a woman", and that's not at all the same claim as "the Bible defines marriage as being between a man and a woman."
"I wasn't sleeping. I'm a beta-tester for Google Eyelids...I was just taking the opportunity to update my Facebook page." -- Morgan Freeman, accused of napping during a TV interview.
We're all liars. Absolutely everyone lies. There's no "banning liars" from anything, because every single person on Earth is a liar. We ban lying in our legal proceedings. I'm all for that, just like I'm all for banning homosexual sex in church proceedings -- because matters of morality are where sexual immorality is relevant. Marriage is not a matter of morality, it's a matter of legal status, sexual exclusivity, and inheritance -- all of which have moral implications, but are not actually moral matters.
Isn't marriage at least sometimes a church proceeding?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
We're all liars. Absolutely everyone lies. There's no "banning liars" from anything, because every single person on Earth is a liar. We ban lying in our legal proceedings. I'm all for that, just like I'm all for banning homosexual sex in church proceedings -- because matters of morality are where sexual immorality is relevant. Marriage is not a matter of morality, it's a matter of legal status, sexual exclusivity, and inheritance -- all of which have moral implications, but are not actually moral matters.
Outside of the religious definition marriage has nothing to do with sex. Swingers are a real thing and it's perfectly legal as far as I know.
Marriage is at least sometimes a church proceeding -- in fact, it's a sacrament. But the people who are trying to keep homosexuals from getting married aren't trying to keep them from participating in the sacrament exclusively. They're trying to keep them from getting married by any definition.
And the idea that marriage has nothing to do with sex is stupid. Marriage is, at it's root, a contract of sexual exclusivity designed to make sure that inheritance issues revolving around paternity don't crop up later in life. The existence of people who don't care about that part of the contract doesn't mean it's not a fully intentional design element of said contract. Seriously, we're talking about homosexuals getting married here -- chances are pretty good that they're not causing any paternity questions, either, but they're still participating in the ritual for other reasons.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"I wasn't sleeping. I'm a beta-tester for Google Eyelids...I was just taking the opportunity to update my Facebook page." -- Morgan Freeman, accused of napping during a TV interview.
So don't keep their company -- I literally couldn't care less whose company you keep. But not keeping their company is nowhere near the same thing as actively discriminating against them by preventing them from marrying. There's nothing more to say about this passage. You're reading things into it that you simply cannot support using a literal reading of the text, period.
Ok, you keep doing this. You make a statement, I'll post a rebuttal to that statement, and then you'll say, "Well that doesn't address [insert completely different argument here]."
Yeah, I'm aware that I didn't address the statement that was totally different from your original statement. That's because you switched topics in the middle of a discussion.
You said that Paul doesn't say to shun gay people, only gay Christians. As I pointed out in my rebuttal, and you've now admitted, this is not the case.
That was the topic I was addressing. I understand it can be hard to keep track because our conversations jump around a lot, but you cannot criticize me for failing to answer a separate topic from what I was actually addressing. That would be like me answering what 2+2 equals and you scolding me because "4" is not an appropriate answer for what direction you need to turn at the next intersection.
That's because you're reading more into the text than is actually there. Let's go through it line by line, which shouldn't be necessary because you're obviously a smart guy, but hey, stubborn sometimes needs to be led through the truth real slow:
Quote from Paul »
9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.
Translation: Don't associate with sexually immoral people. Other immoral types, whatever, you can't escape them, but don't associate with sexually immoral people.
(Painful admission time: I totally read this wrong the first thousand or so times I read it. I missed the part where he specifically separated out sexually immoral people as people to avoid even when they're not in the Church. My bad! Explains a bit of my confoundedness earlier in the thread.)
I'm confused here. Are the italics you amending your previous statement? Should I ignore what came before them or still address them?
Also, "the first thousand or so times"? Considering that you didn't indicate any awareness of the existence of Paul prior to my bringing him up, and given your reluctance to read anything on the subject, do you expect us to believe the number of times you've read that passage even hits two digits?
But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.
Translation: Don't associate with any immoral people who claim to be part of the Church, no matter what form their immorality takes.
But, again, the first part still holds.
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”
Translation: I can't judge people who aren't in the Church. We can judge those in the Church, but God judges those outside the Church. Kick the immoral people out of the Church.
Except for the part where Paul judges the people who are outside of the Church. All the time. So no, you can't use Paul to say don't condemn people who aren't a part of the Christ community and who turn to "unnatural lusts," because Paul does it himself.
Do you see anything in there that says anything about "let's make immoral people's lives harder by preventing them from taking part in society"
Depends on what "taking part in society" means. If it means getting married, then yes, I do, because that's not what marriage means according to Paul.
No. You don't. It's NOT THERE. There is NOTHING WHATSOEVER in this passage or any other in the Bible that gives Christians a divine command, much less the right, to keep gay people from getting married.
We are told to hate what is evil, aren't we? What does Paul say homosexuality is?
The only thing this passage tells you is to keep sexually immoral people out of your life (which I do), and to disassocate with people in the Church that are being immoral (which I do). Exactly nothing in this chapter says what you're reading into it. Which means you're inflicting your beliefs onto the Bible rather than allowing the words in the Bible to inspire your beliefs.
Except for basic logic:
1. Does Paul say that people who turn to "unnatural lusts" are out of God's grace and will burn in Hell? Yes.
2. Does Paul say that whatever we do, we should do for the benefit of others? Yes.
3. Would it benefit others to keep them from engaging in actions that would lead to their eternal damnation? Yes.
From this mindset, how would such a person react to proposals allowing gay marriage.
Indeed, if we accepted 1 to be true, you should be confronting any Christian who DOESN'T actively oppose gay marriage. Eternal suffering? Heck, we should be going after the Westboro Baptist Church for not protesting enough if we were to actually agree with this.
This proves to me that you're not actually reading. I've stated outright what I mean by discriminate. Go back and find it yourself.
Yes, it was this one in post 37:
Quote from Essence »
Discrimination is when you let some attribute of some other person affect the way you treat them
Except that's obviously not the definition you're using now because letting some attribute of some other person affect the way you treat them is precisely what Paul is telling us to do.
Despite that it describes marriage as being between a husband and a wife?
No, it doesn't. It doesn't use the word 'marriage' at all. It describes "man" has having a wife ("each man should have sexual relations with his own wife"), and "woman" as having a husband, but then, no one would ever be so stupid as to claim that this means that every man has a wife or every woman has a husband.
Unless you can demonstrate:
1. That one can gain a wife or a husband without marrying them, or
2. That Paul would condone a man with a husband or a woman with a wife,
Point stands.
It then describes "martial duty" as existing between a husband and wife, but it's equally stupid to assume that every marital duty has a husband and wife. It's the same logical fallacy as the above.
Except that's not a fallacy at all. One cannot have a marital duty without marriage.
But let's flip the script here. Tell you what? You quote the definition of marriage in this chapter. Show me exactly where it is. You do that, and I will concede the point with awe and honor your mad skillz. (Hint: You can't, because it's not there!)
He describes marriage as being between a husband and wife. It's right in front of your very eyes.
Well let's use your tactic against you: find me any other passage from Paul in which he states that marriage is anything other than between a husband and wife.
I don't need to. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If it were, we'd all be atheists in the first place.
... I'm sorry, did we not have a giant conversation about Paul's condemnation of homosexuality? Did you not specifically state in this very thread that Christians should condemn the sexually immoral according to Paul?
Therefore, would Paul condone or condemn the idea that a marriage between two men or two women was legitimate?
Posting stuff does not constitute responding. Try to learn the difference between the two.
You don't think Torah has marriage defined?
This is just a pathetic attempt to "win" by redefinition and by throwing a confusing term that has multiple active definitions on the pile.
No, you made an erroneous statement, and now you are unable to save face and are mad about it.
Unfortunately for you, none of that constitutes an argument. You posted this:
In fact, there is no actual place anywhere in the entire Bible where the term 'marriage' is actually defined in any way, shape, or form.
The Torah is part of the Bible. In your attempts to make some grand sweeping statement about how nowhere does the Bible say __, it was revealed that the Bible said __, and now you're embarrassed. This has happened quite a few times in this thread, and until you start doing the research before you post, it will probably happen more times still.
If you mean Torah as in 'the first five books of the Bible', I know for a fact it doesn't. If you mean 'Torah' as in 'the sum total of all Judaic teachings including the Talmud',
Really man, why are you here? It's bad enough when someone just uses Wikipedia for five minutes and waltzes in like he's some kind of expert on the subject, but you can't even be bothered to do that.
Ignorance is fine. But to claim knowledge you don't have, to presume yourself an expert when you're not, to maintain arrogance even when you are repeatedly proven wrong, and to petulantly condescend others through it all is not fine. It's insulting. It's an insult to every one in this thread, it's an insult to this topic, it's an insult to this forum, and it's an insult to intelligent conversation.
But since you clearly don't care about any of that, at least recognize that it's an insult to you as well. At least let it dawn on you to what extent you are belittling yourself by this. Have any self-awareness at all. I don't care if you come back to this thread with the same juvenile goal of trying to get the last word in, because we all know that's exactly what you're going to do. But even if you never demonstrate that level of maturity here, at least recognize for your own sake that this is beneath you and you can do better.
Yeah, because homosexuals who abstain from any sex whatsoever are fine.
The people objecting to gay marriage aren't making that distinction.
Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. Either way, Paul does.
"No, he's saying you should shun gay people within the community, not outside of it," is both wrong and nonsensical.
You're right on this point. Still doesn't keep the larger point -- that there's no excuse to keep gays from marrying -- from being true.
Unless you bother to think of why that point is correct. Unless you bother to consider the underlying message of Paul that homosexuality is sinful and damnable.
And Paul is advocating both. See also the long tirade about treating people who are wicked differently.
Absolutely false. Paul admonishes people in the Church to avoid people who are wicked. That's not the same thing as trying to, say, use the government to forbid wicked people from enjoying one of society's most important rites.
We are to act for the benefit of others. What would be more beneficial to a person than to prevent them from damning themselves, which is precisely what Paul says that homosexuality is?
Again: Jesus tells us to love everyone. Even the ****s, even the sinners, even the liars and the poor and everyone. There is no exception in Jesus' words for gay people, and Paul knew that. Paul isn't saying "Hey, listen to Jesus in everything except this one thing*." -- he's saying "Hey, don't let sexually impure people or any sinner in the Church into your lives." That's ALL he's saying.
(*Well, maybe he would, because Jesus pretty clearly did some of his miracles to women, who apparently Paul had a problem with. At which point, who are you going to listen to, Paul, or Jesus Christ?)
Again, I have no problems saying Paul's rejection of gay people goes against the spirit of Jesus' ministry.
However, once again, I remind you that saying that you disagree with Paul is not the same thing as saying Paul agrees with you.
If you are going to attempt to argue the latter, it is definitely not valid in a textual discussion about what Paul said to advocate we ignore parts of the Scripture that contain what Paul said.
Unless, of course, you believe that the definition of marriage is specifically between men and women, and not between men and men, and not between women and women. In which case, it becomes a problem of definitions, doesn't it? If something is not marriage, it cannot be called marriage, and to those who follow the Bible, homosexual marriage is not marriage.
You said it yourself, right there: if you believe something -- absolutely anything at all -- you can find something somewhere to back it up. But that's completely not the same thing as actually reading the Bible and basing your beliefs off of it.
Paul. That text we've been discussing in this thread for a while now.
I really don't care what those who follow the Bible believe
Oh believe me, that's obvious.
-- but I'm absolutely going to call them out on it when they claim that their beliefs come from the Bible when they clearly do not.
It's a little hard to do that when you show unwillingness to read it, total disregard for textual accuracy, no desire to actually understand where the opposing arguments are coming from, and are regurgitating what some website told you.
NO. I'm saying that Paul's understanding is not the same thing as a definition. Paul's understanding of marriage being between one man and one woman may very well have been because there was simply no such thing as a committed, monogamus homosexual relationship in the spacetime that Paul occupied. It may very well have never occurred to Paul that such an arrangement would ever exist; so why would he ever talk about it? It's the same reason that the Bible doesn't mention corn-based chemical additives in it's various food strictures.
I am a PhD student in Classics, focusing on Greek and Hellenistic culture. I can tell you--without the slightest shadow of doubt--that Paul was very aware of the concept of a committed, monogamous relationship between a man and a man or a woman and a woman.
And to be honest, the question of "whether Paul defined marriage that way" is almost completely beside the point. Paul's understanding of marriage is as a union to permit people to have sex; his ideal is that we be celibate, but he recognizes the difficulty of such arrangements, so marriage is a special exception to that. But the entire concept is dependent upon sex, and Paul's clear belief is that sex between men and men is against the rule of God.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
So don't keep their company -- I literally couldn't care less whose company you keep. But not keeping their company is nowhere near the same thing as actively discriminating against them by preventing them from marrying. There's nothing more to say about this passage. You're reading things into it that you simply cannot support using a literal reading of the text, period.
Ok, you keep doing this. You make a statement, I'll post a rebuttal to that statement, and then you'll say, "Well that doesn't address [insert completely different argument here]."
That's because I don't care about any of your sub-points. I care about one thing: disabusing everyone of the notion that you can use the literal words of the Bible to support a belief in preventing homosexuals from getting married. I'll freely bring any argument to the table to make that one point, because I don't care about any other points. End of story.
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”
Translation: I can't judge people who aren't in the Church. We can judge those in the Church, but God judges those outside the Church. Kick the immoral people out of the Church.
Except for the part where Paul judges the people who are outside of the Church. All. The. Time. So no, you can't use Paul to say don't condemn people who aren't a part of the Christ community and who turn to "unnatural lusts," because Paul does it himself.
So what you're saying then is that you're not going to listen to what Paul says (quoted right there above), because you've decided that what he does is more important. That's an excellent excuse to inflict your beliefs on the Bible. But it doesn't change the words IN the Bible, which are completely as I described them.
Do you see anything in there that says anything about "let's make immoral people's lives harder by preventing them from taking part in society"
Depends on what "taking part in society" means. If it means getting married, then yes, I do, because that's not what marriage means according to Paul.
Again, you're using Paul's understanding of marriage (not his definition, because he didn't define it) as an excuse. To inflict. Your beliefs. On the Bible.
We are told to hate what is evil, aren't we? What does Paul say homosexuality is?
Paul says sexual immorality is not holy. The opposite of "not holy" is not "evil". Paul never refers to sexual immorality as "evil". In fact, of 25 iterations of "porneia" in the KJV Bible, there are 3 places where it appears in a list with "evil thoughts", several places where it's referred to as "unrighteous" or "unclean", but never anywhere in the Bible is 'porneia' referred to as "evil". You are again reading things into the Bible that aren't in the text.
Does Paul say that people who turn to "unnatural lusts" are out of God's grace and will burn in Hell? Yes.
Does Paul say that whatever we do, we should do for the benefit of others? Yes.
Would it benefit others to keep them from engaging in actions that would lead to their eternal damnation? Yes.
From this mindset, how would such a person react to proposals allowing gay marriage.
If they're a good Christian, they would ask themselves "is this person going to be gay whether they are married or not?" If the answer is 'yes', they have no reason whatsoever to attempt to prevent them from getting married, because keeping them from getting married in no way whatsoever is keeping them out of Hell. So unless you believe that allowing gay marriage is going to somehow create a whole bunch of new gays, your logic fails utterly.
Quote from Essence »
Discrimination is when you let some attribute of some other person affect the way you treat them
Except that's obviously not the definition you're using now because letting some attribute of some other person affect the way you treat them is precisely what Paul is telling us to do.
No, it's not. He's telling us to let the attribute of some other person change your behavior. He's telling you to avoid them -- to not treat them. Not to treat them differently than you treat the other people in your life. There's a huge difference.
Despite that it describes marriage as being between a husband and a wife?
No, it doesn't. It doesn't use the word 'marriage' at all. It describes "man" has having a wife ("each man should have sexual relations with his own wife"), and "woman" as having a husband, but then, no one would ever be so stupid as to claim that this means that every man has a wife or every woman has a husband.
Unless you can demonstrate:
1. That one can gain a wife or a husband without marrying them, or
2. That Paul would condone a man with a husband or a woman with a wife,
Point stands.
No, it flat-out doesn't stand. You have absolutely no logical or rhetorical backing for that absolutely absurd claim. There is no description of marriage in that passage, end of story.
It then describes "martial duty" as existing between a husband and wife, but it's equally stupid to assume that every marital duty has a husband and wife. It's the same logical fallacy as the above.
Except that's not a fallacy at all. One cannot have a marital duty without marriage.
...which doesn't address my point at all. You can't have a marital duty without a marriage, but you can't use that passage to prove that marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman, because the exact same logic that you're using to do that also uses that same passage to prove that "a man", by definition, has a wife. The grammatical construction in the two phrases is identical:
But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife
You cannot use the line about marital duty being between a husband and a wife without opening the door to that exact same logic being used to prove that you're not 'a man' unless you have a wife. That's absurd, and it's absurd because the logic is invalid.
I'm not quoting the next few lines of yours that insist that this is a valid definition of marriage, because it's painfully obvious to everyone here that you're wrong. If it's not yet, it will be by the end of this post.
Therefore, would Paul condone or condemn the idea that a marriage between two men or two women was legitimate?
Irrelevant. Paul's opinion is not in question here. The existence of a firm definition of 'marriage' in the Bible is in question here.
You don't think Torah has marriage defined?
This is just a pathetic attempt to "win" by redefinition and by throwing a confusing term that has multiple active definitions on the pile.
No, you made an erroneous statement, and now you are unable to save face and are mad about it.
Prove it. Show me the definition of 'marriage' in the Torah. Oh, wait -- I already asked you do to that, and you didn't, because you can't, because it's NOT IN THERE. You're the one who brought the Torah (which is, as mentioned, a term that has several different defintitions) up in response to me repeatedly saying outright that marriage is not defined in the Bible and you can't prove otherwise. Why would you bring in something ill-defined if you believe that what you're talking about is already included in the claim I'm making? Because you're trying to confuse the argument, because you're failing to meet this one simple test: show me where in the Bible the term 'marriage' is defined.
homosexuality is sinful and damnable.
No one here is arguing that. You have yet to show anywhere in the literal words of the Bible that that fact means we should keep them from marrying. You've brought a whole lot of opinion and some outright failure to read into the thread, but you have yet to actually use the text to make your point.
Because you can't.
However, once again, I remind you that saying that you disagree with Paul is not the same thing as saying Paul agrees with you.
I'm not disagreeing with Paul. I'm using the literal words of the bible and nothing else to construct an argument. You're the one making crap up and then pretending that the text supports it.
-- but I'm absolutely going to call them out on it when they claim that their beliefs come from the Bible when they clearly do not.
It's a little hard to do that when you show complete unwillingness to read it, total disregard for textual accuracy, no desire to actually understand where the opposing arguments are coming from, and are regurgitating what some website told you. Poorly I might add.
Except that I am reading it. I'm the one who is insisting on textual accuracy. You're the one who insists on reading stuff into the text that literally is not present in it. And now, like everyone on the losing end of an argument, you're devolving into ad hominem attacks.
The challenge is simple, it's on the table, and it's clear. Show me an actual, literal, in-the-text definition of marriage in the Bible. Paul isn't it, and I've made a perfectly crystal clear argument as to why. No one can refute it with anything other than "nuh-uh!", because it's actually a valid argument. In the logical sense.
In fact, I'm going to lay this out in painful detail. Symbolic logic time!
"each man should have sexual relations with his own wife" can be rewritten as "If you are a man, you should have sexual relations with your wife." If A, then do B to C. Nice and simple. The statement does not, and cannot, imply "If A then C", because clearly there are lots of As out there without Cs to do B to.
"The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife" can be written as "If you're a husband, you should fulfill your marital duty to your wife". In symbolic terms, "If A, then do B to C." The problem with your argument that this statement can be used to define marriage is clearly laid out above. The statement does not, and cannot, imply "If A then C". If it could, then every man would, by definition, have a wife.
"If A then C", if you're not following here, is your argument ("If you're a husband, then you have a wife.") It logically does not, and cannot, follow from the text.
Period.
Now, I'll say it one more time. Show me where in the Bible it defines marriage -- because 1 Corinthians 7 is provably not it.
I am a PhD student in Classics, focusing on Greek and Hellenistic culture. I can tell you--without the slightest shadow of doubt--that Paul was very aware of the concept of a committed, monogamous relationship between a man and a man or a woman and a woman.
Excellent! I'm glad to have an expert here to back up Wikipedia. I don't like to quote it, because there's plenty of debate about whether or not it's accurate. Which is exactly why I said "it may be", because I honestly have no idea.
And to be honest, the question of "whether Paul defined marriage that way" is almost completely beside the point. Paul's understanding of marriage is as a union to permit people to have sex; his ideal is that we be celibate, but he recognizes the difficulty of such arrangements, so marriage is a special exception to that. But the entire concept is dependent upon sex, and Paul's clear belief is that sex between men and men is against the rule of God.
You're right -- that is completely beside the point. The point is that none of that actually says "keep gays from marrying", and none of it actually defines marriage as being between a man and a woman.
"I wasn't sleeping. I'm a beta-tester for Google Eyelids...I was just taking the opportunity to update my Facebook page." -- Morgan Freeman, accused of napping during a TV interview.
31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife [see] that she reverence [her] husband.
Bold emphasis, mine. To emphasis every instance of the word his and her when we are talking obviously about a husband and wife.
You said you would gladly concede the argument if someone could show you exact biblical chapter and verse that states that Marriage is between a man and a woman. I've done that for you, in King James version, the one that Mormons accept and defend as THE accurate translation. So now would be the time to gracefully bow out and be a man of true integrity lest you further damage our faith with your stubbornness.
Unless of course, now you will try to sell me a bill of goods that says that when Ephesians is talking about a Man leaving his mother and father to become one flesh with his WIFE, that we talking about something completely different than Marriage because the SPECIFIC word isn't said.
In which case I'll warn you ahead of time, I will be reporting your next post. As you would be proven as just trolling at that point and not interested in actually having a serious and honest biblical discussion.
The challenge is simple, it's on the table, and it's clear. Show me an actual, literal, in-the-text definition of marriage in the Bible. Paul isn't it, and I've made a perfectly crystal clear argument as to why. No one can refute it with anything other than "nuh-uh!", because it's actually a valid argument. In the logical sense.
In fact, I'm going to lay this out in painful detail. Symbolic logic time!
"each man should have sexual relations with his own wife" can be rewritten as "If you are a man, you should have sexual relations with your wife." If A, then do B to C. Nice and simple. The statement does not, and cannot, imply "If A then C", because clearly there are lots of As out there without Cs to do B to.
"The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife" can be written as "If you're a husband, you should fulfill your marital duty to your wife". In symbolic terms, "If A, then do B to C." The problem with your argument that this statement can be used to define marriage is clearly laid out above. The statement does not, and cannot, imply "If A then C". If it could, then every man would, by definition, have a wife.
"If A then C", if you're not following here, is your argument ("If you're a husband, then you have a wife.") It logically does not, and cannot, follow from the text.
Period.
While neither of those statements necessitates that a man have a wife, they *both* logically necessitate that a husband have a wife.
Today's lesson: Don't enter a debate with Highroller unless you know your **** or have the humility to admit you're wrong.
On topic: Languages are only meant to be dissected so much before they become devoid of meaning, and often-times a fact doesn't have to be explicitly stated, for it to be accepted as fact. I may not explicitly say "He had a gun" when saying "He shot her dead", but it is a fact that is granted as true, given the evidence in the statement.
Further, Biblical Literalism doesn't focus on what specifically is said, but tries to determine what the original author intended to say:
Quote from wikipedia »
The essence of this approach focuses upon the author's intent as the primary meaning of the text.
Yes, there are some who ascribe to a purely grammatical approach to interpretation, but even within the conservative, evangelical community this is not accepted as a reliable means of interpretation.
A plain, no BS reading of any of the passages already brought up should make clear how Paul felt about homosexuality, or what he felt marriage should be.
This is why I can only take the Debate forum for so long...
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
EDH UBW Sharuum BR Olivia Voldaren UR Jhoira URG Riku U Vendilion Clique
31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife [see] that she reverence [her] husband.
The Greek is even more explicit than this, by the way; what's translated here as "wife" in the Greek is "γυνη", which is the generic term for woman.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
I felt like bowing out of the argument--this time--was a compromising of my principles on truth. I felt that Essence's belief that the Bible was the infallible word of God would be more staunch than any tolerance he might have towards homosexuals. Therefor, even though I know the Bible said it was wrong, I did not want to debate him on that subject.
I've stopped debating people before when other more knowledgable people have started in, so I could have justified that as being the reason to myself. But, the truth was I did not want to debate Essence because I was worried by showing him the truth about what the Bible said he would either have to abandoned his literal interpretation of the Bible or his tolerance of homosexuals, and I was convinced that tolerance would lose. However, based on my own principles about truth, I feel that was an immoral reason for me to stop. I should be attempting to show people the truth, not 'losing' and argument simply because I did not want the other person to embrace a mindset I don't like.
I can't say much more on the Bible than the other more knowledgeable people on the thread have already said. However I would like to say that this statement sickened me:
I care about one thing: disabusing everyone of the notion that you can use the literal words of the Bible to support a belief in preventing homosexuals from getting married. I'll freely bring any argument to the table to make that one point, because I don't care about any other points. End of story.
Because it denies even the possibility of being wrong, and states clearly the person will shut-out anything but their own version of events.
I find that level of blatant and willful self-deception shocking.
__________________
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife [see] that she reverence [her] husband.
This passage suffers from the same problem as Corinthians does. None of these things define marriage. They imply a lot about marriage, but they do not define it. At all. The word 'marriage' never even appears here.
Unless of course, now you will try to sell me a bill of goods that says that when Ephesians is talking about a Man leaving his mother and father to become one flesh with his WIFE, that we talking about something completely different than Marriage because the SPECIFIC word isn't said.
Talking about what happens to a married person is not the same thing as defining marriage. There are men who leave their mother and father without obtaining a wife. The chapter suffers repeatedly from the "'if A, do B unto C' does not imply 'if A, then C'" problem.
What this tells you is that, again, Paul's understanding of marriage is that it's between a man and a woman. This is not new information. It doesn't add anything whatsoever to the argument made by 1 Corinthians.
In which case I'll warn you ahead of time, I will be reporting your next post. As you would be proven as just trolling at that point and not interested in actually having a serious and honest biblical discussion.
So please, tread carefully.
Go for it! If I'm so far out of bounds here that a moderator decides to shut me up, that's on me. I'm not about to give up on the facts just because you threaten me.
Quote from bLatch »
While neither of those statements necessitates that a man have a wife, they *both* logically necessitate that a husband have a wife.
Saying it doesn't make it true. I laid out my argument. Lay out yours.
Quote from Coffee »
A plain, no BS reading of any of the passages already brought up should make clear how Paul felt about homosexuality, or what he felt marriage should be.
I'm not arguing either of those points. I'm arguing that:
1) The Bible does not define marriage as being between a man and a woman.
and
2) Exactly nothing in the Bible gives Christians the right, much less a mandate, to keep homosexual people from getting married.
Both of those things are true, in the strictest literal sense. That's my argument.
I felt that Essence's belief that the Bible was the infallible word of God would be more staunch than any tolerance he might have towards homosexuals. Therefor, even though I know the Bible said it was wrong, I did not want to debate him on that subject.
I've stopped debating people before when other more knowledgable people have started in, so I could have justified that as being the reason to myself. But, the truth was I did not want to debate Essence because I was worried by showing him the truth about what the Bible said he would either have to abandoned his literal interpretation of the Bible or his tolerance of homosexuals
I appreciate your concern for my beliefs. That's sweet. What you missed is that I never said I had a literal interpretation of the Bible. I don't. I'm simply arguing against the notion that a literal interpretation of the Bible allows for someone keep gay people from getting married.
Now, for the one argument anyone has made on this thread that I feel actually ruins my entire rant:
Yes, there are some who ascribe to a purely grammatical approach to interpretation, but even within the conservative, evangelical community this is not accepted as a reliable means of interpretation.
This may very well be my undoing. If I'm arguing against people who don't actually exist outside of a few genuine white trash hicks that I've known since high school who do, in fact, insist that every word in the Bible is literally true (which is where I started this entire debate in the first place, years ago), well, I'm really wasting my time, neh?
"I wasn't sleeping. I'm a beta-tester for Google Eyelids...I was just taking the opportunity to update my Facebook page." -- Morgan Freeman, accused of napping during a TV interview.
Anyone agreed with OP really should study Genesis carefully with a guidance from the Holy Spirit.
And even more, try to understand the WHOLE Bible, not just a part of it. Because in Bible, everything is connecting, and you can't conclude a part without STUDYING it ENTIRELY.
You played JESUS?!?! I heard none of his guys stay in the graveyard, and once you think you have him beat he ALWAYS comes back to win within three turns. I like...WORSHIP him.
That's because I don't care about any of your sub-points. I care about one thing: disabusing everyone of the notion that you can use the literal words of the Bible to support a belief in preventing homosexuals from getting married. I'll freely bring any argument to the table to make that one point, because I don't care about any other points. End of story.
But therein lies your absurdity: you have no idea whether it does or not.
You haven't read the Bible. You haven't done the research. You don't understand the arguments of the people who claim it does. You didn't even demonstrate any knowledge that there was a Paul until it was brought up in this thread. So how can you possibly claim to know what the Bible says?
Oh, and no, you do care about the side points. You only claim to stop caring about them when you are proven wrong. Notice how many issues you declared unassailable, and then dropped. There's a phrase people use around here for this. It's called "butt hurt."
So what you're saying then is that you're not going to listen to what Paul says (quoted right there above), because you've decided that what he does is more important. That's an excellent excuse to inflict your beliefs on the Bible. But it doesn't change the words IN the Bible, which are completely as I described them.
You cannot claim that Paul does not wish us to judge gay people when Paul specifically judges gay people throughout the Epistles, and calls for us to follow him in doing so.
Again, you're using Paul's understanding of marriage (not his definition, because he didn't define it) as an excuse. To inflict. Your beliefs. On the Bible.
Paul describes marriage as between a man and a woman, and that marriage exists for the purposes of sex. Paul never describes marriage as being between gay people, and says that gay sex is not to be tolerated.
Therefore, you have no case.
Paul says sexual immorality is not holy. The opposite of "not holy" is not "evil". Paul never refers to sexual immorality as "evil". In fact, of 25 iterations of "porneia" in the KJV Bible, there are 3 places where it appears in a list with "evil thoughts", several places where it's referred to as "unrighteous" or "unclean", but never anywhere in the Bible is 'porneia' referred to as "evil". You are again reading things into the Bible that aren't in the text.
No, I'm not.
Quote from Romans 1:16-32, Oremus Bible Browser »
16For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.” 18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.
19For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; 21for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. 22Claiming to be wise, they became fools; 23and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. 24Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, 25because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. 26For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, 27and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error. 28And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. 29They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, 31foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.
If they're a good Christian, they would ask themselves "is this person going to be gay whether they are married or not?" If the answer is 'yes', they have no reason whatsoever to attempt to prevent them from getting married, because keeping them from getting married in no way whatsoever is keeping them out of Hell. So unless you believe that allowing gay marriage is going to somehow create a whole bunch of new gays, your logic fails utterly.
Ridiculous. Paul specifically states that marriage is for sexual intercourse, and that people are to be celibate if not married. Paul is also adamantly against gay sex. Therefore campaigning against gay marriage is entirely in accordance with Paul's teachings.
Quote from Essence »
Discrimination is when you let some attribute of some other person affect the way you treat them
Except that's obviously not the definition you're using now because letting some attribute of some other person affect the way you treat them is precisely what Paul is telling us to do.
No, it's not. He's telling us to let the attribute of some other person change your behavior. He's telling you to avoid them -- to not treat them. Not to treat them differently than you treat the other people in your life. There's a huge difference.
Not only are you trying to split hairs to the point of ridiculousness, but you're still wrong. To ostracize someone for being gay IS treating them differently and IS discrimination. Avoidance IS a type of treatment.
Or are you going to argue that segregation was not discrimination? "No, the white-only restaurants aren't discriminatory at all. See, we're not serving them differently, we're just NOT serving them. Because they're black."
Unless you can demonstrate:
1. That one can gain a wife or a husband without marrying them, or
2. That Paul would condone a man with a husband or a woman with a wife,
Point stands.
No, it flat-out doesn't stand. You have absolutely no logical or rhetorical backing for that absolutely absurd claim. There is no description of marriage in that passage, end of story.
Yes, there is. Paul describes marriage as being between a man and a woman.
So unless you have any evidence that he accepted the idea male-male or female-female marriage, point stands. And no, you can not say we have no evidence he didn't.
Except that's not a fallacy at all. One cannot have a marital duty without marriage.
...which doesn't address my point at all. You can't have a marital duty without a marriage, but you can't use that passage to prove that marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman, because the exact same logic that you're using to do that also uses that same passage to prove that "a man", by definition, has a wife.
See also Senori and bLatch's posts.
Therefore, would Paul condone or condemn the idea that a marriage between two men or two women was legitimate?
Irrelevant. Paul's opinion is not in question here.
In a discussion about what Paul said, Paul's opinion is not in question?
You don't think Torah has marriage defined?
This is just a pathetic attempt to "win" by redefinition and by throwing a confusing term that has multiple active definitions on the pile.
No, you made an erroneous statement, and now you are unable to save face and are mad about it.
Prove it. Show me the definition of 'marriage' in the Torah. Oh, wait -- I already asked you do to that, and you didn't, because you can't, because it's NOT IN THERE.
Quote from Genesis 2:18-25 »
18 Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’ 19So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. 21So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23Then the man said,
‘This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called Woman,
for out of Man this one was taken.’
24Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.
What do you expect to accomplish here, Essence?
I'm not disagreeing with Paul.
Quote from Essence »
(*Well, maybe he would, because Jesus pretty clearly did some of his miracles to women, who apparently Paul had a problem with. At which point, who are you going to listen to, Paul, or Jesus Christ?)
Yes, you are.
The challenge is simple, it's on the table, and it's clear. Show me an actual, literal, in-the-text definition of marriage in the Bible.
Marriage is repeatedly described as being between a husband and wife. How many times do you seek to ignore this?
Excellent! I'm glad to have an expert here to back up Wikipedia. I don't like to quote it,
Of course not, because that would require you to read it, and thus actually do any research at all on the subject, which you are apparently loathe to do.
because there's plenty of debate about whether or not it's accurate. Which is exactly why I said "it may be", because I honestly have no idea.
... Are you... Are you kidding me? You're embarrassed to cite Wikipedia as a source? You, who did no research and no reading on the subject, who probably wouldn't even have read the portions from Romans and Corinthians were they not quoted directly in this thread, are going to complain about using Wikipedia as a source?
Had you even bothered to read Wikipedia in all of the ten minutes it would have spent finding the article on this very debate, you wouldn't have had to spend seven pages of backpedaling trying to save face after your arguments got ripped apart. Do you see where intellectual laziness gets you?
No, by all means, cite Wikipedia as a source. PLEASE cite Wikipedia as a source. You are allowed. Any research from anywhere at all would be an improvement at this point.
Saying it doesn't make it true. I laid out my argument. Lay out yours.
Using your own choice of symbolization, if it is impossible for you to do B to C, then the propositional form "If A, then do B to C" is actually of the form "A => false," which can only be true if A is also false. A, in this case, was "be a husband" -- so it's not the case that you can be a husband if you can't do your marital duty by your wife.
Looking only at that sentence, I think that on the whole it is most likely that Paul was taking it as read that every husband has a wife, since in the subjunctive part of the sentence he simply assumes the wife's existence.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
OP is looking for a literal "marriage is defined in the bible as 1 man w/1 woman". The problem with this reason is that it completely ignores the context of the bible, the undertones, the extremely strong presumptions.
OP's rationale is basically unless the literal statement is there, the bible doesn't say it.
That's like saying, Jesus never said Genocide was wrong.
Along the same reasoning, you could just as well say
The bible never said, hitting someone with your car, and running him over and over again is wrong. Therefore something....
OP is looking for a literal "marriage is defined in the bible as 1 man w/1 woman". The problem with this reason is that it completely ignores the context of the bible, the undertones, the extremely strong presumptions.
OP's rationale is basically unless the literal statement is there, the bible doesn't say it.
Except its not even that because it DOES literally say it, more than once.
Ephesians' quite clearly means that a man is leaving his mother and father to join as one with a wife.
It doesn't say "This man is leaving his mother and father, and may or may not have a wife, who may be another man who has also left his mother and father, but they should still treat his significant other respectfully regardless if they are in a marriage or not".
The entire passage is about marriage, whether the word marriage is said or not.
Any claims to the contrary is just you being obtuse.
It's precisely as the above poster states. If you're going to be so obtuse as to say that "The Bible never says specifically word for word that Marriage means one man, one woman" than I guess that makes it OK for the KKK to go "The Bible never says specifically word for word that we should not hang black people from trees and set them on fire, so it's perfectly OK for us to do it!"
Congratulations, you just set a precedent for racists to kill black people!
So yes, I have reported your post.
Because you've been proven wrong so succinctly, definitely and convincingly that you continuing this debate is merely trolling and needs to be dealt with. You're wrong, and to continue to act as if you're not wrong is a slap in the face of your faith.
Continuing down this path will make you no better than those white trash rednecks who can't even read the Bible and yet use it to mask their own bigotry.
A plain, no BS reading of any of the passages already brought up should make clear how Paul felt about homosexuality, or what he felt marriage should be.
I'm not arguing either of those points. I'm arguing that:
1) The Bible does not define marriage as being between a man and a woman.
and
2) Exactly nothing in the Bible gives Christians the right, much less a mandate, to keep homosexual people from getting married.
Both of those things are true, in the strictest literal sense. That's my argument.
You're not arguing either of those points? You've got to be kidding, right?
Essence arguing Paul's perspective on homosexuality:
The thing is, it's not simply a matter of Levitical Law. There's also Paul. And Paul specifically condemns homosexuality as a turning away from God, and tells his followers to avoid sexual immorality, of which homosexuality is unambiguously a part of.
The thing is, Paul has exactly the same problem that Leviticus does. If you're going to listen to Paul on the issue of homosexuality, you also have to listen to Paul on the points of condemnation of women and the acceptance of the practice of slavery. If you allow your wife to speak in church and/or you support emancipation, than you can't use Paul's argument to condemn homosexuals.
And that's not even the best argument against Paul's supposed condemnation homosexuality. The real point Paul was trying to make wasn't that homosexuality is bad -- the problem is that people read [Romans 1] and then stop, when the entire last 'hellfire and brimstone' passage in [Romans 1] that condemns all manner of sexual misconduct is nothing more than a lead-in to [Romans 2], which goes way out of it's way to say that it's God's job to condemn people for sinning -- not humans'.
So, Paul only reinforces both of my earlier arguments. One: if you only uphold part of the Bible while claiming that the whole thing is true, you're a hypocrite -- Paul feeds directly into that. Two: if you only read part of the text and use it to support your arguments, you're intentionally twisting the text. James 2:10 and Romans 2:1, gentleman.
I'm not arguing either of those points. I'm arguing that:
1) The Bible does not define marriage as being between a man and a woman.
and
2) Exactly nothing in the Bible gives Christians the right, much less a mandate, to keep homosexual people from getting married.
Both of those things are true, in the strictest literal sense. That's my argument.
To use your own words, from earlier in this thread, just because you say something, doesn't make it true.
Now, I'd like to ask: What exactly are you trying to accomplish in this thread? Are you trying to share God's love with others? Are you trying to persuade people to your point of view? Are you interested in flaunting your intellectual prowess?
It certainly and overwhelmingly seems like the latter. You said, early in this thread, that you love Jesus. Why then, are your posts filled with such condescension, self aggrandizement and arrogance, all traits that Jesus railed against? If your goal is to win people to your point of view, how do you expect to accomplish that by being an *******?
You aren't just arguing against the people in this thread, you are also arguing against Church Fathers, biblical scholars and other people across thousands of years of church history. All those people, of course, are fallible and could very well be wrong on a range of issues, but that's not my point. My point is that it really takes a lot of (god complex level) hubris to rebel against that sort of establishment, and if you're gonna do that, you're gonna need much stronger arguments and charisma to pull it off.
I'll give you this though: In this thread, you've managed to argue against atheists, liberal christians AND conservative christians. There should be an achievement for pissing off, and uniting against you, those three groups at the same time.
By the way, as a conservative Christian I actually agree with you, that Christians have no business fighting against gay marriage. But, I arrived at this conclusion entirely differently than you.
Yes, there are some who ascribe to a purely grammatical approach to interpretation, but even within the conservative, evangelical community this is not accepted as a reliable means of interpretation.
This may very well be my undoing. If I'm arguing against people who don't actually exist outside of a few genuine white trash hicks that I've known since high school who do, in fact, insist that every word in the Bible is literally true (which is where I started this entire debate in the first place, years ago), well, I'm really wasting my time, neh?
Disclosure: I graduated with a Biblical Studies degree, from a conservative Christian college. The theological beliefs of my college's faculty and student body were very representative of evangelical Christianity. Many of my professors held degrees from Dallas Theological Seminary. Explicit literal interpretation is simply not popular in these circles, with good reason.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
EDH UBW Sharuum BR Olivia Voldaren UR Jhoira URG Riku U Vendilion Clique
<ignoring all of the ever-increasingly vitriolic ad hominem attacks that are a completely natural and normal part of disproving commonly and passionately-held opinions.>
You cannot claim that Paul does not wish us to judge gay people when Paul specifically judges gay people throughout the Epistles, and calls for us to follow him in doing so.
Have you ever heard a parent say "Do as I say, not as I do?" The only person to ever have led a life perfectly in example of Jesus' teachings...was Jesus. Paul tells you not to judge. He's human; he's allowed to not live up to his own teachings from time to time. But he tells you not to judge. That's the actual teaching -- the part you're supposed to pay attention to.
Believe me, I have a four year old. It's on a daily basis that I check myself because I realize that the example I'm providing doesn't live up to the lessons I'm trying to teach.
Paul describes marriage as between a man and a woman, and that marriage exists for the purposes of sex. Paul never describes marriage as being between gay people, and says that gay sex is not to be tolerated.
Not disagreeing with any of that.
Quote from Romans 1:16-32, Oremus Bible Browser »
16For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.” 18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.
19For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; 21for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. 22Claiming to be wise, they became fools; 23and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. 24Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, 25because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. 26For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, 27and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error. 28And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. 29They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, 31foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.
You really don't understand what it means to be literal, do you? The claim I made was simple: "the Bible never equates 'porneia' and 'evil'. That quote uses the term 'evil' twice, once to describe covetousness and once to equate 'inventors of evil' to a whole bunch of other stuff. It describes 'porneia' as 'impure', 'degrading', and 'unnatural', and as having 'due penalty'. None of those things are the same as 'evil'.
Ridiculous. Paul specifically states that marriage is for sexual intercourse, and that people are to be celibate if not married. Paul is also adamantly against gay sex. Therefore campaigning against gay marriage is entirely in accordance with Paul's teachings.
No. There is a logical leap you're making that's not supported by the text. It's the leap between "Paul says gay people shouldn't have sex (and therefore shouldn't marry)" and "It's my job to petition the government to keep people from marrying."
Again: there are no people out there petitioning the government to keep women silent. Because no one is making that leap when it comes to that issue. They're not making that leap because there is cultural pressure NOT to make that leap, and there is no explicit command in the Bible that tells them to actively petition to keep women silent. If the culture were different, and homosexual people were accorded the same status as women, no one would be arguing that we should keep gays from getting married, for the exact same reasons. But because our culture allows them to, people with hate in their hearts are impinging their beliefs upon the Bible and using it to back up an act that Jesus would not approve of, and calling themselves Christians while doing it.
To ostracize someone for being gay IS treating them differently and IS discrimination. Avoidance IS a type of treatment.
1) There is a difference between avoiding someone in your own life and ostracizing them, which is an engineered social event.
2) Have you ever heard anyone say "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all?" That's the difference between avoiding someone and treating them differently because you disagree with them.
Or are you going to argue that segregation was not discrimination? "No, the white-only restaurants aren't discriminatory at all. See, we're not serving them differently, we're just NOT serving them. Because they're black."
No, those were businesses, and they're not held to moral standards, they're held to legal and societal ones. Turning someone away at your the front door of your home -- your property, your living space -- is completely different.
Yes, there is. Paul describes marriage as being between a man and a woman.
Description is not definition.
Quote from Genesis 2:18-25 »
18 Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’ 19So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. 21So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23Then the man said,
‘This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called Woman,
for out of Man this one was taken.’
24Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.
Oh, this is rich. There's even less about marriage in Genesis than there is in Paul's writings. Literally, let's go through this.
Verse 18: man needs a "helper and partner".
Verses 19-23: god can't find one, so he makes one.
Verse 24: "If you're a man, you cling to your wife" (If A, do B to C. Same problem as Paul.) Will add here that "become one flesh" has nothing to do with marriage; Paul describes having sex with a prostitute as "becoming one flesh", too.
Verse 25: Shame didn't exist yet.
Still absolutely zero in terms of defining marriage. Please try again.
I'm not disagreeing with Paul.
Quote from Essence »
(*Well, maybe he would, because Jesus pretty clearly did some of his miracles to women, who apparently Paul had a problem with. At which point, who are you going to listen to, Paul, or Jesus Christ?)
Yes, you are.
Nothing in that quote has me disagreeing with Paul in the least. First, it was humor. Second, it points out the possibility that Jesus may well disagree with Paul. It says nothing about my opinion at all.
Furthermore, for the record, I do disagree with Paul on the whole 'women should be silent thing' -- but then, I didn't say "I don't disagree with Paul." I said "I am not disagreeing with Paul", which is very different. I can see, however, why it might be easy to confuse the two.
The challenge is simple, it's on the table, and it's clear. Show me an actual, literal, in-the-text definition of marriage in the Bible.
Marriage is repeatedly described as being between a husband and wife. How many times do you seek to ignore this?
Description is not definition. I don't know how to make this any clearer. If you don't care to actually take on the challenge, than man, just walk away. Beating your head against the wall is not making you any smarter.
Quote from Crashing00 »
Using your own choice of symbolization, if it is impossible for you to do B to C, then the propositional form "If A, then do B to C" is actually of the form "A => false," which can only be true if A is also false. A, in this case, was "be a husband" -- so it's not the case that you can be a husband if you can't do your marital duty by your wife.
Excellent argument! Except that A, in the first sentence examined, ("If you are a man, have sex with your wife"), isn't actually "be a husband." It's "be a man." So by your own reasoning, you cannot be a man unless you have a wife. Which is clearly absurd.
The error you're making is in your postulate. We're not testing "If A, then do B to C". We're testing the much more complex claim "If (If A, then do B to C), then (If A, then C)."
Now, just the second parenthetical statement (If A, then C) is true if and only if either (A is false) or (C is true). To bring it back to the text, this saying that "If you're a man, then you have a wife" is true only if either you have a wife, or you're not a man.
The larger claim, "If (If A, then do B to C), then (If A, then C)," has the same rules: for the statement to be true, either the first parenthetical claim is false, or the second parenthetical claim is true. We know that the second claim is false, because not all men have wives. Therefore, if we want the entire claim to be true, the first parenthetical claim must be false.
Except the first parenthetical claim is from the Bible, which we've all agreed for the purposes of this discussion is true by definition. Therefore, since the first parenthetical claim is true and the second is false, the entire claim fails the "A is false or B is true" test, therefore the entire claim is false.
Because there is at least one set of truth values for which the entire claim is false, the entire claim is this also invalid (in the logical sense), and is therefore not a claim that anyone trying to construct a rhetorical argument should rely upon.
So, to be explicit: The statement "The fact that the Bible says (If you are a husband, you should have sex with your wife) means (If you are a husband, you have a wife)" is invalid. Basing arguments on invalid logic, while commonplace, isn't something you should be doing, because it can lead to erroneous results.
Looking only at that sentence, I think that on the whole it is most likely that Paul was taking it as read that every husband has a wife, since in the subjunctive part of the sentence he simply assumes the wife's existence.
Agreed.
Quote from TomCat26 »
OP's rationale is basically unless the literal statement is there, the bible doesn't say it.
That's like saying, Jesus never said Genocide was wrong.
Jesus never did say genocide was wrong, specifically. He said murder was wrong, and you cannot commit genocide without committing a whole bunch of murder, so you'll end up on the wrong side of God's wrath regardless, but that claim literally is true.
Note that the same thing doesn't apply to Paul and banning gay marriage. Paul say buggery was wrong, and it's safe to assume that gay marriage leads to anal sex, and you will end up on the wrong side of God's wrath because of it -- but there's nothing in the Bible that indicates that we as humans should give gays an 'advance' on God's wrath, and quite a few places that strongly indicate we should not, lest we end up on God's blacklist ourselves.
Ephesians' quite clearly means that a man is leaving his mother and father to join as one with a wife.
Agreed. But since we know that there are men who leave their mother and father without joining a wife, all of the above logic applies equally well here as it does to the passage from Corinthians.
Quote from Coffee »
You're not arguing either of those points? You've got to be kidding, right?
"Am arguing" =!= "have argued."
In all of my various deliberate ignoring of the ad hominem attacks against me, I have somewhat accidentally set aside all of the "but you said..." parts of what people have said. Let me be perfectly clear: yes, I have made arguments that were disproven and I have set them aside and continued forward with better arguments. That's a pretty normal part of these kinds of debates, at least in the places I'm accustomed to debating. If that's not considered proper etiquette on these particular debate forums, I apologize.
To the people asking what I'm trying to do here, I refer you to my explicit, previous answer to the same question.
My point is that it really takes a lot of (god complex level) hubris to rebel against that sort of establishment, and if you're gonna do that, you're gonna need much stronger arguments and charisma to pull it off.
Come visit Olympia some time. Rebelling against 'that sort of establishment' is pretty much Tuesday around here. We thrive on that sort of thing.
Regarding arguments and charisma, well, I can't disagree. Unfortunately, if Mitt Romney and all of the elders who do the General Conferences are any indication, Mormonism and 'having the level of charisma necessary to sway public opinion on any grand level' don't seem to be partners.
On an entirely different note, I figured out why my first thousand readings of 1 Corinthians 7 didn't reveal the whole thing that excludes sexually immoral people from the list of people to not avoid. It's because my first thousand readings of 1 Corinthians 7 were from the Pe****ta (or, more specifically, the translation of the Pe****ta into English by George M. Lamsa), not the KJV. (My wife is a major in Middle Eastern Studies and Comparative Religion, so we have all of these books just chilling. I've been studying the Pe****ta since long before I converted to Mormonism, and I didn't feel the need to "update" to the less accurate KJV despite the fact that the Mormons feel it's somehow mysteriously better.)
The Pe****ta reads:
Quote from 1 Corinthians 5:9-10 »
I wrote to you in an epistle not to associate with immoral persons. I do not mean that you should separate completely from all of the immoral people of the world or from the fradulent and extortioners or from idolaters; otherwise you would be obliged to leave the world.
Now, as it turns out, 'immoral persons' in verse 9 and verse 10 are both 'porneia'. So actually, my original reading was correct: Paul is telling you that you cannot separate yourself completely from all of the sexually immoral people in the world (as well as that long list of others.)
[edit]That starred word is the vulgar word for feces, for anyone who doesn't know. It's the Bible in it's original Aramaic.[/edit]
"I wasn't sleeping. I'm a beta-tester for Google Eyelids...I was just taking the opportunity to update my Facebook page." -- Morgan Freeman, accused of napping during a TV interview.
That's not what this thread is about, though. I don't care whether gay marriage should be legal in the US--I personally think it should. But the question is whether the Bible opposes it, and while you may not find that question very interesting, those of us here do.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
The question as you put it wasn't relevant to the discussion. I gave an answer that was pertinent to the discussion rather than go off on a tangent.
We're all liars. Absolutely everyone lies. There's no "banning liars" from anything, because every single person on Earth is a liar. We ban lying in our legal proceedings. I'm all for that, just like I'm all for banning homosexual sex in church proceedings -- because matters of morality are where sexual immorality is relevant. Marriage is not a matter of morality, it's a matter of legal status, sexual exclusivity, and inheritance -- all of which have moral implications, but are not actually moral matters.
You're not saying anything I disagree with here. We should definitely interpret the grammar in light of what is clearly understood by the author. But that in no way gives you leave to add something that isn't there. Paul's understanding of marriage isn't a definition, period. It's his understanding. It may well be that his understanding was so ingrained in him that he felt no need to define marriage, but that's not relevant. What's relevant is that the word 'marriage' is not defined anywhere in the Bible.
So don't keep their company -- I literally couldn't care less whose company you keep. But not keeping their company is nowhere near the same thing as actively discriminating against them by preventing them from marrying. There's nothing more to say about this passage. You're reading things into it that you simply cannot support using a literal reading of the text, period.
That's because you're reading more into the text than is actually there. Let's go through it line by line, which shouldn't be necessary because you're obviously a smart guy, but hey, stubborn sometimes needs to be led through the truth real slow:
Translation: Don't associate with sexually immoral people. Other immoral types, whatever, you can't escape them, but don't associate with sexually immoral people.
(Painful admission time: I totally read this wrong the first thousand or so times I read it. I missed the part where he specifically separated out sexually immoral people as people to avoid even when they're not in the Church. My bad! Explains a bit of my confoundedness earlier in the thread.)
Translation: Don't associate with any immoral people who claim to be part of the Church, no matter what form their immorality takes.
Translation: I can't judge people who aren't in the Church. We can judge those in the Church, but God judges those outside the Church. Kick the immoral people out of the Church.
Do you see anything in there that says anything about "let's make immoral people's lives harder by preventing them from taking part in society"?
No. You don't. It's NOT THERE. There is NOTHING WHATSOEVER in this passage or any other in the Bible that gives Christians a divine command, much less the right, to keep gay people from getting married. The only thing this passage tells you is to keep sexually immoral people out of your life (which I do), and to disassocate with people in the Church that are being immoral (which I do). Exactly nothing in this chapter says what you're reading into it. Which means you're inflicting your beliefs onto the Bible rather than allowing the words in the Bible to inspire your beliefs.
This proves to me that you're not actually reading. I've stated outright what I mean by discriminate. Go back and find it yourself.
No, it doesn't. It doesn't use the word 'marriage' at all. It describes "man" has having a wife ("each man should have sexual relations with his own wife"), and "woman" as having a husband, but then, no one would ever be so stupid as to claim that this means that every man has a wife or every woman has a husband.
It then describes "martial duty" as existing between a husband and wife, but it's equally stupid to assume that every marital duty has a husband and wife. It's the same logical fallacy as the above.
But let's flip the script here. Tell you what? You quote the definition of marriage in this chapter. Show me exactly where it is. You do that, and I will concede the point with awe and honor your mad skillz. (Hint: You can't, because it's not there!)
I don't need to. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If it were, we'd all be atheists in the first place.
This is just a pathetic attempt to "win" by redefinition and by throwing a confusing term that has multiple active definitions on the pile. If you mean Torah as in 'the first five books of the Bible', I know for a fact it doesn't. If you mean 'Torah' as in 'the sum total of all Judaic teachings including the Talmud', I couldn't care less unless it's actually in the Bible, which it's not. I don't argue over the Hadith with Islamic people either -- if it's not in the Qu'ran, I don't care. (Islam would be a much cleaner and more respectable religion without the Hadith, by the way, but that's an entirely different discussion.)
I'll broaden by earlier challenge in response: chapter and verse. Show me where in the Bible marriage is actually defined.
The people objecting to gay marriage aren't making that distinction. And don't think that there aren't gay kids out there waiting until after they get married to have sex for the first time. They're moving to my city in (small) droves (Ok, so I've met two couples), since we just legalized gay marriage and Olympia has a history of tolerance.
You're right on this point. Still doesn't keep the larger point -- that there's no excuse to keep gays from marrying -- from being true.
Absolutely false. Paul admonishes people in the Church to avoid people who are wicked. That's not the same thing as trying to, say, use the government to forbid wicked people from enjoying one of society's most important rites. There's a difference between "don't make them part of your life" and "get actively involved in their lives (by trying to sway society against them.)"
Again: Jesus tells us to love everyone. Even the ****s, even the sinners, even the liars and the poor and everyone. There is no exception in Jesus' words for gay people, and Paul knew that. Paul isn't saying "Hey, listen to Jesus in everything except this one thing*." -- he's saying "Hey, don't let sexually impure people or any sinner in the Church into your lives." That's ALL he's saying.
(*Well, maybe he would, because Jesus pretty clearly did some of his miracles to women, who apparently Paul had a problem with. At which point, who are you going to listen to, Paul, or Jesus Christ?)
You said it yourself, right there: if you believe something -- absolutely anything at all -- you can find something somewhere to back it up. But that's completely not the same thing as actually reading the Bible and basing your beliefs off of it.
I really don't care what those who follow the Bible believe -- but I'm absolutely going to call them out on it when they claim that their beliefs come from the Bible when they clearly do not.
Wit and wisdom from my four-year-old son. Recommended for anyone who enjoys a good belly laugh.
...
Alright, so you agree that Paul is saying that he believes it is God's will that homosexual intercourse is immoral and that marriage is only to be between one man and one woman, yes? But you're arguing that it's only Paul saying that, and not "the Bible."
Well, here's the thing. Every portion of the Bible was written by someone; the Pentateuch traditionally by Moses, the Gospels by their respective Evangelists, the Psalms by David, etc. By your reasoning, you could say--and I suppose in a certain sense you'd be right here--that "the Bible" never says in Leviticus, say, that you can't eat shellfish, that only Moses does. But at that point, in what sense does the Bible say anything at all?
The Bible is a collection of people saying they believe things, which were codified together. The fact that Paul says something is the Bible saying something; to pretend otherwise is to admit the Bible no meaning at all.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
NO. I'm saying that Paul's understanding is not the same thing as a definition. Paul's understanding of marriage being between one man and one woman may very well have been because there was simply no such thing as a committed, monogamus homosexual relationship in the spacetime that Paul occupied. It may very well have never occurred to Paul that such an arrangement would ever exist; so why would he ever talk about it? It's the same reason that the Bible doesn't mention corn-based chemical additives in it's various food strictures.
Add that to the fact that an "understanding" and a "definition" are not at all the same thing, and you have absolutely no basis to claim that Paul "defined marriage" in any way, shape, or form. I understand that GMO wheat scared the Chinese so much that they stopped importing it from the USA, but no definition of 'GMO wheat' in any dictionary anywhere would ever include that fact. Also, the whole 'not all men have wives' argument from my last post.
I'll say it one more time: there is no definition of any terms in that scripture. At all. There are a lot of terms used, and a lot can be implied by that scripture, but there are no definitions whatsoever. The strongest argument you can make from that chapter is "Paul understood marriage to be between a man and a woman", and that's not at all the same claim as "the Bible defines marriage as being between a man and a woman."
Wit and wisdom from my four-year-old son. Recommended for anyone who enjoys a good belly laugh.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Outside of the religious definition marriage has nothing to do with sex. Swingers are a real thing and it's perfectly legal as far as I know.
And the idea that marriage has nothing to do with sex is stupid. Marriage is, at it's root, a contract of sexual exclusivity designed to make sure that inheritance issues revolving around paternity don't crop up later in life. The existence of people who don't care about that part of the contract doesn't mean it's not a fully intentional design element of said contract. Seriously, we're talking about homosexuals getting married here -- chances are pretty good that they're not causing any paternity questions, either, but they're still participating in the ritual for other reasons.
Wit and wisdom from my four-year-old son. Recommended for anyone who enjoys a good belly laugh.
Ok, you keep doing this. You make a statement, I'll post a rebuttal to that statement, and then you'll say, "Well that doesn't address [insert completely different argument here]."
Yeah, I'm aware that I didn't address the statement that was totally different from your original statement. That's because you switched topics in the middle of a discussion.
You said that Paul doesn't say to shun gay people, only gay Christians. As I pointed out in my rebuttal, and you've now admitted, this is not the case.
That was the topic I was addressing. I understand it can be hard to keep track because our conversations jump around a lot, but you cannot criticize me for failing to answer a separate topic from what I was actually addressing. That would be like me answering what 2+2 equals and you scolding me because "4" is not an appropriate answer for what direction you need to turn at the next intersection.
I'm confused here. Are the italics you amending your previous statement? Should I ignore what came before them or still address them?
Also, "the first thousand or so times"? Considering that you didn't indicate any awareness of the existence of Paul prior to my bringing him up, and given your reluctance to read anything on the subject, do you expect us to believe the number of times you've read that passage even hits two digits?
But, again, the first part still holds.
Except for the part where Paul judges the people who are outside of the Church. All the time. So no, you can't use Paul to say don't condemn people who aren't a part of the Christ community and who turn to "unnatural lusts," because Paul does it himself.
Depends on what "taking part in society" means. If it means getting married, then yes, I do, because that's not what marriage means according to Paul.
We are told to hate what is evil, aren't we? What does Paul say homosexuality is?
Except for basic logic:
1. Does Paul say that people who turn to "unnatural lusts" are out of God's grace and will burn in Hell? Yes.
2. Does Paul say that whatever we do, we should do for the benefit of others? Yes.
3. Would it benefit others to keep them from engaging in actions that would lead to their eternal damnation? Yes.
From this mindset, how would such a person react to proposals allowing gay marriage.
Indeed, if we accepted 1 to be true, you should be confronting any Christian who DOESN'T actively oppose gay marriage. Eternal suffering? Heck, we should be going after the Westboro Baptist Church for not protesting enough if we were to actually agree with this.
Yes, it was this one in post 37:
Except that's obviously not the definition you're using now because letting some attribute of some other person affect the way you treat them is precisely what Paul is telling us to do.
Unless you can demonstrate:
1. That one can gain a wife or a husband without marrying them, or
2. That Paul would condone a man with a husband or a woman with a wife,
Point stands.
Except that's not a fallacy at all. One cannot have a marital duty without marriage.
He describes marriage as being between a husband and wife. It's right in front of your very eyes.
... I'm sorry, did we not have a giant conversation about Paul's condemnation of homosexuality? Did you not specifically state in this very thread that Christians should condemn the sexually immoral according to Paul?
Therefore, would Paul condone or condemn the idea that a marriage between two men or two women was legitimate?
Posting stuff does not constitute responding. Try to learn the difference between the two.
No, you made an erroneous statement, and now you are unable to save face and are mad about it.
Unfortunately for you, none of that constitutes an argument. You posted this:
The Torah is part of the Bible. In your attempts to make some grand sweeping statement about how nowhere does the Bible say __, it was revealed that the Bible said __, and now you're embarrassed. This has happened quite a few times in this thread, and until you start doing the research before you post, it will probably happen more times still.
That's Tanakh, also written as TNK, not Torah.
Really man, why are you here? It's bad enough when someone just uses Wikipedia for five minutes and waltzes in like he's some kind of expert on the subject, but you can't even be bothered to do that.
Ignorance is fine. But to claim knowledge you don't have, to presume yourself an expert when you're not, to maintain arrogance even when you are repeatedly proven wrong, and to petulantly condescend others through it all is not fine. It's insulting. It's an insult to every one in this thread, it's an insult to this topic, it's an insult to this forum, and it's an insult to intelligent conversation.
But since you clearly don't care about any of that, at least recognize that it's an insult to you as well. At least let it dawn on you to what extent you are belittling yourself by this. Have any self-awareness at all. I don't care if you come back to this thread with the same juvenile goal of trying to get the last word in, because we all know that's exactly what you're going to do. But even if you never demonstrate that level of maturity here, at least recognize for your own sake that this is beneath you and you can do better.
Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. Either way, Paul does.
Unless you bother to think of why that point is correct. Unless you bother to consider the underlying message of Paul that homosexuality is sinful and damnable.
We are to act for the benefit of others. What would be more beneficial to a person than to prevent them from damning themselves, which is precisely what Paul says that homosexuality is?
Again, I have no problems saying Paul's rejection of gay people goes against the spirit of Jesus' ministry.
However, once again, I remind you that saying that you disagree with Paul is not the same thing as saying Paul agrees with you.
If you are going to attempt to argue the latter, it is definitely not valid in a textual discussion about what Paul said to advocate we ignore parts of the Scripture that contain what Paul said.
Paul. That text we've been discussing in this thread for a while now.
Oh believe me, that's obvious.
It's a little hard to do that when you show unwillingness to read it, total disregard for textual accuracy, no desire to actually understand where the opposing arguments are coming from, and are regurgitating what some website told you.
I am a PhD student in Classics, focusing on Greek and Hellenistic culture. I can tell you--without the slightest shadow of doubt--that Paul was very aware of the concept of a committed, monogamous relationship between a man and a man or a woman and a woman.
And to be honest, the question of "whether Paul defined marriage that way" is almost completely beside the point. Paul's understanding of marriage is as a union to permit people to have sex; his ideal is that we be celibate, but he recognizes the difficulty of such arrangements, so marriage is a special exception to that. But the entire concept is dependent upon sex, and Paul's clear belief is that sex between men and men is against the rule of God.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
That's because I don't care about any of your sub-points. I care about one thing: disabusing everyone of the notion that you can use the literal words of the Bible to support a belief in preventing homosexuals from getting married. I'll freely bring any argument to the table to make that one point, because I don't care about any other points. End of story.
So what you're saying then is that you're not going to listen to what Paul says (quoted right there above), because you've decided that what he does is more important. That's an excellent excuse to inflict your beliefs on the Bible. But it doesn't change the words IN the Bible, which are completely as I described them.
Again, you're using Paul's understanding of marriage (not his definition, because he didn't define it) as an excuse. To inflict. Your beliefs. On the Bible.
Paul says sexual immorality is not holy. The opposite of "not holy" is not "evil". Paul never refers to sexual immorality as "evil". In fact, of 25 iterations of "porneia" in the KJV Bible, there are 3 places where it appears in a list with "evil thoughts", several places where it's referred to as "unrighteous" or "unclean", but never anywhere in the Bible is 'porneia' referred to as "evil". You are again reading things into the Bible that aren't in the text.
If they're a good Christian, they would ask themselves "is this person going to be gay whether they are married or not?" If the answer is 'yes', they have no reason whatsoever to attempt to prevent them from getting married, because keeping them from getting married in no way whatsoever is keeping them out of Hell. So unless you believe that allowing gay marriage is going to somehow create a whole bunch of new gays, your logic fails utterly.
No, it's not. He's telling us to let the attribute of some other person change your behavior. He's telling you to avoid them -- to not treat them. Not to treat them differently than you treat the other people in your life. There's a huge difference.
No, it flat-out doesn't stand. You have absolutely no logical or rhetorical backing for that absolutely absurd claim. There is no description of marriage in that passage, end of story.
...which doesn't address my point at all. You can't have a marital duty without a marriage, but you can't use that passage to prove that marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman, because the exact same logic that you're using to do that also uses that same passage to prove that "a man", by definition, has a wife. The grammatical construction in the two phrases is identical:
You cannot use the line about marital duty being between a husband and a wife without opening the door to that exact same logic being used to prove that you're not 'a man' unless you have a wife. That's absurd, and it's absurd because the logic is invalid.
I'm not quoting the next few lines of yours that insist that this is a valid definition of marriage, because it's painfully obvious to everyone here that you're wrong. If it's not yet, it will be by the end of this post.
Irrelevant. Paul's opinion is not in question here. The existence of a firm definition of 'marriage' in the Bible is in question here.
Prove it. Show me the definition of 'marriage' in the Torah. Oh, wait -- I already asked you do to that, and you didn't, because you can't, because it's NOT IN THERE. You're the one who brought the Torah (which is, as mentioned, a term that has several different defintitions) up in response to me repeatedly saying outright that marriage is not defined in the Bible and you can't prove otherwise. Why would you bring in something ill-defined if you believe that what you're talking about is already included in the claim I'm making? Because you're trying to confuse the argument, because you're failing to meet this one simple test: show me where in the Bible the term 'marriage' is defined.
No one here is arguing that. You have yet to show anywhere in the literal words of the Bible that that fact means we should keep them from marrying. You've brought a whole lot of opinion and some outright failure to read into the thread, but you have yet to actually use the text to make your point.
Because you can't.
I'm not disagreeing with Paul. I'm using the literal words of the bible and nothing else to construct an argument. You're the one making crap up and then pretending that the text supports it.
Except that I am reading it. I'm the one who is insisting on textual accuracy. You're the one who insists on reading stuff into the text that literally is not present in it. And now, like everyone on the losing end of an argument, you're devolving into ad hominem attacks.
The challenge is simple, it's on the table, and it's clear. Show me an actual, literal, in-the-text definition of marriage in the Bible. Paul isn't it, and I've made a perfectly crystal clear argument as to why. No one can refute it with anything other than "nuh-uh!", because it's actually a valid argument. In the logical sense.
In fact, I'm going to lay this out in painful detail. Symbolic logic time!
"each man should have sexual relations with his own wife" can be rewritten as "If you are a man, you should have sexual relations with your wife." If A, then do B to C. Nice and simple. The statement does not, and cannot, imply "If A then C", because clearly there are lots of As out there without Cs to do B to.
"The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife" can be written as "If you're a husband, you should fulfill your marital duty to your wife". In symbolic terms, "If A, then do B to C." The problem with your argument that this statement can be used to define marriage is clearly laid out above. The statement does not, and cannot, imply "If A then C". If it could, then every man would, by definition, have a wife.
"If A then C", if you're not following here, is your argument ("If you're a husband, then you have a wife.") It logically does not, and cannot, follow from the text.
Period.
Now, I'll say it one more time. Show me where in the Bible it defines marriage -- because 1 Corinthians 7 is provably not it.
Excellent! I'm glad to have an expert here to back up Wikipedia. I don't like to quote it, because there's plenty of debate about whether or not it's accurate. Which is exactly why I said "it may be", because I honestly have no idea.
You're right -- that is completely beside the point. The point is that none of that actually says "keep gays from marrying", and none of it actually defines marriage as being between a man and a woman.
Wit and wisdom from my four-year-old son. Recommended for anyone who enjoys a good belly laugh.
31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife [see] that she reverence [her] husband.
Bold emphasis, mine. To emphasis every instance of the word his and her when we are talking obviously about a husband and wife.
You said you would gladly concede the argument if someone could show you exact biblical chapter and verse that states that Marriage is between a man and a woman. I've done that for you, in King James version, the one that Mormons accept and defend as THE accurate translation. So now would be the time to gracefully bow out and be a man of true integrity lest you further damage our faith with your stubbornness.
Unless of course, now you will try to sell me a bill of goods that says that when Ephesians is talking about a Man leaving his mother and father to become one flesh with his WIFE, that we talking about something completely different than Marriage because the SPECIFIC word isn't said.
In which case I'll warn you ahead of time, I will be reporting your next post. As you would be proven as just trolling at that point and not interested in actually having a serious and honest biblical discussion.
So please, tread carefully.
While neither of those statements necessitates that a man have a wife, they *both* logically necessitate that a husband have a wife.
On topic: Languages are only meant to be dissected so much before they become devoid of meaning, and often-times a fact doesn't have to be explicitly stated, for it to be accepted as fact. I may not explicitly say "He had a gun" when saying "He shot her dead", but it is a fact that is granted as true, given the evidence in the statement.
Further, Biblical Literalism doesn't focus on what specifically is said, but tries to determine what the original author intended to say:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_literalism
Yes, there are some who ascribe to a purely grammatical approach to interpretation, but even within the conservative, evangelical community this is not accepted as a reliable means of interpretation.
A plain, no BS reading of any of the passages already brought up should make clear how Paul felt about homosexuality, or what he felt marriage should be.
This is why I can only take the Debate forum for so long...
UBW Sharuum
BR Olivia Voldaren
UR Jhoira
URG Riku
U Vendilion Clique
The Greek is even more explicit than this, by the way; what's translated here as "wife" in the Greek is "γυνη", which is the generic term for woman.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
I've stopped debating people before when other more knowledgable people have started in, so I could have justified that as being the reason to myself. But, the truth was I did not want to debate Essence because I was worried by showing him the truth about what the Bible said he would either have to abandoned his literal interpretation of the Bible or his tolerance of homosexuals, and I was convinced that tolerance would lose. However, based on my own principles about truth, I feel that was an immoral reason for me to stop. I should be attempting to show people the truth, not 'losing' and argument simply because I did not want the other person to embrace a mindset I don't like.
I can't say much more on the Bible than the other more knowledgeable people on the thread have already said. However I would like to say that this statement sickened me:
Because it denies even the possibility of being wrong, and states clearly the person will shut-out anything but their own version of events.
I find that level of blatant and willful self-deception shocking.
__________________
-Nietzsche, Friedrich
This passage suffers from the same problem as Corinthians does. None of these things define marriage. They imply a lot about marriage, but they do not define it. At all. The word 'marriage' never even appears here.
Talking about what happens to a married person is not the same thing as defining marriage. There are men who leave their mother and father without obtaining a wife. The chapter suffers repeatedly from the "'if A, do B unto C' does not imply 'if A, then C'" problem.
What this tells you is that, again, Paul's understanding of marriage is that it's between a man and a woman. This is not new information. It doesn't add anything whatsoever to the argument made by 1 Corinthians.
Go for it! If I'm so far out of bounds here that a moderator decides to shut me up, that's on me. I'm not about to give up on the facts just because you threaten me.
Saying it doesn't make it true. I laid out my argument. Lay out yours.
I'm not arguing either of those points. I'm arguing that:
1) The Bible does not define marriage as being between a man and a woman.
and
2) Exactly nothing in the Bible gives Christians the right, much less a mandate, to keep homosexual people from getting married.
Both of those things are true, in the strictest literal sense. That's my argument.
I appreciate your concern for my beliefs. That's sweet. What you missed is that I never said I had a literal interpretation of the Bible. I don't. I'm simply arguing against the notion that a literal interpretation of the Bible allows for someone keep gay people from getting married.
Now, for the one argument anyone has made on this thread that I feel actually ruins my entire rant:
This may very well be my undoing. If I'm arguing against people who don't actually exist outside of a few genuine white trash hicks that I've known since high school who do, in fact, insist that every word in the Bible is literally true (which is where I started this entire debate in the first place, years ago), well, I'm really wasting my time, neh?
Wit and wisdom from my four-year-old son. Recommended for anyone who enjoys a good belly laugh.
And even more, try to understand the WHOLE Bible, not just a part of it. Because in Bible, everything is connecting, and you can't conclude a part without STUDYING it ENTIRELY.
My 180 Modern Bordered Only Cube
But therein lies your absurdity: you have no idea whether it does or not.
You haven't read the Bible. You haven't done the research. You don't understand the arguments of the people who claim it does. You didn't even demonstrate any knowledge that there was a Paul until it was brought up in this thread. So how can you possibly claim to know what the Bible says?
Oh, and no, you do care about the side points. You only claim to stop caring about them when you are proven wrong. Notice how many issues you declared unassailable, and then dropped. There's a phrase people use around here for this. It's called "butt hurt."
You cannot claim that Paul does not wish us to judge gay people when Paul specifically judges gay people throughout the Epistles, and calls for us to follow him in doing so.
Paul describes marriage as between a man and a woman, and that marriage exists for the purposes of sex. Paul never describes marriage as being between gay people, and says that gay sex is not to be tolerated.
Therefore, you have no case.
No, I'm not.
Ridiculous. Paul specifically states that marriage is for sexual intercourse, and that people are to be celibate if not married. Paul is also adamantly against gay sex. Therefore campaigning against gay marriage is entirely in accordance with Paul's teachings.
Not only are you trying to split hairs to the point of ridiculousness, but you're still wrong. To ostracize someone for being gay IS treating them differently and IS discrimination. Avoidance IS a type of treatment.
Or are you going to argue that segregation was not discrimination? "No, the white-only restaurants aren't discriminatory at all. See, we're not serving them differently, we're just NOT serving them. Because they're black."
Yes, there is. Paul describes marriage as being between a man and a woman.
So unless you have any evidence that he accepted the idea male-male or female-female marriage, point stands. And no, you can not say we have no evidence he didn't.
See also Senori and bLatch's posts.
In a discussion about what Paul said, Paul's opinion is not in question?
What do you expect to accomplish here, Essence?
Yes, you are.
Marriage is repeatedly described as being between a husband and wife. How many times do you seek to ignore this?
Of course not, because that would require you to read it, and thus actually do any research at all on the subject, which you are apparently loathe to do.
... Are you... Are you kidding me? You're embarrassed to cite Wikipedia as a source? You, who did no research and no reading on the subject, who probably wouldn't even have read the portions from Romans and Corinthians were they not quoted directly in this thread, are going to complain about using Wikipedia as a source?
Had you even bothered to read Wikipedia in all of the ten minutes it would have spent finding the article on this very debate, you wouldn't have had to spend seven pages of backpedaling trying to save face after your arguments got ripped apart. Do you see where intellectual laziness gets you?
No, by all means, cite Wikipedia as a source. PLEASE cite Wikipedia as a source. You are allowed. Any research from anywhere at all would be an improvement at this point.
Using your own choice of symbolization, if it is impossible for you to do B to C, then the propositional form "If A, then do B to C" is actually of the form "A => false," which can only be true if A is also false. A, in this case, was "be a husband" -- so it's not the case that you can be a husband if you can't do your marital duty by your wife.
Looking only at that sentence, I think that on the whole it is most likely that Paul was taking it as read that every husband has a wife, since in the subjunctive part of the sentence he simply assumes the wife's existence.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
OP is looking for a literal "marriage is defined in the bible as 1 man w/1 woman". The problem with this reason is that it completely ignores the context of the bible, the undertones, the extremely strong presumptions.
OP's rationale is basically unless the literal statement is there, the bible doesn't say it.
That's like saying, Jesus never said Genocide was wrong.
Along the same reasoning, you could just as well say
The bible never said, hitting someone with your car, and running him over and over again is wrong. Therefore something....
Except its not even that because it DOES literally say it, more than once.
It doesn't say "This man is leaving his mother and father, and may or may not have a wife, who may be another man who has also left his mother and father, but they should still treat his significant other respectfully regardless if they are in a marriage or not".
The entire passage is about marriage, whether the word marriage is said or not.
Any claims to the contrary is just you being obtuse.
It's precisely as the above poster states. If you're going to be so obtuse as to say that "The Bible never says specifically word for word that Marriage means one man, one woman" than I guess that makes it OK for the KKK to go "The Bible never says specifically word for word that we should not hang black people from trees and set them on fire, so it's perfectly OK for us to do it!"
Congratulations, you just set a precedent for racists to kill black people!
So yes, I have reported your post.
Because you've been proven wrong so succinctly, definitely and convincingly that you continuing this debate is merely trolling and needs to be dealt with. You're wrong, and to continue to act as if you're not wrong is a slap in the face of your faith.
Continuing down this path will make you no better than those white trash rednecks who can't even read the Bible and yet use it to mask their own bigotry.
Infraction for flaming.
Yes, and when we read the wisdom of Spider Man and Uncle Ben, we are really reading Stan Lee's interpretation of his word.
So, this is precisely why basing any law or ethics system off of any religion is just a complete waste.
You're not arguing either of those points? You've got to be kidding, right?
Essence arguing Paul's perspective on homosexuality:
Essence arguing about what marriage should be:
To use your own words, from earlier in this thread, just because you say something, doesn't make it true.
Now, I'd like to ask: What exactly are you trying to accomplish in this thread? Are you trying to share God's love with others? Are you trying to persuade people to your point of view? Are you interested in flaunting your intellectual prowess?
It certainly and overwhelmingly seems like the latter. You said, early in this thread, that you love Jesus. Why then, are your posts filled with such condescension, self aggrandizement and arrogance, all traits that Jesus railed against? If your goal is to win people to your point of view, how do you expect to accomplish that by being an *******?
You aren't just arguing against the people in this thread, you are also arguing against Church Fathers, biblical scholars and other people across thousands of years of church history. All those people, of course, are fallible and could very well be wrong on a range of issues, but that's not my point. My point is that it really takes a lot of (god complex level) hubris to rebel against that sort of establishment, and if you're gonna do that, you're gonna need much stronger arguments and charisma to pull it off.
I'll give you this though: In this thread, you've managed to argue against atheists, liberal christians AND conservative christians. There should be an achievement for pissing off, and uniting against you, those three groups at the same time.
By the way, as a conservative Christian I actually agree with you, that Christians have no business fighting against gay marriage. But, I arrived at this conclusion entirely differently than you.
Disclosure: I graduated with a Biblical Studies degree, from a conservative Christian college. The theological beliefs of my college's faculty and student body were very representative of evangelical Christianity. Many of my professors held degrees from Dallas Theological Seminary. Explicit literal interpretation is simply not popular in these circles, with good reason.
UBW Sharuum
BR Olivia Voldaren
UR Jhoira
URG Riku
U Vendilion Clique
Have you ever heard a parent say "Do as I say, not as I do?" The only person to ever have led a life perfectly in example of Jesus' teachings...was Jesus. Paul tells you not to judge. He's human; he's allowed to not live up to his own teachings from time to time. But he tells you not to judge. That's the actual teaching -- the part you're supposed to pay attention to.
Believe me, I have a four year old. It's on a daily basis that I check myself because I realize that the example I'm providing doesn't live up to the lessons I'm trying to teach.
Not disagreeing with any of that.
You really don't understand what it means to be literal, do you? The claim I made was simple: "the Bible never equates 'porneia' and 'evil'. That quote uses the term 'evil' twice, once to describe covetousness and once to equate 'inventors of evil' to a whole bunch of other stuff. It describes 'porneia' as 'impure', 'degrading', and 'unnatural', and as having 'due penalty'. None of those things are the same as 'evil'.
No. There is a logical leap you're making that's not supported by the text. It's the leap between "Paul says gay people shouldn't have sex (and therefore shouldn't marry)" and "It's my job to petition the government to keep people from marrying."
Again: there are no people out there petitioning the government to keep women silent. Because no one is making that leap when it comes to that issue. They're not making that leap because there is cultural pressure NOT to make that leap, and there is no explicit command in the Bible that tells them to actively petition to keep women silent. If the culture were different, and homosexual people were accorded the same status as women, no one would be arguing that we should keep gays from getting married, for the exact same reasons. But because our culture allows them to, people with hate in their hearts are impinging their beliefs upon the Bible and using it to back up an act that Jesus would not approve of, and calling themselves Christians while doing it.
1) There is a difference between avoiding someone in your own life and ostracizing them, which is an engineered social event.
2) Have you ever heard anyone say "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all?" That's the difference between avoiding someone and treating them differently because you disagree with them.
No, those were businesses, and they're not held to moral standards, they're held to legal and societal ones. Turning someone away at your the front door of your home -- your property, your living space -- is completely different.
Description is not definition.
Oh, this is rich. There's even less about marriage in Genesis than there is in Paul's writings. Literally, let's go through this.
Verse 18: man needs a "helper and partner".
Verses 19-23: god can't find one, so he makes one.
Verse 24: "If you're a man, you cling to your wife" (If A, do B to C. Same problem as Paul.) Will add here that "become one flesh" has nothing to do with marriage; Paul describes having sex with a prostitute as "becoming one flesh", too.
Verse 25: Shame didn't exist yet.
Still absolutely zero in terms of defining marriage. Please try again.
Nothing in that quote has me disagreeing with Paul in the least. First, it was humor. Second, it points out the possibility that Jesus may well disagree with Paul. It says nothing about my opinion at all.
Furthermore, for the record, I do disagree with Paul on the whole 'women should be silent thing' -- but then, I didn't say "I don't disagree with Paul." I said "I am not disagreeing with Paul", which is very different. I can see, however, why it might be easy to confuse the two.
Description is not definition. I don't know how to make this any clearer. If you don't care to actually take on the challenge, than man, just walk away. Beating your head against the wall is not making you any smarter.
Excellent argument! Except that A, in the first sentence examined, ("If you are a man, have sex with your wife"), isn't actually "be a husband." It's "be a man." So by your own reasoning, you cannot be a man unless you have a wife. Which is clearly absurd.
The error you're making is in your postulate. We're not testing "If A, then do B to C". We're testing the much more complex claim "If (If A, then do B to C), then (If A, then C)."
Now, just the second parenthetical statement (If A, then C) is true if and only if either (A is false) or (C is true). To bring it back to the text, this saying that "If you're a man, then you have a wife" is true only if either you have a wife, or you're not a man.
The larger claim, "If (If A, then do B to C), then (If A, then C)," has the same rules: for the statement to be true, either the first parenthetical claim is false, or the second parenthetical claim is true. We know that the second claim is false, because not all men have wives. Therefore, if we want the entire claim to be true, the first parenthetical claim must be false.
Except the first parenthetical claim is from the Bible, which we've all agreed for the purposes of this discussion is true by definition. Therefore, since the first parenthetical claim is true and the second is false, the entire claim fails the "A is false or B is true" test, therefore the entire claim is false.
Because there is at least one set of truth values for which the entire claim is false, the entire claim is this also invalid (in the logical sense), and is therefore not a claim that anyone trying to construct a rhetorical argument should rely upon.
So, to be explicit: The statement "The fact that the Bible says (If you are a husband, you should have sex with your wife) means (If you are a husband, you have a wife)" is invalid. Basing arguments on invalid logic, while commonplace, isn't something you should be doing, because it can lead to erroneous results.
Agreed.
Jesus never did say genocide was wrong, specifically. He said murder was wrong, and you cannot commit genocide without committing a whole bunch of murder, so you'll end up on the wrong side of God's wrath regardless, but that claim literally is true.
Note that the same thing doesn't apply to Paul and banning gay marriage. Paul say buggery was wrong, and it's safe to assume that gay marriage leads to anal sex, and you will end up on the wrong side of God's wrath because of it -- but there's nothing in the Bible that indicates that we as humans should give gays an 'advance' on God's wrath, and quite a few places that strongly indicate we should not, lest we end up on God's blacklist ourselves.
Agreed. But since we know that there are men who leave their mother and father without joining a wife, all of the above logic applies equally well here as it does to the passage from Corinthians.
"Am arguing" =!= "have argued."
In all of my various deliberate ignoring of the ad hominem attacks against me, I have somewhat accidentally set aside all of the "but you said..." parts of what people have said. Let me be perfectly clear: yes, I have made arguments that were disproven and I have set them aside and continued forward with better arguments. That's a pretty normal part of these kinds of debates, at least in the places I'm accustomed to debating. If that's not considered proper etiquette on these particular debate forums, I apologize.
To the people asking what I'm trying to do here, I refer you to my explicit, previous answer to the same question.
Come visit Olympia some time. Rebelling against 'that sort of establishment' is pretty much Tuesday around here. We thrive on that sort of thing.
Regarding arguments and charisma, well, I can't disagree. Unfortunately, if Mitt Romney and all of the elders who do the General Conferences are any indication, Mormonism and 'having the level of charisma necessary to sway public opinion on any grand level' don't seem to be partners.
On an entirely different note, I figured out why my first thousand readings of 1 Corinthians 7 didn't reveal the whole thing that excludes sexually immoral people from the list of people to not avoid. It's because my first thousand readings of 1 Corinthians 7 were from the Pe****ta (or, more specifically, the translation of the Pe****ta into English by George M. Lamsa), not the KJV. (My wife is a major in Middle Eastern Studies and Comparative Religion, so we have all of these books just chilling. I've been studying the Pe****ta since long before I converted to Mormonism, and I didn't feel the need to "update" to the less accurate KJV despite the fact that the Mormons feel it's somehow mysteriously better.)
The Pe****ta reads:
Now, as it turns out, 'immoral persons' in verse 9 and verse 10 are both 'porneia'. So actually, my original reading was correct: Paul is telling you that you cannot separate yourself completely from all of the sexually immoral people in the world (as well as that long list of others.)
[edit]That starred word is the vulgar word for feces, for anyone who doesn't know. It's the Bible in it's original Aramaic.[/edit]
Wit and wisdom from my four-year-old son. Recommended for anyone who enjoys a good belly laugh.