LGBTQ+ Rights and Religion

But if he is not good, why would you follow him? If his own morality is so alien that he could stray into immoral behaviour or even encourage it, then isn't he the last thing to base a system of morality on? After all, why should you follow something that encourages immoral actions? You're basically saying that God is not worthy of being a source of morality because he's incapable of being bound by it himself.

@Pykrete: Or omnipotent. According to the rabbi at my mom's synagogue, the idea that God is omnipotent is relatively modern, and he's inclined not to believe it.

I think you missed an arrow there.

I don't much mind people thinking homosexuality is sinful. Either we can agree to disagree or simply stop seeing each other.

It only bothers me when people use it to attempt to control my life, either through laws or simply by yelling slurs at me as I walk by.Though that doesn't bother me near as much as stuff like this.

Just because you have a firm belief about something that doesn't relate to you doesn't mean you can be an ass about it.

edited 8th Dec '12 8:04:28 PM by Matues

Well, again, if—a large "if," I grant you—there's an omnipotent, omniscient Creator-God out there, then I maintain that He's worth following and obeying. No matter how alien His morality is, if He's what He appears to be then His is the only genuine morality on tap, however I might feel about it on an emotional level. For reasons I alluded to above, such a Being by His very nature doesn't encourage or have any truck with immoral actions—calling them "immoral" implies a standard of morality external to this Being, which would make Him something less than omnipotent.

And as for Matues and Hydronix: your objections are reasonable. However, this thread is designed to address religious perspectives on homosexuality. As I said earlier, this requires addressing religious arguments on their own terms. If I didn't believe in the Christian God, then it's kind of obvious that Christian arguments wouldn't cut much ice with me. If I could only address the arguments from an extra-religious perspective, though, I'd have come to the wrong thread.

edited 8th Dec '12 8:07:45 PM by Jhimmibhob

So, you don't believe there is such a thing as secular morality?

Ah.

Then you would be right. An omniscient being would, by definition, know everything there is to know, and would be able to grasp the entirety of the universe at once and arrive at the best possible conclusion as to how to act.. but.. that requires a goal to be acted towards.

I mean, if He were acting to create the highest possible amount of peace, the rules would be different than if He were trying to do the inverse.

If God is acting towards the highest amount of Good, that depends on what Good is defined as.

God wants Good and anything God wants is Good?

edited 8th Dec '12 8:19:36 PM by Matues

Still, God being omniscient and omnipotent doesn't necessarily mean he has our best interest in mind.

Yes, but he still has the best plan for whatever goal he does have in mind.

When you're holding all the cards, winning is easy.

@Jhimmibhob: So you're saying you'll follow anything powerful enough, or anything that claims to be powerful enough even if it's completely malevolent just because?

He's saying that if something has all the power, then it can't be malevolent because it gets make the rules about what's good and what's bad.

I once read that the proof that God is good is that you can say He isn't. *

Of course, it could also mean that He simply doesn't care about what a few inane organic water-bags clinging to a rock on the outside of a cluster of flaming gas balls and more rocks thinks.

edited 8th Dec '12 8:42:50 PM by Matues

However, Jhimmi, the actual laws cannot use anything with no actual reasoning to back it up as any way to change them.

I understand why they think that, but it is void of actual reasoning and usable logic.

If they can explain why they believe God is right, I'm willing to listen. But I can't listen to words that have no actual meaning here. God is not my actual boss. I do not listen to him for the sake of listening to him. I agree with a lot of what he has said, however. Like thou shalt not murder(which is to take a life under the guise of malice, which applies to everything beyond War, where it's actual self-defense, or in the case of literal self-defense. The Death Penalty notably does not apply to this logic, since, you know, no self-defense). Another is thou shalt not steal.(I admit I have made this mistake too, no lies, but I agree with this). Adultery is another one. I don't remember them all, mind you. Those three I fully agree with, however.

I do not agree in any consensus that God's spoken word alone actually means anything here. I agree it means something if you can give reasoning why. Murder makes it so one cannot be alive every again. Adultery is a direct misuse of trust. Theft hurts people directly. Not allowed to be homosexual... uhhhh... what reasons can be given? The whole reproduction thing could've made sense then, which I'll give, but that does not work anymore, now does it?

You're probably referring to Pascal's Wager. In which case, you can see most of the page I linked for why that doesn't really work.

No, not that.

It was something along the lines of: God is benevolent, because He allows you to disagree with him. If He were malicious, You would not have Free Will to disagree.

It thought it was interesting, but ultimately flawed. Trying to guess what an omni-being would do is like an amoeba trying to guess what a human would do.

That doesn't mean he's not malevolent. That just means your hatred of him furthers his plans in some way so he allows you to continue with it. He could still burn you for all eternity after you're done being his pawn.

edited 8th Dec '12 9:03:20 PM by Kostya

Or that He simply doesn't care.

There's many possibilities.

I think we may be drifting off topic.

The other question is, why would an omnibenevolent God see homosexuals as less than other humans or homosexual "acts" as somehow innately worse than other sexual acts?

Well, some homosexual acts are abusive and immoral. Just like some heterosexual acts.

Rape is bad. This seems obvious.

According to Bob, if God can do and understand anything, then he makes all the rules, so anything that anyone else thinks about morality (or anything else for that matter) means jack.

That's kinda besides the point...

Think harder.

Because in fact, most of the passages in the Bible seen as anti-homosexual are in fact condemning rape, pedophilia, and other such things which are illegal in secular societies too.

Oh, yeah.

Good point.

Thanks.

And sorry, by the way. That came out a little condescending.

It's okay.

@Ultrayellow: Well, it never directly condemned homosexuality(anal, however, has been, only because it was used as humiliation tactic, so in that sense, it was illegal, not actual homosexual sex, which is the relevant context in certain parts). It said "effeminate" when correctly translated. This is somewhat notable as "women" were seen as lesser in the Bible, so a man acting like that was considered wrong. This does make sense to a degree in that context.

Not anymore wrong of an idea, especially now though. But the past was different.

Paul, specifically, does mention about the "being true to yourself", and while he condemned sex in general, he did not see anything wrong with being manly, effeminate, etc in general.(they have some problems now, but you get what I mean) As noted a bit earlier, homosexuality was never used officially in the Bible. That's a bad translation either caused by bigotry, or simple misunderstanding of what effeminaty is.

I would argue a being as alien as you would describe is useless as a source of morality not matter its powers or awareness specifically because of its nature. Even assuming that its right if it will not or cannot explain its reasoning in ways that we can understand and universally agree on (and I think thread has proven that there are those who disagree with the common interpretation of those biblically passages) then we are not under any obligation to follow its directions.

And this is what it boils down to. You have a specific idea of what God is and are arguing from that position as if its a given. But the only reasons you've give is that this is the only way you can conceive of such a being. But just because you can only think of such a being in that way doesn't mean that others can't think of it other ways.

That's why I mentioned those tropes before. Because myself and others are capable of conceptualising different formulations of an ultimate being the onus is on you to prove that you idea of God is in fact the correct one. Until you do, your reasoning is to us hypothesising ahead of evidence at best. Less generously its just a case of GIGO, Garbage in, garbage out.