The Virgin Birth and the Immaculate Conception

Lots of people get these confused. The Virgin Birth of Christ, which is 

taught in Matthew and Luke, says that Christ was conceived in

Mary’s womb without sexual intercourse, through a divine miracle. It is 

accepted by Catholics and conservative Protestants.

The immaculate conception of Mary is the doctrine that Mary herself was

conceived in her mother’s womb free of the stain of original sin. It’s a 

Catholic doctrine that Protestants deny on the ground that the Bible teaches

“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

The poached egg argument

“A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse… But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. 
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The Donald Trump of atheism

Dawkins is kind of the Donald Trump of atheism. But he has his following, just as Trump does. 

Does the Bible support slavery? Well, it depends on what parts you cut out.

Apparently slaveowners were afraid to let their slaves read the whole thing, because they might rebel if they read it.

Here. 

Is there anything you accept on faith?

I think it is Dawkins' view that you should never take anything on pure faith. But on the one hand, if you take statement X, and say that statement needs proof, then someone might say ask for proof of that statement, and then ask for proof for that statement, and then ask for proof for that statement. etc. So there  has to be something you believe that doesn't have to  be proved by something else.  Is what you believe without proof something you believe on faith? If so, what are those things you don't need proof for? 

Is gay monogamy a myth?

I think the tendency on the part of people of a more conservative bent to nonetheless find gay marriage acceptable depends largely on their ability to see gay marriage as a mirror image of straight marriage, only with a same-sex as opposed to an opposite sex couple. Some, however, doubt that this kind of mirror image can exist in the gay community. 

“Male homosexuals are very seldom monogamous,” Dr. Elizabeth Iskander asserts, “they overwhelmingly reject the type of relationship most heterosexuals think of when they think of marriage: a long-term relationship where sexual activity is strictly limited to one’s marriage partner.”

Here. 

A gay rights slogan

It is a slogan to say that allowing gay marriage allows gay people to be who they are. 

Is a person's true identity to be found in their sexual feelings? Not their beliefs, their ideas, their friendships, their occupation, etc? What about people who never find the right person to have a relationship with? Are they unable to be who they are?

Wherever you stand on issues like this, beware of slogans. 

Punting to the government for our morals

Why do we always punt to the government to decide whether something is right or not? That is, if we think something is wrong, we want the government to pass a law against it, and if the government doesn't pass a law against it, we assume it's OK? There was a woman in Colorado who was asked why she smoked marijuana during  her pregnancy, and she replied by saying that since the government said that smoking pot was legal, she figured it was OK for her to smoke pot while pregnant. The government need not be our moral compass, or abortion, on homosexuality, on marijuana, or on whether it's OK to tell a woman you love her in order to get her to go to bed with you, even though you don't. Nor should it decide whether it is OK to show up at funerals of AIDS victims with "God hates fags" signs. Of course it's not OK, but we don't want the government stopping it either.  

Adam, Steve, Donald, and Melania

It seems to me that you could take the anti-gay position from a theological point of view (homosexuality is wrong in God's eyes), and still support same-sex marriage in the civil realm. This is what most people do with respect to Donald Trump's marriage. If we are enforcing Christian standards in the area of marriage through government, then you would have to say that someone who is dumping his wife for a younger woman for the second time, and is a well-known serial adulterer, should not be given another marriage license.  Instead, we ask him "are your prior divorces final," and if they are, he gets a license. If you are going to say that Adam and Steve can't get married because of what the Bible says, then you also have to say that Donald and Melania can't get married because of Mt 5:32 and other passages.

Abortion and demographics

People who accept traditional understandings of these monotheistic religions have a greater tendency to oppose abortion that those who are, say, religious skeptics. But the arguments on both sides of the issue rarely mention God or the Bible directly. 

What does "abortion is murder" mean?

What exactly is packed into the idea of murder is interesting. For example, if you do not believe that the things whose life you are taking is a person, is it still murder? Is manslaughter murder?

 What if you deceive yourself into believing that some being who clearly are persons are not persons---Jews, for example? In cases like that my intuition support the use of the word “murder” because the perpetrators clearly and unmistakably ought to believe in the personhood of their victims, even if they do not. Is abortion murder in that sense? Is the full and complete personhood of the fetus so clearly true that to deny is to, to use Paul's phrase, "suppress the truth in unrighteousness?"

What if you take the life of a person for reasons that you morally justify taking the life of a person, but sub specie aeternitatis, they do not justify the homicide? Are you then a murderer? 

 The word homicide does not carry the negative connotations of the word murder. Should the word murder be used for all homicides that lack moral justification? 

It looks as if the term "murder" in the context of abortion, even if appropriate, needs some parsing. 

What should the punishment be for abortion if it is to be punished?

Pro-lifers believe that abortion is not currently a crime, due to Roe v. Wade, but it should be one. Though, interestingly enough, they often think that abortion providers, not the women who get the abortions, should be punished, and the punishments they recommend are not nearly as severe as the punishments for first degree murder. Does this make sense? If pro-lifers are right about the fetus, what kinds of punishments should there be for the parties involved in an abortion? 

Is there a dissonance between the legal and the moral arguments concerning abortion?

Roe is based on this argument:

1. The right to bodily autonomy, and privacy with respect to medical decisions (absence any superior countervailing right) is known to be established by the Constitution. For example, as decided in the Griswold case from 1962, state governments do not have the right to prohibit artificial birth control.

2. The fetus's right to life prior to viability is not a right we can be sure of. Reasonable opinion differs as to whether the fetus has such a right.

3. A right of which we are certain takes precedence over a right over which there is uncertainty.

4. Therefore, because of the uncertainty with respect to the fetus's right to life, the right of the mother to bodily autonomy and medical privacy takes priority, and a woman has a right to an abortion prior to viability.

What do you think is the bad premise in this argument, (if you think there is one)? What is surprising to me is that the anti-Roe legal arguments seem to concentrate their firepower on premise 1, but people interested in the moral issue of abortion object to premise 2. There seems to be some dissonance between the legal arguments on Roe v. Wade and the moral arguments concerning abortion. Does anyone besides me find this troublesome?

Abortion and the beating heart

I've never understood the significance of the heartbeat in the abortion controversy. The brain, not the heart, is the organ of thought, and the heart is a blood pump. Either life begins at conception, or the development of the cerebral cortex is what is relevant. Is this another example of pro-life political pragmatism?

Moral relativism and the Holocaust

If you are a relativist, whether the Holocaust was OK is just a matter of human perspective. If the Nazis had won WWII, and history is written by the winners, then if Hitler had won WWII the history books would praise the Holocaust as one of Hitler's great accomplishment. It was how Hitler and those who followed him felt about it right, and if morals are relative to how people feel about it, then the history books would be right. When you say that there is no objective truth in the area of morality, this is what you have to swallow. Or, again, look at hatred for homosexuals (who were also slaughtered in the Holocaust). Lots of people hate homosexuals, and many for reasons that have nothing to do with religion. If morals are relative, that is how people feel, and there is nothing really wrong with that. If you are going to be a moral relativist, you've got to be a consistent one, but most people aren't consistent in their relativism, by any stretch of the imagination.

Christianity and anti-Semitism

There are, unfortunately forms of anti-Semitism that Christians have engaged in. Hitler's version of anti-Semitism, however, is really incompatible with Christianity, because it said that what is wrong with Jews is not their religious choices (failure to accept their own Messiah), but rather what is wrong with them is their race. That is the race that produced Jesus, Paul, and all 12 apostles. In other words, one of that racial group is God Incarnate, according to Christianity. Why any Christian would support Hitler is beyond me (though, I am sorry to say, many did).

Is this homophobia?

The position of the Catholic Church on this is interesting. They don't think, per se, that there is anything sinful about having a gay orientation. They just say that those who have such an orientation are called to a celibate life. 

Hard and soft determinism

Neither soft nor hard determinists believe that we are the original sources or causes of our actions. My act may be caused by my choice, but what caused my choice? That needs a cause, too. In determinism, causes are events which are temporally prior to the action. And those causes need causes, and therefore a chain goes back in time prior to when any of us were born. Given conditions millions of years ago, you could not have done otherwise that write this e-mail you just wrote me. Assuming that everything is material, for example, given the state of the material world 4 million B. C., and given the laws of nature, everything has to happen just the way it does. 

What soft determinism actually says is not that we are originating causes of our actions. What it says is that even though we aren't the originating causes of our actions, we can still be responsible for them just in case the immediate causes of our actions are our own will. There is a difference, for example, between consenting to sex and being raped, in that the consensual partner wanted the sex to occur, while the rape victim did not. Freedom, says the soft determinist, is the ability to do what we want to do. The fact that we were caused to want to do it doesn't affect our responsibility for our actions. 

The hard determinist, and the libertarian, look instead at the fact that we are not the ultimate source of our actions, that a number of things in place before we were ever born guaranteed that we would do what we did. Given this fact, the idea that we can deserve something bad for doing something bad, if determinism is true, doesn't seem right. 

Did Mueller come up with nothing?

Did Mueller come up with nothing? Certainly not. Just not the slam-dunk "unindicted co-conspirator" affirmation that might have provided a bipartisan basis for impeachment, which is what you need to get impeachment and removal. Leading Russian figures were indicted for a criminal attack on the American election system. Several American figures, including the former campaign chair, deputy campaign chair, and national security advisor, have all been convicted of felonies, based on questionable relationships with Russia and lying about it. Evidence of criminal activities were found which Mueller did not think to be part of the narrow scope of his inquiry, which he farmed out to other jurisdictions, such as the Southern District of New York. What they did not find was sufficient evidence that Trump or people in the campaign assisted in the basic Russian crime of interfering in our elections.

There was a crime against our country, and it was Mueller's job to prosecute those who were involved in committing it. Please, please, please, don't tell me that you're OK with a foreign government hacking into campaign computer systems and leaking secret stuff, so long as they do it to the Democrats and not the Republicans. The Russians try to do this in elections around the world. It was no witch hunt--Mueller did his job and was honest enough not to try to make illegitimate cases that could not be carried through to convictions. Where he did prosecute, no one has been acquitted. And yet, through all of this, he had to endure constant a constant media attack calling his investigation a witch hunt. Now Trump supporters are calling for Trump opponents to apologize and back off. Maybe. But Trump supporters need to apologize for their constant Mueller-bashing and witch hunt charges. Lots of people in the Trump orbit were guilty of inappropriate relationships with Russia, which is why they're going to jail. There was a major crime against our electoral system, a cyber 9/11. I was actually kind of hoping Mueller would indict a sitting President--Vladimir Putin of Russia. But he didn't. But don't call it a nothingburger. You don't have to be on the Left to have problems with a foreign government hacking our election system and a President who benefits from that hacking and then acts as if the Russians did nothing wrong, and even carries on conversations with their leader while insuring that we have no record of it. Trump consistently welcomed the fruits of this crime against our country, asked Russia to provide Hillary's hacked e-mails, and as President consistently has disregarded his own intelligence community's assessment that there is no reasonable doubt that this interference was the work of the Russians. . I would call that collusion after the fact (rather like being an accessory after the fact to murder), but that is not the sort of collusion that fell within Mueller's mandate to prosecute, and is not, I guess, illegal. It may be within reason to impeach the President on just these grounds, it is certainly something for Americans to take into consideration in 2020 when, as is expected, Donald Trump’s name will appear at the top of the Republican ticket.

We have not been given a definitive answer to the question of whether our President is so under the influence of a foreign government that he is likely to do things that are not in our national interest in virtue of his business interests or the undue influence that foreign governments might have over him. That is the proper subject, not of a criminal investigation, but of Congressional oversight.

Political idolatry

In general, I find political parties to be conglomerations of moral, nonmoral, and immoral concerns, producing some pretty accidental alliances. No Christian should be fully and completely comfortable with any political party. One can, I think support the party one think best embodies Christian principles at any particular time, but there are always going to be some things about your own party that make you cringe. If you think your own party is always completely right the opposing party completely wrong and evil, you are committing idolatry.