Podcast #64: Gays, Bidets, and Hating Thy Neighbor

179 September 27, 2015 by

64_finalIn this episode of drunk Ex-Pastors, we begin with a capitulation on Christian’s part toward the color-blind, and then move on to what a man’s chin and legs tell us about his sexual orientation. Jason nods his head and furrows his brow as Christian expresses his frustration over DXP’s Catholic listeners, after which we take a call from an active military listener explaining what exactly “lawful orders” are. Another caller seeks clarity on whether acting gay sends you to hell or whether just being that way is sufficient. We then share some preliminary thoughts on a documentary about the so-called “Purity Movement” (which is that thing of when earnest evangelicals have sex before marriage, but only after promising not to). The topic of open relationships arises, as does the thorny issue of Ahmed’s ticking time bomb. Oops, we mean clock. We turn our attention to the refugee crisis (noting the irony of which segment of society is embodying the “Hate Thy Neighbor” ethic), a discussion which dovetails into the issue of whether democracy can really beat theocracy in a fight. Jason is biebered by Eastern European Mexicans, while Christian’s bieber ends up focusing on the real reason his clothes don’t fit right.

Also, it really is a small world, after all. Just ask Matt.

Links from this Episode:

179 Comments (click here to leave a comment)

  1. This probably won’t matter much to anyone who isn’t Catholic, but on the issue of conscience objections and protections for people, including government officials, who find themselves morally unable to carry out some of their professional responsibilities, Pope Francis was asked about it, and he answered here:

    Terry Moran, ABC News:

    Holy Father, thank you, thank you very much and thank you to the Vatican staff as well. Holy Father, you visited the Little Sisters of the Poor and we were told that you wanted to show your support for them and their case in the courts. And, Holy Father, do you also support those individuals, including government officials, who say they cannot in good conscience, their own personal conscience, abide by some laws or discharge their duties as government officials, for example in issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples. Do you support those kinds of claims of religious liberty?

    Pope Francis:

    I can’t have in mind all cases that can exist about conscience objection. But, yes, I can say the conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right. It is a right. And if a person does not allow others to be a conscientious objector, he denies a right. Conscientious objection must enter into every juridical structure because it is a right, a human right. Otherwise we would end up in a situation where we select what is a right, saying “this right that has merit, this one does not.” It (conscientious objection) is a human right. It always moved me when I read, and I read it many times, when I read the “Chanson de Roland” when the people were all in line and before them was the baptismal font and they had to choose between the baptismal font or the sword. They had to choose. They weren’t permitted conscientious objection. It is a right and if we want to make peace we have to respect all rights.

    Terry Moran, ABC News:

    Would that include government officials as well?

    Pope Francis:

    It is a human right and if a government official is a human person, he has that right. It is a human right.

    More here: http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/4204/full_transcript_of_pope_francis_inflight_press_conference.aspx

  2. The sexual orientation to biology connection has yet to be identified; it is still an open question. For example, twin studies haven’t shown very high concordance rates of sexuality where at least one twin identifies as gay. I absolutely believe people who have same sex attraction aren’t lying, and they very well might have had sexual feelings from their youth, but the idea that they are born that way hasn’t been proven and may be too simplified even it there are some biological factors (environmental factors probably still play a role).

  4. I’m a Catholic, 42-year-old, never-married, physically disabled, heterosexual guy (no, this isn’t a singles ad, hehe!) who has homosexual friends who are Catholic and celibate. Completely seriously here: I am utterly *in awe* of their commitment to their faith. I’ve been celibate for almost 15 years, and it has been anything but easy. However, I know that my celibacy *may* end some day, theoretically, because I can get married as a faithful Catholic. My heart does break for my gay friends who are trying to live by the Church’s teaching on sexuality, relationships, and marriage. I try to be there to help and support them as much as possible. We try to support each other. This includes words and actions (hugs, many, many lengthy conversations, and so on).

  5. A few nights ago, a friend of mine was talking about the refugee situation, and he basically said that he’s unwilling to welcome them into the Western world, because he thinks that many of them are radical Islamic terrorists. I responded that from what I’ve seen, most of them seem to be terrified men, women, and children who are actually *fleeing* violent, radical Islam. I also said that in *any* event, I am much more afraid of what fears about refugees would do to me, spiritually, if I were to *give in* to those fears, than I am of being killed by terrorists.

  6. As for open relationships, Christian keeps claiming that it isn’t about sex, that it is about having a “caring loving relationship”. BS. If it were just about having a caring loving relationship, it would be called a FRIENDSHIP. Talking about “open relationships” means we are talking about sexual relationships.

    I know you aren’t necessarily talking about marriage. However, marriage is about comprehensively giving all of oneself to another, and that simply isn’t possible in an non-exclusive relationship – because you are giving yourself sexually to more than one person. Marriage is also about growing in virtue by putting someone else’s needs ahead of your own from time to time.

    Open relationships sound nice in theory I guess, especially if you consider sex your highest good. However, when thing get complicated, I don’t see them being that great. For example, kids. So now you have kids with more than one person, and your wife also has a relationship with other men (all of whom also have other adults) that aren’t part of your relationship. So now kids have multiple groups of adults (who aren’t bound by commitment), potentially living at multiple houses, and I just see the kids interests being dropped.

    Further, without this commitment in place, what happens when someone gets really sick or old. You are already in the mindset of finding others to fulfill you. But if someone can’t due to illness, eff them I guess. I say this watching my parents example. Following celebrating their 50th anniversary, my father was in a terrible car accident (not his fault) that lead to him being bound to wheel chair and unable to take care of himself – even feeding himself. Watching my mother’s example fulfilling her commitment to him is absolutely inspiring.

    Your right, you can’t expect someone to completely fulfill you. However the answer isn’t that you find a second (or third) spouse, it is about realizing that being completely fulfilled by others isn’t an absolute must to which you are entitled. Try being a little less self-focused.

  7. Being loving and compassionate, by their very nature means taking risks. The people promoting the message that is effectively “don’t love your neighbor, because they might be your enemy” while at the same time claiming to be a Christian – Makes. Me. Sick.

    The point about having Faith in the first place is so that you CAN be able and willing to take the risks required to love others. This whole narrative flies in the face of Christianity.

  8. “If it were not attributable to biology, and were a choice made by people, I would not expect to find homosexuality within the greater animal kingdom.”

    Why, because animals only respond to their biology and not to environmental experiences? Also, being human means transcending your base “animal” urges. You are more than a sum of your desires.

  9. Christopher, I’d like to suggest that you’re thinking only within the paradigm in which you’ve been conditioned to think. Read “Sex at Dawn” and get back to me. There are lots of alternatives to the nuclear family you consider the only way to doing things right and having the best interest of the kids. (Some of them were even practiced in your precious Old Testament.)

    And no, it’s not about the sex. Are you saying that if you’re in a “normal” relationship that it’s just about the sex? No? Then why can’t multiple relationship not be about the sex?

  10. I read that too. It doesn’t really seem to address the issue though. Yes, we all agree that conscientious objection is a right, but what he doesn’t address is what to do when the person is an elected official whose job is to implement the rulings of a county’s highest court, and whose salary is paid by taxpayers.

    The reporter was trying to get there, but I don’t think he succeeded.

  11. First, I’m Lane, but I’m flattered to be confused with Christopher! =)

    “And no, it’s not about the sex. Are you saying that if you’re in a “normal” relationship that it’s just about the sex? No? Then why can’t multiple relationship not be about the sex?”

    Again, what you describe is called “friends”.

  13. To play devil’s advocate, the fact is that in many (most?) ancient cultures things were more tribal and communal than the nuclear family model, with kids being raised not just by mom and dad, but by the whole neighborhood, as it were. In fact, this model seems to be quite ancient-near-eastern and even semitic.

    They followed it in the Bible, is what I’m saying.

  14. Right, her particular case is tricky. But, I think, as he did in the quote, would be to focus on the fact that providing access to the right of conscientious objection should be always on the table. If it simply can’t be provided in a certain situation than that’s that, but it should be taken under serious consideration before being rejected.

  15. Allowing conscientious objection to anyone who is in a voluntary position (i.e. a job they applied for) would lead to absurdity. (“I applied for a job at the Coca Cola company, but I’m a Mormon and don’t believe people should drink Coke. Therefore, I’m not coming into work today and you can’t fire me because I’m a conscientious objector!”) Conscientious objection for things that are mandatory (i.e. drafting into military service) make perfect sense.

  17. Why, because animals only respond to their biology and not to environmental experiences?

    Because the evidence we have seemingly points to a biological reason.

    And because animals have no conception of God or religion to the best of our knowledge, so it seems rather foolish to say that God gave them up to homosexuality because they rejected him, as St. Paul claimed He did for human homosexuals.

    Also, being human means transcending your base “animal” urges. You are more than a sum of your desires.

    Well, now you’re bringing religion into it, which is outside of the scope of whether homosexuality is biological based or a personal choice.

  18. I see the point, but I think this comes down to what is ideal. Even in the Bible, having multiple spouses never really lead to anything but problems. We don’t live in the same brutal world that our ancestors live in. Our age is different.

    In general, I think we should always strive personally for the ideal, and encourage others to do the same. That should always be balanced my mercy for failure.

    As for, “kids being raised not just by mom and dad, but by the whole neighborhood, as it were.”

    I believe we should all be looking out for everyone. However, the kid should know their parents. Each kid should have a mother and father that is committed not only to them but to each other. This is the ideal. Not having the ideal is not ruinous. However, we should not intentionally strive for less than this. Like I said, people are going to fail.

    I think most of the talk about having these none ideal open polyandrous adult relationships is precisely because we no long think about children when we think about marriage.

  19. “And because animals have no conception of God or religion to the best of our knowledge, so it seems rather foolish to say that God gave them up to homosexuality because they rejected him, as St. Paul claimed He did for human homosexuals.”

    I think of it more of a problem of the fall, and our desires becoming disordered, putting the lower goods before higher goods.

    “Well, now you’re bringing religion into it, which is outside of the scope of whether homosexuality is biological based or a personal choice.”

    Maybe, but it does highlight that our society doesn’t see humans as anything but animals. It does explain a lot of their wrong presumptions.

  21. We share 98% of our DNA with chimps, so it’s difficult to argue that we are not, in fact, animals. We might be a rational animal (though looking at our politics and culture, I would dispute that notion) but we are an animal.

    Is there something more to us than our genes? Perhaps, but that remains the purview of religion and not science.

  23. Lane, I feel like you don’t really know or understand the alternatives to the modern-day “nuclear family” that we have today. You’re having a difficult time stepping outside of your own paradigm and seeing things from a different point of view.

  24. Jason is on the boards! Annnnd….. shocker, playing liberal devils advocate. Just come out of the closet already and admit you are flirting with agnosticism…. even if you arent, say it anyway so we can see James White have a fiesta with “I told you so” glee!

    Christian Kingery,

    Are those refugees really being forced to work in camps to pay their way to a new home? I mean, couldn’t they just walk away and “quit”. After all, it doesnt REALLY count as forced servitude if they can just walk away.

    Couldnt help myself 🙂

    I have two friends who ended up in an open relationship. They have been together for six years while sleeping with other people. Well, mostly SHE sleeps around…. he has a hard time finding girls willing to play second fiddle. Its a really interesting dynamic. You can tell they are bith jealous as hell whenever the other “stays out late”. Inevitably the side gigs fade away.

    As an interesting sociological note, both men and women look down on this couple with the same veracity. None of the co-workers think its “cool” or “healthy”. I find this interesting because most if these judgmental onlookers are antitheists or agnostic.

  25. Ha. Once again, conflating two completely different situations! The baker in America and the refugee fleeing their war torn country out of fear of death and being expected to work in a labor camp in another dangerous country to be able to continue their escape should get together and commiserate!

    Yeah, I think that generally people in open relationships keep quiet about it and spend most of their time with other people in open relationships because of the judgment. I don’t take this as a sign of there being something wrong with it (and I’m also not saying there isn’t) but more of just people not liking things that are “different” than what they’ve been conditioned to believe is “normal.” There have been societies throughout history where this type of thing was completely normal and jealousy was not a component. I believe it’s conditioning.

    Also, if they are “jealous as hell” when the other one is out, they probably shouldn’t be in an open relationship. It’s certainly not meant for everyone and that doesn’t sound healthy.

  26. Im sure they arent a great example. Only ones I know though. Its a great deal for the girl. Guys wil line up around the building to get some ass without commitment. Sucks for him though! Also, there is this kind of black sheep effect on the guys that bang her. All the other girls label them as “nasty”. Completely fascinating.

  27. The title of yalls first book:

    “You should see the other guy”

    Subtitle:

    The story of two drunk ex pastors

    Cover image:

    Christian and Jason with black eyes, cigars, and a bottle of Jameson.

    Yall would take turns writing chapters about how screwed the other person has been through life. Make it fun. Dude…. its brilliant. Every listener would pay to hear those stories.

  28. Well, if we have to thoroughly research something before commenting on it, we are all in trouble here at DXP! 😉

    I’m not trying to misrepresent yours or anyone else’s motivation, but you HAVE to admit that sex is the distinguishing mark of this relational construct. Again, you want and value in a relationship everything that anyone else would call a friend, but want to also have sex. If it weren’t for the sex, it wouldn’t be considered an “open relationship” it would be just a “friendship”. So it very well might not primarily be about the sex, but without the sex component it is just a friendship.

  29. Random thoughts:

    • If we don’t take their picture or feed them cake, then gay marriage doesn’t exist.

    • Come on, Christian, I need liberal hippie backup on this site.

    • Re: Charity. Humanist is the word you’re looking for. I’m considering dropping the Christian label and adopting the label of religious humanist.

    • I can’t talk about Kim Davis anymore… suffice to say that likening her being forced to do her job or resign or face the consequences to persecution is really a First World point of view from people who have never had their churches defaced, burned down, or faced angry mobs of zealots trying to actually kill them because they worship Jesus. It’s the ultimate lazy man’s attempt to claim the idea that the world hates them because they’re Christian.

    No, people don’t like you because you’re not doing your job and you’re hurting people by refusing to do it.

    • And likening Anti-discrimination laws to slavery falls into the same category as likening taxation to theft. Just smile and walk away from that person.

    • If being gay isn’t a sin (only acting on it), then St. Paul would be wrong. In Romans he makes it pretty clear that being gay is a result of God giving you up to sin because you have rejected Him and His natural law.

    • Evolutionarily speaking, we know that gay people do have children. There are plenty of married men and women who are gay living in the closet with an opposite sex spouse. So homosexuality by itself isn’t necessarily an impediment to reproduction. And there are plenty of genes or genetic factors that may prove to be beneficial in some degree, but taken to the extreme are not.

    “One possibility is that the allele confers a psychological trait that makes straight men more attractive to women, or straight women more attractive to men. “We know that women tend to like more feminine behavioural features and facial features in their men, and that might be associated with things like good parenting skills or greater empathy,” says Qazi Rahman, co-author of Born Gay; The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation. Therefore, the theory goes, a low “dose” of these alleles enhances the carrier’s chances of reproductive success. Every now and then a family member receives a larger dose that affects his or her sexual orientation, but the allele still has an overall reproductive advantage.”

    http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26089486

    • Ahmed should have known better than to try and practice SCIENCE! in Texas. They tried to burn the NASA folks at the stake several times for witchcraft.

    • By all accounts, Ahmed kept telling the school and the police that it was a clock. He made the police angry because he kept telling them that.

    • We’ve completely lost perspective. 14 years ago, terrorists killed 3,400 people. Every year, American citizens with guns kill 38-40,000 people. Yet we’re told to be far more afraid of the brown kid with a clock than with Bubba who feels the need to carry his Glock with him everywhere he goes.

    • The refugee crisis is happening largely because of the actions of the United States over the last 14 years. Our decision to destroy Iraq spawned ISIS, which joined the rebels to destabilize Syria. Libya was destabilized by our actions there that led to the overthrow of Kaddafi. It’s primarily our fault this is happening. We’re also helping destabilize and destroy the country of Yemen by providing logistical support and selling the Saudis arms which they are using to bomb that country and blockade it to the point where millions of people are in danger of starvation.

    But God is going to judge us now because we let gays marry.

    • And we have one political party that just has a giant hard-on about doing it again to Iran.

    • Maybe we could take care of veterans and refugees if we raised taxes, cut our Defense budget, and stopped starting wars for no goddamn reason other than trying to look tough.

    • To be fair, in my Facebook feed, the conservatives are divided about 50/50 on helping refugees, with some evangelical Christians who are in Europe being on the front lines of relief efforts to help the refugees.

    • Let’s be honest, many Christians are also theocrats as well, which is why you have constant talk around election season of “Taking back America for Christ!” and “getting more Christians elected to Congress”.

    • We are stupid, fearful animals led about by con men exploiting our primal instincts for their own agenda.

    • Perhaps after climate change destroys our civilization, the next intelligent creature to evolve will have a better run. I’m hoping it’s otters.

  30. “Is there something more to us than our genes? Perhaps, but that remains the purview of religion and not science.”

    Maybe, but I think philosophy has a place in the discussion. I simply reject the idea that the only source of knowledge is scientific knowledge; it’s too reductionist to our shared human experience.

    But, going back to the original point, if we only consider science, then there isn’t proof that people with same sex attraction are born that way. This idea is repeated constantly as if had been proved. It might be true, but we don’t know it to be true from the science.

  31. Re: Christian theocracy: Hell, the culture war is largely a bi-product of the notion that the Bible (or more specifically, one’s interpretation of it) should supersede the Constitution.

  34. Touche on the research! We don’t want to start going down that road!

    Well, if you have a relationship and then you have a bunch of friends of the opposite sex and you add sex, you don’t have an open relationship, you have cheating. Honestly, there are all types of open relationship. Some are extremely sexual and some are less so. Some are more poly-amorous and everyone is involved with everyone, and some are just some guy (or girl) that wants permission to have sex with other women. I think the nature of the relationship is different in an “open relationship” whether you have sex or not. If you have a female friend, is your wife ok with you telling her you love her, cuddling with her on the couch as you watch a movie, going out to a romantic dinner with her… long as there is no sex? Of course not, so it’s about a lot more than sex.

  36. The Pope ties European childlessness to need to take refugees:

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/catholicnews/2015/09/refuse-to-have-kids-then-make-room-for-migrants-pope-francis-says/?ref_widget=trending&ref_blog=deaconsbench&ref_post=at-the-cross-her-station-keeping

    In a new, wide-ranging interview Pope Francis spoke at length of the European refugee crisis – saying that incoming migrants are now filling the void left by a sterile continent that refuses to have children.

    “The migrant phenomenon is a reality…when there is an empty space, people look to fill it. If a country doesn’t have children, migrants come to occupy that place,” the Pope said in a recent interview with Portugal-based Radio Renascença (Renaissance).

    He referred to the staggeringly low number of births in countries such as Italy, Portugal and Spain, where the current number of births falls, he said, at “almost zero percent.”

    Francis said he is no stranger to the phenomenon of not wanting to have children, and that he encountered it in his own family when some years ago his Italian cousins said they preferred to travel or buy property rather than have children.

    “So, if there are no children, there are open spaces,” he said. For him personally, the societal refusal to have children is part of a “culture of ‘well-being,’” in which the assurance that one’s personal needs and wants will be taken care of is emphasized to an exaggerated degree.

  42. There have always been Christians against war. Today, the only remaining group of any size is the Mennonite / Amish tradition. The progressive wing of the Mennonite Church not only are still very strong pacifists (with advocacy work on behalf of peace and non-violence) but are leading the way for “evangelicals” in same-sex marriage.

    The two largest Mennonite colleges – Easter Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA and Goshen College in Goshen, IN came out this summer in support of same-sex marriage and removed all prohibitions of same-sex couples in administration, faculty, staff, and student body.

    This led to an uproar in the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (EMU was a founding member), with two institutions (Union, Oklahoma Wesleyan) withdrawing in protest. Both Mennonites schools in the spirt of generosity voluntarily withdrew.

    https://www.goshen.edu/news/2015/09/21/goshen-college-and-emu-announce-withdrawal-from-cccu/

  46. I’d love the DXP take religious bias in presidential elections. Dr. Carson flat out said he wouldn’t want a Muslim as president, turns out he’s not alone. 38% of Americans wouldn’t want a Muslim president and 40% wouldn’t want an Atheist. This is despite the Constitution clearly saying there should be no religious test for office.

  47. The Catholic Church’s priestly celibacy discipline is for priests within the specific Roman rite of the Church. Eastern Catholic priests can be married, as can Catholic priests who converted from the Anglican Church to Catholicism. (There are more than fifteen different rites in the Church. The Roman rite is simply the largest one.) In any event though, the priestly celibacy discipline can be changed at any time, because it’s not a matter of doctrine. Instead, it’s a discipline, like fasting from meat on Fridays. Prior to Vatican II, all Catholics, world-wide, were asked by the Church to fast from meat on Fridays. Now, that penance is only obligatory during Lent (although we are supposed to substitute some other kind of penance on Fridays throughout the year).

    Personally, I think that priestly celibacy is a good thing. A Catholic married man who follows the teachings of the Church may well have many children, and a man with five or more kids is going to have an extremely difficult time being the pastor of a church and being an attentive husband and father. I have seen that kind of attempted balancing act do serious damage to the marriages of Protestant pastors.

  48. Carson clarified that statement later by saying that he would potentially vote for a Muslim who does not put Sharia law above the Constitution.

  49. Jason, when the Pope said that conscience protection should apply to government officials, he was replying to the reporter who was asking, partially, about the issuing of same-sex marriage licenses. To be sure, that wasn’t the *entire* context of the question but it was part of it, as specifically phrased by the reporter. Within that context, the Pope seemed to be saying that Kim Davis was within her rights to not issue the licenses.

    I’ve also been seeing this report from many sources (i.e. from very conservative to mainstream to very liberal media) , and the Vatican isn’t denying it, which, in “Vatican-speak,” seems to mean that it happened: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/attorney-kentucky-clerk-kim-davis-met-with-pope/

  50. Frankly, no officials should ever put their religion above the Constitution (cough, cough, Kim Davis).

    If that’s the concern, Atheists should be at the front of the pack.

  53. Given that Dr. Ben is a Seventh-Day Adventist, I would wager that he is quite familiar with the Old Testament. SDA’s follow the Old Testament dietary laws and keep the Jewish Sabbath, going to church on Saturdays instead of Sundays. They pay more attention to the OT, in general, than many other Christian denominations. They also have some pretty radical beliefs about the Pope supposedly eventually teaming up with governments and trying to impose one worldwide government and a mandatory “Sunday worship” law. With all of that said, Carson *is* running for President, claiming to be a strict Constitutionalist, so I’m assuming that he believes, as President, he should put the Constitution above his faith, and that a Jewish U.S. President should too.

  54. When I first heard Carson’s comments about supporting a Muslim for President, I thought they amounted to shallow, inarticulate pandering to Evangelical voters and that he shouldn’t have said them. I’m changing my mind. Muslims, Jews, Christians, Catholics (see what I did there), and any other openly religious candidate should be required to go on national TV and say that as President that will not put their body of religious law above the Constitution. Ben Carson should be at the front of this line.

  55. If you really believe your first sentence above, then, in your view, was Martin Luther King, Jr. wrong to defy the government’s violations of the rights of black people– given that he did so with, partially, on the basis of his religious beliefs? He believed that our rights come from God, not the government, and he explicitly wrote and spoke about that conviction. However, his conviction didn’t come from the Constitution. It came from the Bill of Rights, which grounds the origin of our rights in God, rather than government.

    On Kim Davis and same-sex marriage, the reality is that until the last twenty years in the Western world, no government in human history held that there was a “human right” to same-sex marriage. Literally, from the dawn of humanity until the mid-1990s, no civilization even had a *debate* that there was such as thing as SSM. Now, in the U.S., certain Supreme Court judges have decided that there is actually a “Constitutional right” to SSM– while other SC judges deeply disagree with them. I agree with Justice Scalia, in his dissent against the ruling, when he stated that the judicial reasoning used to reach the ruling was on the level of a fortune cookie aphorism. Another SC justice, in his dissent, said that if you want to celebrate the ruling, by all means, do so– but don’t pretend that the ruling has anything to do with Constitutional reasoning.

  56. First, there is plenty of secular justification for equal rights. Your question is absurd. That MLK used religious appeals to bolster the argument for civil rights does not mean that the argument is dependent on religion.

    Second, when Kim Davis was asked what authority she had to defy the US Constitution, she responded, “God’s authority.”

  57. I know that I could never be President, because I would never be willing to put the Supreme Court justices’ *rulings* on what the Constitution *supposedly* says above my responsibility to God and to my fellow human beings. The SC has ruled reprehensible things to be “Constututional” in the past. Jim Crow? Slavery of black people until the Civil War?

  59. Even in jest, It’s not really an accurate analogy to bring up the 13th amendment, because OT slavery was not based on race and was not similar, in other ways, to American slavery. OT slavery was closer to indentured servitude for people who were in debt and working off that debt. I’m not saying that it was a great system. It just wasn’t really what the 13th amendment abolished in the U.S.

  60. Secular reasoning for human rights, period, much less equal rights, is simply not the reasoning found in the Bill of Rights. If you want to make a secular argument for the origin and grounding of human rights, that’s one thing, but it’s not the reasoning of the Founding Fathers.

    Moreover, if one claims that our rights are not grounded in God, then in what are they grounded– the government? That kind of thinking logically leads to totalitarianism, because if the government can “give” us rights, it can also take them away from us with perfect consistency.

    Yes, Kim Davis made that statement. So did MLK, in his context, in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” The fact also remains that even the SC justices, themselves, disagreed over there being a “Constitutional right” to same-sex marriage.

  61. I’m more concerned about theocratic totalitarianism. And so were the founders, which is why they banned government-sponsored religion.

  62. “Muslims, Jews, Christians, Catholics (see what I did there), and any other openly religious candidate should be required to go on national TV and say that as President that will not put their body of religious law above the Constitution.”

    They do already. Before any President can begin execution of their office, they swear:

    “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

  65. The Founding Fathers did not want there to be a “Church of the U.S.A.,” as there is still a Church of England. However, even the Church of England in the time of the American Revolution did not amount to theocratic totalitarianism. It wasn’t like Sharia law in Saudi Arabia! The C of E wielded its hand in certain areas of economic and daily life with the English people, and the rebels who eventually formed the U.S. objected to that. However, *none* of them, nor any American political official who was to follow until the mid-1990s, ever even *tried* to claim the Constitution contains a right to SSM.

  66. Thanks for taking the time to talk to that point. I would add that even in the rites that allow married men to become priest, they still don’t allow priest to get married. If they are single when they become a priest, they must stay that way. And if a married priest’s wife dies, they can’t get remarried. And when you think about it, how weird would it be for a priest to be on the prowl for a girl friend!? Even in Protestant churches it seems that pastors effectively HAVE to be married to get a head pastor job. Maybe Jason and Christian can talk from experience whether that is the case or not.

  67. Which is why I could never be President. I can’t place the Supreme Court’s interpretations of the Constitution above my responsibility to obey God. If I had been President, and had lived before the Civil War, and had put the Supreme Court above my faith, I would have had to tolerate race-based slavery as supposedly being “Constitutional.”

  69. Different Protestant denominations have very different thinking on this subject (and on many other subjects!). I have heard of single Lutheran and Methodist pastors. In my past experience as a “Reformed Baptist” though, I never encountered a senior pastor (or head preaching elder) who was unmarried. I think that the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary even explicitly said that he would not ordain an unmarried man.

  70. There would have to balance between up holding the current law and trying to change it.

    This is also why Americans were so hesitant to elect a Catholic at all. JFK had basically say that he doesn’t follow the Vatican:

    “I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition, to judge me on the basis of my record of 14 years in Congress, on my declared stands against an ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott of the public schools (which I have attended myself)— instead of judging me on the basis of these pamphlets and publications we all have seen that carefully select quotations out of context from the statements of Catholic church leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in other centuries, and always omitting, of course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948, which strongly endorsed church-state separation, and which more nearly reflects the views of almost every American Catholic.

    I do not consider these other quotations binding upon my public acts. Why should you? But let me say, with respect to other countries, that I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion. And I hope that you and I condemn with equal fervor those nations which deny their presidency to Protestants, and those which deny it to Catholics. And rather than cite the misdeeds of those who differ, I would cite the record of the Catholic Church in such nations as Ireland and France, and the independence of such statesmen as Adenauer and De Gaulle.”

    From speech on religion: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16920600

  71. No test for office, but it’s still up to the people (sort of) to vote the person in, and that’s where the religious “test” comes in. Personally, I’d just like to avoid fundies of all stripes.

  73. It’s clear, from their writings, that some of them were not Christians. Jefferson was a deist, and Franklin was also not a Christian. However, to the extent that they talked and wrote about “God,” they seemed to be referring to a deity that resembles the God of the Bible much more than the deities of any other religions.

  75. No, it wasn’t like indentured servitude.

    In theory, Jewish men would work 6 years, then go free with back wages. In practice, the prophet Jeremiah notes that no one followed that law. And slave owners could always arrange a situation where a slave had to choose between his freedom and his family and thereby surrender to lifetime servitude.

    Jewish women could be bought as slaves, concubines, or wives and would be in that position for life.

    While there was a prohibition against kidnapping and human trafficking, there was no prohibition about taking foreign prisoners of war or foreign civilians and impressing them into slavery or sexual servitude (concubinage.) Nor was there any prohibition from buying foreigners as slaves. And foreigners and their children were slaves for life to be passed on to the next generation.

    All slaves could be beaten, so long as eyes or teeth weren’t put out, and slaves could be beaten to death, so long as they survived the beating by a couple of days before passing.

    All in all, it was pretty similar to the system of slavery everywhere else in the world. Let’s not whitewash it.

  76. I think it’s frowned upon to not be married in protestant churches. The thinking is that you’re kind of a rock star and women are going to be throwing themselves at you, so you if you don’t have a wife… then who are you going to cheat on?

  77. Christopher, why doesn’t this same logic extend to any man with a job? If a man with a full-time job follows the teachings of the Catholic church and has many children, why is it any easier for him to be an attentive husband and father than it is for a priest?

  79. Which is probably more a result of their isolated cultural experiences (isolated in the sense that there’s no TV, internet, 24 hour news, etc) than it is that they actually believed in the god of the bible. (Excepting the actual devout Christians, of course.)

  80. Yep. Americans were actually right to be hesitant about electing a Catholic as President, in my view… but Kennedy made his choice in the end. He may or may not have been a great President (I think he was great in some ways and not good at all in others), but in that role, he did make a decision to be an “obedient” American political leader first and a Catholic second. I could not make that choice.

  81. I never denied that there was abuse under OT slavery, or NT slavery, for that matter. St. Paul’s writings about slavery make it clear that there was abuse. He also instructed that a slave owner should treat a fleeing slave who was brought back no longer as a slave but as a brother.

  84. My career has caused me to have swear oaths to the Constitution. That is one of the reasons I’m so adamant about the human right to not be compelled against one’s conscience.

  85. Have you read many of the Founding Fathers’ writings? They were extremely well-read, educated men. Classical education was the norm for men of their positions in those days, and that education was *much* more rigorous and wide-ranging that the educations of most public-schooled-Americans today. The FF were familiar with the writings of secular philosophers. Some of them had also studied numerous religions, other than Judaism and Christianity.

  88. He is simply wrong about chattel slavery not existing in the Law of Moses:

    44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

  89. The Newsboys were in that horrible movie (I suffered through it with an evangelical friend), “God’s Not Dead,” which promoted the idiotic idea of Christians viewing the movie and then sending texts to all of their “Godless” friends saying, simply, “God’s Not Dead!” As if that is *any* kind of actual reasoned argument about the existence of God at all, *or* any kind of outreach that would make anyone curious to look into the question! I really don’t get how some evangelical Christians think about how to communicate the faith… I didn’t even get it when I was an evangelical!

  96. Please read the article to which Lane linked. It provides some clarity and context on OT slavery.

  97. There are different vocations one is called to, one vocation is to be a father to biological children, and another is to be a father to spiritual children. Although, Everyone is called to chastity. The lay father follows the teachings of the Church in a family setting. Both vocation have the same purpose – to be fully drawn into God’s family and become Saints.

    A Catholic priest, doesn’t make 6 figures like some Protestant pastors. They tend to make 30-40k, even if they are at a parish with several thousand registered families (where a mega church protestant pastor might make 7 figures). I was treasurer at my Presbyterian church that I just left, and let’s just say that the salary and benefits of the 2 pastors make up a rather alarming portion of the budget. Catholic parishes do not need to pay a Priest to support a family in the vast number of cases.

    Further, a priest can be called on 24 hours a day. Not having a family to be responsible to is very helpful to their all consuming vocation. And St. Paul agrees:

    But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.
    (1 Corinthians 7:33-35 ESV)

  98. I’m not sure about their raising as children and young adults, and I’m also not sure about how far their world travels extended as adults. A rigorous classical education can help to combat cultural isolationism though, and that education appears to have done so for at least some of the Founding Fathers. I’ve never been outside of the U.S., but I’m not ignorant about other cultures, and I wasn’t, even well before the ubiquity of the internet. I’m familiar with different aspects of many different cultures through meeting people from those cultures and being taught about them and doing my own reading and research about them. This is a book which you might find surprising, about a Founding Father who once claimed that it is proper that an American leader should at least hold to *some* sort of belief in God, although not *necessarily* that of orthodox Christianity, specifically: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/29/thomas-jefferson-s-quran-how-islam-shaped-the-founders.html

  99. I did and the assumption about foreign slaves is simply not warranted. Foreigners could be bought and sold freely and were slaves for life to be passed along to children with their children.

    He interprets the scripture about not punishing a man who beats his slave to death after the slave lingers a day or two rather charitably.

    He fails to deal with the practice of war brides or comfort women which was practiced by the Israelites whereby foreign pre-teen virgin girls were spared and distributed to the soldiers.

    And he goes to great lengths to try and justify a system supposedly written by an omniscient, all-powerful God who could have simply said, “Hey, guys? Remember how much it sucked to be a slave in Egypt? Yeah… don’t do that stuff to other people. Here’s how we’re going to handle debt. I’m going to introduce you guys to the concept of bankruptcy law.”

  100. My point is that the world was much larger back then and people’s experience was much more isolated. I can get to Africa or the Middle East in a day, and people can get here in a day, and we now live in a melting pot. Add the internet, radio, TV, etc., and I’d say we have a far wider range of cultural experience than all of our white, European founding fathers. I’m not saying we’re smarter or that they weren’t well read. I am saying that their upbringing would influence their view of god whether they rejected Christianity or not, and that view would mostly be a white, European view.

  103. This article deals with the OT texts on slavery, including foreign slaves. I do concede your point that the OT slavery of foreigners was less humane, and closer to American slavery of black people, than slavery within/among the Hebrews. Biblical slavery was not intrinsically race-based though, in any case, as slavery was in the American South before the Civil War. http://enrichmentjournal.ag.org/201103/201103_124_OTSlave.cfm

  104. The Supreme Court ruled that bans on same sex marriage were unconstitutional as they violated the 14th amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. They were not inventing a right to marry. They were simply saying laws banning a gay couple from marrying were illegal.

    As for the dissenting justices, Anton Scalia has no governing philosophy on court ruling other than his personal likes and dislikes.

    And I can list quite a few SCOTUS decisions I think were complete bullshit too. However they still settled the question of the law, until a future court reviews the cases and decides their predecessors were wrong.

  105. Fair points. My upbringing influenced me to become an agnostic, and later, an atheist. However, that upbringing happened to be in the Bible Belt, hehe! I actually became a Christian, in many ways, *in spite of* how and where I was raised, rather than because of it. My cultural background and formal education made me much more hostile to Christianity, for many years, than open to it.

  106. The very division in the law between Jews and foreigners and how they were to be treated differently is a race-based distinction.

    And, as much as we all agree today that slavery is wrong, there were many, many American Christian pastors and apologists from the 16th century on who built biblical arguments for why slavery was awesome and part of God’s plan for black people and they used the very verses modern day apologists desperately try to re-interpret to say, “No, no, no. It wasn’t really slavery slavery. It was just slavery, guys. Totally different.”

    Anyway, if God really needed a legion of human apologists to make what He supposedly wrote seem less awful and hideous to us, maybe He should have done a 2nd draft and clarified what He really meant. 😉

  107. Your statement about Justice Scalia is ridiculous. He was elected to the Supreme Court with great respect from people across the American legal landscape, and many people who sharply disagree with him, philosophically, still respect his legal mind.

    From the very beginning of Constitutional law, itself, in the U.S until the last ten years, the elected legal minds of this country did not see legal marriage as a “Constitutional right” which actually existed between two members of the same sex. If the right was not invented, then how did it go undiscovered in the Constitution, from the beginning of the U.S. until the 2000s?

  108. From my experience of what I’ve seen with both Catholic priests and Protestant pastors, it’s not a very a feasible option for them to do their “professional work” for a certain amount of hours (which constitutes a workday, like a regular job), and then “leave the job at work” to go home to their families. If I were a woman, I could not *imagine* wanting to be married to a pastor or priest, with his time so taken up by constantly attending to the needs, problems, and complaints of his parishioners. To me, celibacy for priests seems like a very reasonable concept. Not easy, to be sure, but reasonable and sensible, given the constant demands of the job.

  109. It’s not a solely “religious” claim to say that being human means transcending our base animal desires– unless you think that any human being should be free to try to have sex with (or kill!) another human being, anywhere, any time, as some animals visibly do! 🙂

  110. Yep, from the 16th century on, some Protestant pastors and apologists did wrongly use “Sola Scriptura”-type reasoning to justify race-based slavery. I’m sure that some Catholics got into that act too, betraying their own historic tradition in doing so.

    The Israelites viewed any people other than themselves as “foreigners.” In their view, it was a distinction between themselves, as the chosen people to whom God had specifically bonded Himself, in covenant, and everyone else. It wasn’t about race. It was about Israel and God, and their self-understanding in that respect.

    I’m not saying that OT slavery was great or ideal. Not at all. For that reason, and a million others, I’m thankful for the New Covenant, and for the apostolic teaching, from early Christian times through the centuries, which led to people such as William Wilberforce (a Christian, among many Christians in his same vein) tirelessly advocating for the abolition of the slave trade.

  111. The Supreme Court ruled that bans on same sex marriage were unconstitutional as they violated the 14th amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. They were not inventing a right to marry. They were simply saying laws banning a gay couple from marrying were illegal.

    To be fair, people who identify as gay COULD get married, just not to a person of the same sex – OR to a second person, OR to an underage person, OR to a closely related person. However, the idea of marriage has fundamentally changed in our society. Our culture decided to embrace many of the ideas of the sexual revolution such as contraception, cohabitation, and no fault divorce. The idea that marriage is about being open to life and permanent has been replaced by a public declaration of temporary romantic interest. If that is all marriage is, how can you stop anyone from showing romantic interest publically? The problem is that the culture has shifted, and the court decided to shift with it. So, I kind of understand how the court reached its decision; I just disagree with the presumptions.

  116. He definitely wasn’t speaking “ex cathedra” there. It’s his personal view, not an official teaching of the Church. 🙂

    As far as your statement about his argument (for conscience protections for government officials) devolving into absurdity though, if you had a chance to sit down and talk with him and explore his thinking, he might be able to surprise you on that point. Pope Francis has degrees in chemistry, philosophy, and theology. He also just addressed Congress and the U.N., so he’s not exactly a ranting “Obama’s a Muslim” fundamentalist on your Facebook page. 😉

  117. I don’t know. I think I’d trust an atheist more to be president.

    They think this life is the only one we get, so I think they’d be more cautious about engaging in a war.

    And they’re not muddled by bad theology about Israel and the End Times, so they might bring sanity back to our Middle Eastern policy.

  118. It wasn’t just about covenant relationships. From very early on, in Genesis, we see the patriarchs shunning the local women and going back to their families for brides.

    In the Mosaic Law there are entire sections about how the offspring of a Jew and an Ammonite or Moabite are impure to the seventh generation.

    In Ezra, we see the religious leaders either command or endorse the notion that any Jews who married non-Jewish women should divorce them and kick them and their own children with these women out of their houses.

    And, of course, there was the general disdain for and hatred of Samaritans who were the descendants of Jews with non-Jewish natives in the former kingdom of Israel.

    There is a very racial component to OT Judaism.

  119. I don’t think that he is at all. I have great respect for him as a human and a thinker. Doesn’t mean I agree with him on everything though, and frankly I’m not sure he totally understands the scenarios that could come up in this country if people could conscientiously object to a position they volunteered for.

  120. It’s not ridiculous, if you google criticisms of Scalia’s rulings, they provide examples of inconsistent application of his principles that tend to fall in line with his preferred political stances.

    I’m not going to fault him on that. Everyone has a bias and elections have consequences like getting to make lifetime appointments to SCOTUS.

  122. It goes ‘undiscovered’ because we encounter new cases and new situations that must be scrutinized and dealt with by existing law and our Constitution.

    It wasn’t an issue before because up until recently, if you were a gay man or woman, you kept it secret or you risked your life.

  123. Comrade, consider this: Would there even *be* an OT, with a Mosaic Law, for you to critique, without God having chosen Israel (in the teaching of the Bible, that is, of course)? Whatever you or I or anyone thinks about them, all of the Biblical texts that you mention are in the context of Israel being God’s chosen people. In that time, other peoples were regarded as “impure,” not racially, but spiritually, because they could potentially spiritually corrupt the people of Israel away from the one true God with Whom they were in a covenant relationship. We see such warnings all throughout the OT.

  124. Well, as a former atheist who has studied philosophy in general, and historical American philosophical and legal thinking– when I consider the idea of an atheist U.S. President, I am not encouraged by the fact that *any* atheistic view of human rights would conflict sharply with that of the Bill of Rights. Why should we have a President who has an intrinsically different view of human rights, period, than the view of our Founding Fathers? The atheist concept of human rights… as granted to us by… whom or what again? Each other? The government? Upon what basis?

  125. “Gay marriage” wasn’t an issue, from the founding of the U.S.A. until about fifteen years ago, because marriage was broadly understood according to natural law in this country. Until recently, in the understanding of the huge majority of Americans (and most people, still, worldwide), there just was no such thing as homosexual marriage, period. It did not exist as a concept. Certain justices of the Supreme Court have now declared that it exists, but they are philosophically mistaken and legally incorrect. It is an ontological fiction and a legal construction.

  128. Ha ha! Oh, please!

    That was for one person, the king. And it doesn’t say he can’t have multiple wives, just not “many”, and we all know that when the god of the Old Testament was serious about something, he killed those who disobeyed him! 😉

  129. Oh please, right back atcha! 😉 Genesis says the man shall leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife, not wives, and that together, the two shall become one. Doesn’t sound like God wanted polygamy in the beginning. This OT teaching is quoted and reaffirmed in the NT.

  130. It doesn’t change the fact that most of the men of god in the OT had a different definition of marriage than you do and that apart from some advice for any future kings, God’s attitude was live and let live in that arena.

  131. Would there even *be* an OT, with a Mosaic Law, for you to critique, without God having chosen Israel (in the teaching of the Bible, that is, of course)?

    If God is omnipotent, then the answer would be yes.

    Whatever you or I or anyone thinks about them, all of the Biblical texts that you mention are in the context of Israel being God’s chosen people.

    That doesn’t absolve the text of criticism. In fact, notions of racial purity as being a godly thing, endorsement of slavery, encouraging men to divorce their wives and send their children packing in one section while saying how much you hate divorce in another section of the text, the ordering of genocide save for the pre-teen girls, and other problematic passages should encourage us to view the text more critically precisely because it claims to be from God in the context of a divine revelation to one people group out of the entire world, which then required God himself to come down a few thousand years later and revise the entire thing because the original revelation was insufficient and flawed, which then required a hierarchy of priests and bishops to discern and teach that revelation to the world because the common man would be insufficient to the task of reading and understanding it for himself.

    In that time, other peoples were regarded as “impure,” not racially, but spiritually, because they could potentially spiritually corrupt the people of Israel away from the one true God with Whom they were in a covenant relationship. We see such warnings all throughout the OT.

    Really? You’re hanging out with agnostics, atheists, progressive Christians and evangelicals, but you still seem pretty confident in your faith.

    Let’s say this evening you meet a lovely Muslim or Jewish girl, fall hopelessly in love, and run off to Vegas to get married. Would you renounce Christ and attend synagogue? Or would you start praying towards Mecca? I kind of doubt it.

  132. Your assumption that a president without religion would disregard the Constitution and the existence of human rights is based on… what exactly?

    Atheists are not inhuman robots. As a former atheist who (presumably) did not descend into antisocial killing sprees, you should know this.

    Conversely, if the only thing keeping you from doing terrible things is a fear of a cosmic father-figure, there is a whole other set of issues at play that need to be addressed.

  135. Technically, Adam and Eve were never married. They just started to shack up.

    Also technically, the marriage model inferred from Adam and Eve would be one man and his female clone.

  136. Yeah I think the government should step in and threaten jail time for not voting for specific candidates. Of course, ot wouldn’t be FORCING anyone to vote certain ways…. they could always just not vote at all….

  138. You know, antidiscrimination and all that jazz. If a muslim runs, we should make SURE that no one discriminates.

  141. Ha! Its your definition of “free” not mine. Apparently its ridiculous in all other circumstances except the single special place you carved for it. American business.

    Refugees are “forced” to work for travel (even though they could always quit and wander around their own), voters would become “forced” to vote for a muslim (even though they could just not vote at all), and yet americans amazingly arent be forced to work for others so long as they have the option to quit their jobs or go out if business.

    Indoctrination, indoctrination, indoctrination…..

  143. Adam and Eve were never married in the sense of marriage being a legal institution. However, marriage is pre-legal. It dates from, oh, well, the first people on earth!

    About the “cloning,” God doesn’t dig that, although I’m sure that eventually, a Protestant denomination will spring up, using Sola Scriptura-based mangled reasoning to argue that cloning is actually “Biblical.”

  144. Yes, I hang out with people of widely, radically varying religious beliefs, non-beliefs, etc. I haven’t lost my faith. I’m also not an ancient Israelite!

    As for the rest of your “I’m more enlightened than the Bible” comment, I’ve devoted a good bit of time to responding to you today, and I’m taking a break. Why not do the same? Take a break from your Smartphone and enjoy the world. You’re busy in these comboxes more than I’m in church! Is this your religion? 😉

  146. Some of these men of God also got into some serious trouble due to their multiple wives– such as with Solomon going after false gods in his elder years. God never said “live and let live” about Idolatry. This is one of the many reasons why He instituted marriage as a one-man, one-woman covenant.

  147. I do not assume, at all, that, in your words, “a president without religion would disregard the Constitution and the existence of human rights.” I claimed that a President who does not believe that our human rights come from God would have a fundamentally different view of human rights than the view found in the Bill of Rights. I still claim this, because it is true. The Bill of Rights grounds the existence of human rights in our being granted them by our Creator. An atheist would ground our human rights as being granted by… once again.. what or whom? And upon what basis?

    Of course, I know that atheists are not inhuman robots. You are correct that I did not descend into killing sprees when I was an atheist. Nor do I now descend into killing sprees. What keeps me from doing so, then, is obviously *not* only my Christian faith. However, in a *consistent* atheistic philosophical framework, human beings are not sacred, any more than cows or dogs are sacred. Human beings are simply more sophisticated animals. Not the best worldview for promoting human rights!

  148. I’m asking questions and I have doubts about the veracity of the claims that the Old Testament was written by God.

    Given Christ’s disposition towards Thomas, I think He’s okay with doubters and skeptics.

    God, theology, religion and politics fascinate me. And I have a useless theology degree that I no longer use save for chatting online,so I need to justify the expense somehow.

  149. “The Bill of Rights grounds the existence of human rights in our being granted them by our Creator.”

    No, that would be the Declaration of Independence.

    The Constitution grounds our rights and our system of government in “We, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

  150. They think this life is the only one we get, so I think they’d be more cautious about engaging in a war.

    By the same logic, they would also be more opportunistic.

  152. Yes, that *would* be the Declaration of Independence! I was mixing up my terms there (and have just edited my comments to correct them). I had the Declaration in mind though. It precedes the Constitution (obviously) and explicitly provides the Founding Fathers’ philosophical basis for the rights outlined in the Constitution. Whether you like it or not, that basis is in our being *created beings*, not in modern notions of personal autonomy. The Fathers did not even *attempt* to ground the origin and basis for human rights in either “We, the People” or in any government. Rather, they stated that our rights are granted to us by *our Creator*, as opposed to those rights being granted to us by the government or by ourselves.

  153. Points made, CR. *Also* in the interest of fairness though, I’ve read quite a few of your comments at DXP, and you do much more than ask questions and articulate doubts! 🙂 When it comes to the Bible and your comments on it, from what I have seen, you do virtually nothing *but* raise reasons why, in your mind, it should *not* be viewed as a trustworthy document, much less as the written word of God. God can work with that though! He did with me. 😉

  154. Yes, after being told for 30+ years that the Bible is the word of God, that the Bible is infallible, that the Bible is inerrant, that one particular version of Christianity is the ‘right’ version and everyone else is wrong, I suppose I feel a bit lied to and no longer trust in the document as the infallible word of God when presented with problems that require mental gymnastics to twist ourselves into an intellectual pretzel.

    Makes much more sense to chalk it up to the men of the time writing as they understood God and what they might have sincerely believed His will to be within the context of their culture.

  155. You’re getting hung up on one phrase within the document. Especially within a time before the theory of evolution was even formed when creationism was literally the only game in town when it came to human origins.

    The affirmation of human rights is due to our status as human beings.

    And arguably, the Christian does not have a right to life. “He who finds his life will lose it, He who loses it for my sake will find it…”

    Nor does the Christian have a right of liberty. He is a bondservant or slave to Christ. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.”

    Nor really does the Christian have a right to happiness, “In this world you will have tribulation…” and “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution…”

    He has these rights as an American citizen, but arguably as a Christian, he does not receive these rights from God. His life, his liberty, and his happiness are all subject to the will of his Lord and therefore are not rights which he can demand, but temporary privileges granted from day to day which may be recalled or suspended as his Lord sees fit.

  156. I think all that the Newsboy are guilty of is association with a shitty non-sensical movie “franchise” (yeah, God’s Not Dead #2 is on its way) with a shitty non-sensical song. Shame on them for pandering to the Religious Right as their career slides into obscurity.

  157. The “one statement” in the Declaration of Independence speaks very clearly about the Founding Fathers’ view of the origin and basis of human rights. They believed that our human rights come from God, and that, moreover, this is self-evident.

    Now, you can try to explain away such statements of the FF by saying that they were “Creationists”– which seems to lump them in with evangelical fundamentalists, which they were *not*. You can insult them by saying that their view of human rights (as coming from God) is because they lived in a time when they didn’t know know any better– which is condescending, and which overlooks the rigorous educations that many of those men received (educations which would dwarf any of ours).

    However, whatever you try to say about the FF, the fact remains that if *any* Presidential candidate does *not* believe that our human rights come from God, and that instead, they stem from the government or from ourselves, then that Presidential candidate has a view of human rights that is *opposed* to the view found in our Declaration of Independence.

    You posit that human rights come from “our status as human beings.” What does that statement mean? It sounds like the vague wording of a politician. If you don’t believe that our human rights are endowed to us by our Creator, then from what or whom does that endowment come?

    Of course, the Christian understanding of God’s relation to humanity is not one in which we can, or should, come before Him, demanding our “rights.” He is God. We are not. According to St. Paul, he (the apostle) was willing to forgo his “rights,” at times, so as to be able to better preach the Gospel in certain circumstances. Such statements in the Bible, though, presume that human beings do have rights. God is not a dictatorial tyrant. If He were, then it would have been nonsense for the Founding Fathers to even *attempt* to claim that our rights come from Him (even as some of the FFs were not Christians, though their understanding of God was deeply influenced by the Bible, and the Koran, at times).

  159. Christian, that’s an interesting question. Who endowed the Creator with the right to give our human rights to us? I could be wrong here, but to me, that seems to be a question akin to asking, “If God made everything, then who made God?” God is non-contingent. No one existed before Him to endow Him with the “right” to do anything. God is the very ground of the existence of everything and everyone. This short video explains more of this view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zMf_8hkCdc

  160. I hear you, CR. In many ways, we are just coming from different places, so I think sometimes, we are speaking past each other, though that isn’t what I want.

    I was not raised in evangelical Christianity. Heck, I wasn’t really raised as any kind of Christian at all– other than maybe as a very nominal, very theologically liberal Protestant in a conservative Christian state in the Bible Belt. My family background gave me little to almost nothing in terms of Christian grounding, and what I saw of Christianity around me, outside my family, mostly scared and repulsed me. This background of wildly conflicting messages about God eventually led me to agnosticism, and, later, atheism. How I ended up a Catholic is a *very* long story with a lot of detours! 😉

    With all of this said, if I had been raised to believe that a particular version of evangelical fundamentalist Christianity, and a particular view of the Bible within that context, were the only “right” views of said things, I might be a skeptic now too (instead of having been one several years ago, as I was, and then coming to another view, which is neither skepticism nor fundamentalism).

  162. Ahh, ok! I’ve heard those kinds of questions asked seriously, so I thought you were serious. 😉

  163. Well, now we have the Vatican, saying that the Pope’s meeting with Kim Davis should not be construed as supporting her position in all of its particular respects and what-not. Still, he did speak clearly, on the way back from the U.S. visit, about government officials having a right to conscience protection. To say those things and to meet with her, telling her, “Stay strong,” and giving her rosaries? That doesn’t give the impression that he *opposes* what she did. I guess now we don’t know what he thinks about her stand, positively or negatively. His words indicate that he thinks she was within her rights though. He has definitely spoken strongly about what he sees as negative attempts to redefine marriage and family: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/what-is-being-proposed-is-not-marriage-pope-calls-for-defense-of-family-12766/

  164. I’m tired.

    Today, I hugged my kids a bit tighter, knowing that when I dropped them off at school, I was playing the lottery. They’ll probably make it home alright, unless their numbers come up and someone picks their school for the next massacre.

    We all play it now. And we know it. In the backs of our minds, we might consider as we sit in a movie theater where the exits are in case we need to leave quickly.

    As more and more places install metal detectors and do bag searches, we’re reminded of the lottery. Our numbers might come up.

    Of course, there are other ways to die that come without warning. Car accidents, heart attacks, and strokes, but we can try and do something about those. We can lose weight, exercise, eat better, and drive slower and more carefully, but you can’t do anything about lottery. Not unless we want to wear body armor every day for the rest of our lives.

    We’ll see the same results of the winners of this sick and twisted lottery. The survivors will mourn. Some will suffer PTSD for the rest of their lives. Their loved ones will cry, scream, curse God, and wonder why… WHY, in the name of all that is holy does this shit happen? Why do we do nothing while it happens?

    Then the other voices will sound. The ones that live in fear, the ones that demand the rest of us live in fear. We can’t stop them all, so why bother trying? It’s not the gun’s fault. They could do the same thing with a knife!

    But they can’t. You could fight a man with a knife and have a chance of surviving. A man with a gun will shoot you long before you reach him. Someone tried yesterday.

    If only we were all armed!

    A deranged fantasy we’ve all had about being a hero in a crisis situation, when in reality, in the chaos and confusion, concern for your family, who knows what they would really do? Who knows if they would have a chance. Maybe they’d die long before they knew they should draw their weapon. Maybe they would kill an innocent bystander by mistake. Maybe the police would mistake them for the shooter.

    And because those that cater to our fears have the ears of our political system, we will do nothing. The bodies will be buried. The blood cleaned up. The media will move on. What has that wacky Donald Trump been up to this week? And things will calm down.

    Until the next drawing of the lottery.

    Then we’ll all hug our children a bit tighter and go about our business as we live under siege.

    God bless America.

  168. Loos like the guys have the theological debate covered, so i’ll just jump in here with my trivial comment that i enjoyed the discussion about the pEllows. That is all.

  170. Comrade,

    I think thst I might take a second look at your doctrine of inspiration.

    1. What does it mean for a book to be “written by God”?

    2. How do we tell the difference between a normative command and a circumstancial rule for a specific purpose?.

    3. Is it rational to assume that God has moral obligations and duties to mankind in the same way that we do to each other? If not, then is it rational to compare Gods commands to a nation to the commands of a mere man to a nation? What I mean to say, is there a difference between Hitler commanding genocide and the omnibenevolent, omnipresent, omnipotent Lord of the cosmos commanding the death of a civilization?

  171. you guys are so great. great podcast.heeellllllloooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!
    but seriously.
    great if not best episode.
    -hell in houston-
    he is a horrendous “IT”

  174. Again, you’re reading quite a lot into one phrase out of an entire document.

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

    The focus isn’t on God, it’s on men. Indeed, if we seek to resolve the bible with the Declaration of Independence, it is not possible. For Paul, Peter, Jesus, and John the Baptizer all called upon citizens to obey and submit to governments far more abusive and despotic than the one the Founders rebelled against.

    We’re dealing, therefore, with a new non-Christian approach to the idea of human rights, one that focuses upon the people.

    Our rights are derived from our shared common humanity. There may influence of Christianity in these rights, but they are not dependent upon Christianity or Theism.

    It is not insulting to say that the Founding Fathers were born before the theory of Evolution was written down by Darwin and that we have the benefit of scientific knowledge that simply did not exist in their time. I don’t think it’s arrogant or prideful to suggest that at least some of the Founders, who you point out were educated, would have viewed the origins of mankind very differently had they had access to that knowledge.

    And if you cannot assert your rights before the King, then you do not really have them. They are again privileges extended at the pleasure of the Lord and not really rights at all.

  175. What does it mean for a book to be “written by God”?

    Not asking for a lot, are you? 🙂

    The traditional American Evangelical view of the bible is probably best summarized by the Chicago statement on biblical inerrancy:

    1. God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God’s witness to Himself.

    2. Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms: obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.

    3. The Holy Spirit, Scripture’s divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.

    4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives.

    5. The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible’s own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.

    Needless to say, I don’t agree with this any longer. My personal view of scripture is pretty close to this: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogerwolsey/2014/01/16-ways-progressive-christians-interpret-the-bible/

    Which is too long to quote here. More on your other queries later.

  176. 2. How do we tell the difference between a normative command and a circumstancial rule for a specific purpose?

    Applying the view of scripture I linked to, you would need to wrestle with the passage. Look at the context, tradition, how much weight we give the book it is in, the different views and interpretations of the passage, how it fits with the person and character of Jesus Christ as revealed in the gospels, and how it fits with the lens of love, justice, and compassion.

    3. Is it rational to assume that God has moral obligations and duties to mankind in the same way that we do to each other? If not, then is it rational to compare Gods commands to a nation to the commands of a mere man to a nation? What I mean to say, is there a difference between Hitler commanding genocide and the omnibenevolent, omnipresent, omnipotent Lord of the cosmos commanding the death of a civilization?

    Again, not a light or easy question. You’re basically asking me to resolve Euthyphro’s dilemma: is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God.

    Or conversely, does not prohibit murder because it is morally evil or is it morally evil because it is prohibited by God.

    Rather than dive into the philosophy, I will simply say that I think good is good because it agrees with the character and nature of God, and thus God cannot command murder and genocide because they are morally repugnant to His nature.

    Plenty of civilizations have died due to natural circumstances, and the Old Testament is filled with tales of God’s judgment upon civilizations. If God really wanted the Amalekites or Canaanites wiped off of the face of the Earth, He could have done it Himself. That He supposedly commanded His followers to commit murder and genocide and get their hands bloody tells me that those ‘commands’ were more likely the interpretation of oral history by a pious author than a divine imperative.

    (Aside from which, I have a difficult time imagining Jesus Christ to be that bloodthirsty, ruthless, and cold-blooded.)

  177. Comrade,

    Ill just put all my cards on the table. I think that there may be possible to answer the three questions in a way that is nuanced, and still upholds our understanding of plenary inerrancy. Perhaps we could discover one that meshes with your skepticism and moral outrage?

    To the first question, I want to be more specific and drive the dialog forward. What does it mean to say that God “inspired” these texts? Your link provides a hermeneutic, but doesnt directly answer the question. I think that you will agree that the scriptures are not “dictated” by God a la Islam. So in what way are they inspired? Try to answer from an inerrantist perspective. Especially in light of the old testament.

  178. Regarding 2…

    Would you then grant that its possible for the many uncomfortable verses in question to be merely circumstancial and aimed at a specific purpose? Even if we arent in a position to know what those purposes may be?

    3. You slightly misunderstood my question. Im not asking whether a thing is good because God commands it or if God commands it because its good. Im asking if God Himself has any moral responsibilities or duties to us. Can one say “God is obligated to treat me in such and such a way”. Or “God is obligated to grant me immortality” or “God is obligated to make sure I live a happy life”. Is He? If so, why? If not, then can God really be said to have done anything wrong in the old testament? Especially considering many of the verses in question were aimed at specific conditions and specific purposes?

Related Posts