Tim Sweetman is an 18-year-old journalist, blogger, and student who lives near our nation's capital,
Washington D.C. He is much more widely known by his "code-name," Agent Tim. This name also serves as
the name of his popular blog, which has received over 750,000 visits since its debut three years ago. Contact Tim 
In the past few days, a few dissenting comments have been made on a very old article of mine, buried in the archives of Virtue Magazine. Andrew, the dissenter and objecter to my logic, has made some very interesting comments relating my popular article, Tolerating the Intolerable (It was caught by a pagan homeschooling email loop, where I was called “blatantly bigoted” among other names). Here’s what Andrew says:
This article is terribly written. I can’t follow the logic at all. What does this statement mean?
“Yes, you will call me intolerant and a bigot. But then again, I’m afraid the tables turn when you say that. Because how can you be tolerant of the intolerant?â€
First of all, the terribly written article–it was my third published article, so give me a little break. But after a tenth read-through, I’ve come to the honest conclusion that it really isn’t that bad of an article. Not quite New York Times material, but not bad.
Now, the logic. That’s something I can clarify for you.
As a Christian, I do not believe that we must “tolerate” other beleif’s. Now, before you chuck a rock at the screen, we need to define that tolerance. As I said in the article, tolerance is say “I’ll believe what I want to believe, and you can believe what you want to believe.†And both truths are equally true. This is called “positive tolerance,” “Accepting all religions as equally true, and allowing others to worship as they please because you have no right to criticize another’s truth.” No. Right. To. Critizice.
“It’s true because I believe it is true,†is, as I said, the accepted statement of today. I then went on to take this logic to an extreme to emphasize it’s utter fallacy.
Andrew responds:
I just think you guys are playing with semantics. No one has ever suggested that we allow people to “tolerate†murder because someone thinks it is okay to murder. That’s insanity. Society does not have to show “tolerance†to those who breaks rules that ALL REASONABLE people agree are important to the foundation of society.
Evangelical Christians seem to carry this faulty argument to ridiculous ends, arguing that tolerance itself is objectionable, an attack on their morals.
I never said anyone has suggested it, but if you actually take the logic itself to it’s extreme end, you end up with people saying that they have the right to steal, cheat, and lie.
Andrew continues:
Tolerance is accepting that on some issues, REASONABLE people can disagree about right and wrong. Tolerance isn’t accepting their truth to be yours, but accepting that their opinion is valid and they are entitled to it. Issues such as abortion and the rights of homosexuals fall into this category.
Exactly, Andrew. He’s right on. We can agree to disagree, and everyone has the right to believe as they want to believe. But that doesn’t mean that their truth is true because they believe it. In fact, as a Christian, I believe my truth is the ultimate truth (”BIGOT!”) and that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. That’s negative tolerance, “acknowledging another human’s religion and understanding their right to freedom of religion. You respect their beliefs but do not accept them as truth.” Really Andrew and I are on the same page when it comes to defining tolerance. He’s just as upset as I am about positive tolerance. See, the sad fact is, many people really believe that everyone’s truth is just as true as the next person’s. That’s just not so.
Andrew states one last thing that is interesting:
You are not welcome to impose your religious beliefs on me, and change the law to conform to your God, instead of mine. That’s tolerance.
I agree. I’m not working to “impose” my “religion” on someone else. I only share the truth, and you are left to decide for yourself. I can’t save you or make you come to Christ. God does that, not me. And I’m not talking about the God of your understanding, but *the* God.
God is a just God who demands perfection. And you and I well know that their is just no way that we can be perfect. Sure, we can be “good people” but we cannot be perfect. We’ve broken the Law of God: we’ve lied at least once, stolen, lusted, coveted, dishonered God’s name, and dishonered Sunday. Even if we’ve only done it once, we are guilty, and stand before God as guilty. He’s going to judge us by His law, and none of us have followed it perfectly.
So what are we going to do when we stand before God on Judgement Day? Are we going to be guilty or innocent? Well, obviously, we are going to be guilty according to the Law of God. And I think we both know where the guilty one’s go. And I wouldn’t want anyone to go there.
But the great thing about this is that God came to earth as a man to die in place of us. He took our punishment, death, upon himself, so that we might live and have eternal life in heaven. And all we need to do is to repent of our wrongdoing, our sin. Then we need to turn around and ask Christ to save us from that sin. We need to ask him into our lives, to save us from eternal punishment.
That’s who God is: holy, just, and merciful towards us, sinners. He doesn’t tolerate sin, and we have to answer for our wrongdoings, even if we consider them small things. They aren’t to God. So, what are you going to do?
P.S. Andrew, do you have a blog? If not, I think you should start one.
April 3rd, 2006 at 10:03 pm
Tim — I’m happy to agree and disagree with you. (And I’m sorry if I insulted your article at first — not very tolerant of me).
I don’t have a blog, but thanks for the suggestion …
April 3rd, 2006 at 10:40 pm
Dear tim,
great post. I always laugh when i hear about ‘tolerance’. what a stupid concept to have as a christian. God tells us to hate sin, and most of the things the world asks us to ‘tolerate’ are sinful. But, we are to love our enemies, but one can be intolerate and still love. Like when a mother is intolerant of letting her child watch rated R slasher movies, she still loves her child. In fact, that intolerance is probably a result of her love, to protect her child. Its the hatred that is usually asscociated with intolerance that gives the word intolerance a bad aura.
April 4th, 2006 at 2:30 am
Very well articlulated Tim! It’s always good to see a nice balanced response to a very touchy subject.
April 4th, 2006 at 6:47 am
Hey Andrew:
You said:
“You are not welcome to impose your religious beliefs on me, and change the law to conform to your God, instead of mine. That’s tolerance.”
I must beg to differ. That’s intolerance. Why? Apparently you are intolerant of anyone else imposing their religious belief on you!
Not to say that it is OK for people to be “forced” into a way of belief. But you see the fallacy of your statement. You believe that everyone should tolerate all beliefs, but you will not tolerate someone who does not tolerate all beliefs.
Another quote:
“Society does not have to show ‘tolerance’ to those who break rules that ALL REASONABLE people agree are important to the foundation of society.”
Why not? Is right and wrong dependent upon majority opinion? If so, what about rape? If you are a woman who has been kidnapped by a gang member, the majority of the generally REASONABLE people in the gang have no problem with rape. So then is rape OK when you are captured by the gang but NOT OK after you escape?
People will say that “you can’t legislate morality”. But I would say that you cannot do anything else! Legislation is at its most basic level an expression of right and wrong … basic morals.
Just because I pass legislation making criminal sodomy and prenatal murder crimes does not mean that I am “imposing my religion on you”. Religion is a system of beliefs. You, however, are still free to hold whatever beliefs you want; but you can no longer exercise those beliefs by murdering the unborn etc.
Our Constitution guarantees freedom of belief and freedom to speak and write your mind. It never says “Laws derived from a Judeo-Christian set of morals are hereby declared intolerant and null and void.”
In Him,
David S. MacMillan III
April 4th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Hey Tim,
I added your blog to mine. Very good post today. Full of grace and fact. Nice blend.
April 4th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Mr. MacMillan just made some excellent points with some examples. I had to chuckle at the whole “the majority of the generally REASONABLE people in the gang,” although there is nothing funny about rape or murder.
Having said that, I do feel sorry for Andrew, since he’s now involved in two discussions at once (one here, one at Virtue Magazine.). It’s tough enough to be in one debate when you’re outnumbered, let alone two.
:[
April 4th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
wow, i just now found your website (through a chain of links…somewhere along the way we’re linked! lol). anyway, your site is pretty amazing. it’s great to see there are people who stand up for who they are and what they believe - a great thing to see, indeed!
April 4th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
Good Post Tim!
In America you are free to believe what you want to, but no where are you forced to accept that all beliefs are equal.
As Christians we need to take a stand for what we believe (Jesus Christ is the Way the Truth and the Life, no one gets to the father but by him). No religion is equal to Christianity and we as Christians cannot accept the belief that society has imposed that all religions are equal.
The thing that separates us from other “religions” is that fact that if you go to Christ’s grave, his bones aren’t there, our faith is different than the others and we cannot accept that all religions are the same.
Amen Tim!
KP
April 5th, 2006 at 4:28 am
Just because I pass legislation making criminal sodomy and prenatal murder crimes does not mean that I am “imposing my religion on youâ€. Religion is a system of beliefs. You, however, are still free to hold whatever beliefs you want; but you can no longer exercise those beliefs by murdering the unborn etc.
Yes, you are imposing your beliefs on others. There is no reason to believe sodomy is harmful for anyone who isn’t a Christian (and, I would argue, it isn’t harmful for Christians either, but this is a different point altogether). What would be the point of making sodomy criminal? A “good” Christian should already not engage in sodomy if it is against his/her belief system; everyone else is going to burn in Hell whether they practice sodomy or not, right?
Do you have a single good reason for criminalising sodomy that does not involve vague, Biblical pronouncements? If not, why do you want to force non-Christians to adhere to the Bible?
I would also argue that you are imposing your religion on me when you force me to adhere to the view that a fetus is a person with a “right to life”. It is only after first accepting this premise, after all, that it can reasonably be argued that abortion is wrong.
Personally, I’m an atheist. It logically follows that I think all religious people are wrong, but I respect your right to religion and tend to hope that you will respect my right to NO religion as well. If there is good reason to suspect a practice that is considered sinful in Christianity is harmful (particularly if the act is harmful to persons other than the one voluntarily practicing it), we must seriously consider criminalising it like we have criminalised rape, murder, kidnapping, etc. etc. If there is no reason to suspect the practice is generally harmful (as in sodomy and premarital sex), then yes, I do think you are imposing your religion on others if you desire to criminalise it anyway.
(Apologies if the italics don’t work correctly. No preview button, alas.)
April 5th, 2006 at 8:17 am
I ask some similar questions, Anna V. Why de-criminalize Sodomy? Why was it criminal for so many years, and now there has been a push to de-criminalize it? Following your reasoning, why not decrminalize everything else? In what way does an action have to be “generally harmful?” I would say that Sodomy is physically, emotionally and spiritually harmful and studies would back that up. How is rape harmful if Sodomy is not? The follow-up question to all of this would be this: How do you determine if something is “harmful” or not? What would be the basis for that determination, and how could you, knowing your reasoning, elevate it to something that you would require all people to support and adhere to? How is that any different than my upholding the Bible and wanting to govern from its foundation, and what makes your basis better than the Bible?
April 5th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Why de-criminalize Sodomy? Why was it criminal for so many years, and now there has been a push to de-criminalize it?
Perhaps because the United States no longer consists of pretty much exclusively Christians? If everyone’s a (conservative) Christian, then logically no-one’s going to care an awful lot about some law about sodomy, whereas if more and more people become non-religious or simply more moderate, it makes sense to argue against sodomy being illegal, since the basis for its being illegal is essentially a couple of verses in the Bible. Just because this was relatively recent does not seem to be a very good argument against it. Homeschooling was illegal in many states for many years and was only recently decriminalised everywhere, but surely we agree that the legalisation of homeschooling was a good thing?
Following your reasoning, why not decrminalize everything else?
Well, I don’t follow your reasoning here at all. How do you get from my arguments to “why not decriminalize everything else?”?
I would say that Sodomy is physically, emotionally and spiritually harmful and studies would back that up.
Perhaps you could cite the studies that have conclusively shown that sodomy is harmful. Evidence would be nice.
How do you determine if something is “harmful†or not?
A good question. In some cases, of course, it’s pretty straightforward, e.g. rape, murder, theft, etc. There are, of course, cases that are ambiguous.
As a very general rule, I would say that anything that consenting adults (ALL parties) engage in is permissible. Harm usually occurs when one party in an interaction does not consent, as in rape, murder, etc. etc. (One exception, however, comes to mind immediately, which is that of mentally ill and addicted persons, who must sometimes be protected against themselves.) Of course churches and other groups may make abstinence from certain “permissible” acts a requirement for membership, but the state has no business making this decision for rational adults.
I think this approach is better for the simple reason that it leaves you free to lead your life in a conservative-Christian manner, abstaining from sodomy and premarital sex and what-have-you, while still protecting the members of society from other people, whereas your approach would make it impossible for me to engage in activities that are only problematic within certain religions.
April 5th, 2006 at 10:15 am
Anna,
First of all, thanks for stopping by (from England? Canada?). I see where you’re coming from, especially from the view of an atheist. I mean, no God or god means no One defines right and wrong. It truly is up to the human beings to decide what morality is, and whether or not they personally believe sodomy or abortion is immoral.
But none of us can deny the fact that we have a conscience, which means with knowledge.
Really, if your conscience is allowed to do its duty, it will speak to you of God’s existence. But if you decide to deny that inner knowledge, according to the Bible your conscience is “seared” and deadened. So, right now, I want to speak directly to it, in an effort to resurrect it. But in order to do this, I need to use a few of the Ten Commandments–what the Bible calls the Law of God.
God’s Law is like a mirror. Not a pretty sight for any of us. So, my first question for you to answer for me is this:
Would you consider youself a good person?
When that is answered, we can continue the discussion leading to the main question you are asking: can you legislate morality?
April 5th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Tim,
For the record, I have read the post in which you discuss your general strategy for attempting to convert people to Christianity. Do not think I have not seriously considered religion and the existence of God. I was raised within the church. I went to Sunday School. I even attended Christian schools up until last year, when I graduated secondary school. Neither the Bible, nor writers like C.S. Lewis, nor the famous Christian blogs such as the Rebelution, Albert Mohler’s blog, or your own blog, for that matter, have managed to convince me that Christianity is the One True Religion. I do not think you will manage now.
But feel free to try, I suppose.
Would you consider yourself a good person?
This question is practically rhetorical, but yes, of course.
(As to the question where I’m from: the Netherlands. Born and bred, as they say.)
April 5th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
Following your reasoning, why not decrminalize everything else?
Well, I don’t follow your reasoning here at all. How do you get from my arguments to “why not decriminalize everything else?�
It was a question. Why not? What is your basis for criminality or wrong or right?
You answered:
As a very general rule, I would say that anything that consenting adults (ALL parties) engage in is permissible.
So, then, if your spouse consented to having sex with another person, that would be okay? If two consenting adults decided to kill each other, that would be okay?
April 5th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Mike,
Quick answer, because it’s getting quite late where I live.
I mentioned in my initial post that I would base the decision of what ought to be illegal on the criterion of harmfulness and stated that I considered sodomy to be harmless and therefore, that it ought to be legal. You then, somehow, made the giant leap to “everything should be decriminalised”, which is frankly silly, and I therefore wondered what the reasoning was behind this leap of logic.
As to your two hypothetical situations: in the adultery case, ALL parties do not in fact consent; you are ignoring a third party, the partner.
If two consenting adults decide to kill each other, and they are both okay with being killed (essentially, a double suicide case), then I don’t really have a problem with it. However, suicidal persons are usually mentally ill and cannot truly be considered consenting adults, as rational thinking is often seriously impaired during mental illness. (Mentally ill people, in that sense, would be more like children, whom we also need to protect against themselves.)
April 5th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
anna,
“However, suicidal persons are usually mentally ill and cannot truly be considered consenting adults, as rational thinking is often seriously impaired during mental illness. (Mentally ill people, in that sense, would be more like children, whom we also need to protect against themselves.)”
Do you think these mentally ill adults should have full adult rights? or should people mentally ill be deemed minors due to their mental state?
And about your beleifs about there not being a God. If you think there isn’t a God, why do you think that because of your belief, and many few others, there isnt a God. Does majority opinion have to do with the truth? If i thought hard enough that i am the president of the world, am I really the president of the world?
2 corinthians 4 states (copy and pasted from a digital bible)
1)Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart,
2)but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.
3)And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing,
4)in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
5)For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’ sake.
If you read that carefully enough, you might notice that according to the vurse your ‘mind has been blinded’ not to see Jesus in his true glory.
For your own sake, in the end, you will not want to be blinded. and if you continue in your ways, on that last day you will regret not turning to Christ. I Pray that God to show you his glory, and how how sinful you really are, and the only way not to be doomed to an eternity in hell is to repent and to turn to Christ.
its your soul.
*if anything is wrong or bad in this comment please feel free to delete it hastily tim*
April 5th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
I forgot to add this, and its the best part *whacks forehead*
Jesus is the only one that can save anyone, Jesus is the only name given among men by which we must be saved. and His saving of you is all his work. repent and turn to Christ.
April 6th, 2006 at 4:15 am
Do you think these mentally ill adults should have full adult rights? or should people mentally ill be deemed minors due to their mental state?
This is a false dilemma. Seriously mentally ill people should neither be given full adult rights nor treated as minors. It is in the first place their family’s job to protect them, keep them physically safe, ensure that their finances in order, etc. If the family cannot or does not perform this duty, the state can step in and involuntarily admit the person to the hospital or assign a “mentor” to oversee the person’s finances. (I am not sure if such a position exists in the USA.) This, however, can only occur if there is reasonable evidence that the person is a danger to himself or to others. If there is no such evidence, the person should be given full adult rights.
As for your proselytizing, it seems clear that there are two options here:
I’m right and you’re wrong. I am not blinded to God’s glory or whatever, you believe in a fantasy and sadly, a great deal of the world’s population does, too.
Alternatively, I’m wrong and you’re right. God has, for mysterious reasons, decided to blind me to His glory, thereby dooming me to Hell. Nevertheless, I am supposed to believe that He is a loving God who cares about me.
The first option seems more likely to me, especially as you have yet to make a convincing case that God exists. Your argument is circular logic. The Bible is true because it is God-breathed, God exists because the Bible says so. Do you see how unconvincing this is?
As for, “does majority opinion have anything to do with the truth?”, clearly, this is not where I base my opinion on. Atheists are a minority in most, if not all, Western societies. It is easier to turn this argument against you, as you belong to the majority (at least in the USA).
There is no point in talking about the saving grace of Christ or Hell for unbelievers when you have yet to convince me that any god even exists in the first place.
April 6th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Anna V.:
It’s not true to say that God has blinded you to His glory. There are three areas of evidence for the existence of God: nature (there must be a sufficient cause for the universe and for design in the universe), your humanity (you are a person and therefore must come from a person), and the Bible. You don’t live in a vacuum; you live in the world that God created and you are a creature of God.
April 6th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
You should read the other blog for the ongoing arguments on tolerance. I can’t rehash it all here.
http://www.virtuemag.org/articles/tolerating-the-intolerable
But there is one thing I’d like to address, especially to David S. MacMillan III, Walker and Kierstyn P. There is a distinct Christian arrogance to your assumptions about what tolerance means. At the heart of tolerance is the teaching of Jesus, who told us that the meek shall inherit the earth. I don’t see any humility in your willful refusal to tolerate dissent.
April 7th, 2006 at 2:58 am
Gabriel,
Thank you for your answer. I do not, however, find any of your lines of evidence convincing.
Nature: It is, I admit, difficult to imagine that the universe came into being spontaneously. However, it is no less difficult to imagine that an eternal supernatural force, the “uncaused cause”, did it. Both seem extremely unlikely; nevertheless, one of the two must be correct. I see no particular reason to prefer the God-did-it explanation over a spontaneous beginning.
Humanity: I am not entirely sure what you mean by this. Yes, I come from a person (a modern human). However, if you go back through the line of ancestors, they will stop resembling modern humans so much. As you go back milions of years you will meet (among others) Homo erectus, Australopithecus afarensis, and eventually the common ancestor of human beings, chimpanzees and bonobos. My humanity is sufficiently explicable through evolution (and in fact is a lot more interesting that way).
The Bible: I am sure we are in agreement that the holy texts of all religions other than Christianity were written by man. Personally, I see no reason to assume that the Bible wasn’t written by man as well. Not all religions can be right, but it is quite plausible that they are all wrong.
April 7th, 2006 at 11:59 am
4)in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
If you would notice, God dosent doom you. the god of this world(notice the lower case), satan, blinds.
ok, since your so sure in yourself that there isnt a God, and that the bible isnt true, so what? What is the meaning of life? do you have a purpose? you were born, then you live, then you die, then what? nothing? poof? whats the point of being a good person(as you call yourself) if its not going to matter? whats the point of anything if its not going to matter?
God showed me through the bible that I do have a purpose here in this life. I have a reason to live.
April 7th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
Anna V.,
Humanity: What I mean is that a “who” is greater than a “what” and therefore cannot come from a “what” any more than water can rise above its source. If you say that matter is the ultimate reality what you are saying is that personality is not real.
April 8th, 2006 at 8:36 am
Walker,
Apologies. I hadn’t caught the “god of this world” thing. I’ve grown familiar with evangelical terminology over the past few months, but my Christian upbringing was different (not to mention that it was in Dutch), so it’s still kind of alien to me.
Yes, you are born, you live, then you die, and once you’re dead you’re pretty much just gone. Personally, I find this reassuring; I like life, but I don’t think I’d want it to go on forever. Not even “perfect happiness” in Heaven, as it is the contrast between great pain and happiness that makes the happiness great. Loss hurts, pain hurts, rejection hurts… but laughing and loving through the pain is what makes life worth living.
The point of being a good person, as you say, is the rewards it gives you. We are capable of empathy, and thus are capable of “feeling” other people’s pain. I cannot take pleasure in inflicting pain. Treating other people decently keeps me from experiencing guilt, gains me friends, keeps my life relatively conflict-free and gives me a greater chance at good job and study opportunities. What’s more, empathy allows us to become happy when we make other people happy.
Existential questions, of course, remain difficult. Each and every person will need to figure that out for themselves. Personally, I hope to gain as much knowledge as possible, make some kind of contribution to my field (biology, particularly evolutionary and/or developmental biology) and raise children, hopefully on a habitable Earth.
However, I should note here that one of the problems I have had with religion is exactly this: purpose. Okay, so I’m supposed to live and worship God and accept his guidance. Then when I die, repenting of my sins, Christ forgives and I go to Heaven to experience eternal happiness. So, um, what exactly is the point of this life?
Gabriel,
Thank you for the clarification. Unsurprisingly, I continue to disagree with you. I do not hold with Descartes’ dualism like you seem to do. Many animals also have personality. Have you ever had a cat or a dog? My cats certainly always had a unique personality. Dolphins, too, have self-awareness, personality, and a great deal of intelligence. Humans differ from other animals, particularly mammals, in degree, not absolutely. Personality is undeniably brain-based; it is real, but it is materialistic. I have a few pet theories as to why personality is so well-developed in humans, mostly to do with highly complex language, our social structure, and our capacity for imagination. I find it a far too fascinating question to close the subject with a simple “God did it” when the only argument in favour of the God-did-it explanation is personal incredulity.
April 8th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
[Obviously] I have been absent from this discussion for quite some time. So I will jump right in:
Anna V., I appreciate your desire to communicate your beliefs. If there is one thing I cannot stand, it is apathy and mediocrity (as evidenced by my blog’s name, “In Rejection of Mediocrity“). I am going to respond to a few of your original comments made to my first comment, then move on to more recent dialogue.
Yes, you are imposing your beliefs on others.
When a policeman arrests a teen for drunk driving, he is imposing his beliefs on the teen. He believes that law, order, and justice should be upheld, and that the public should be protected. That is as much an imposition of personal belief as would be a law illegalizing homosexual acts.
There is no reason to believe sodomy is harmful for anyone who isn’t a Christian. . . .
As reported at Wikipedia.org, there are an average of 12,000 murders per year in the United States. CIA.gov, however, reports that there are 14,000 deaths due to AIDS in the United States every year. Medical science (I didn’t include a link because I didn’t really want to search for “homosexual intercourse and AIDS” with Google) has shown a direct link between homosexual intercourse and the formation of the AIDS virus.
That is just one reason. Here is another. I do not have the statistics linked, but in the average population the number of child molesters per capita is tens of times less than the per capita figure in the homosexual population. Deviant sexual behavior only breeds further deviancy, progressing to child molestation and rape.
A “good†Christian should already not engage in sodomy if it is against his/her belief system; everyone else is going to burn in Hell whether they practice sodomy or not, right?
You can say the same thing for rape or murder.
Do you have a single good reason for criminalising sodomy that does not involve vague, Biblical pronouncements? If not, why do you want to force non-Christians to adhere to the Bible?
I just gave you quite a few. However, I would like to ask you: Do you have a single good reason for criminalising murder that does not involve personal beliefs or a Judeo-Christian worldview? Don’t say public safety. Rather, tell me why public safety is important!
I would also argue that you are imposing your religion on me when you force me to adhere to the view that a fetus is a person with a “right to lifeâ€. It is only after first accepting this premise, after all, that it can reasonably be argued that abortion is wrong.
I agree that an unborn child must be human before one can argue that an abortion would be murder. But again, medical science has confirmed overwhelmingly that the mother and child are separate from the moment of conception. In fact, were it not for a special hormone secreted by the child from day 1, the mother’s body would recognize it as foreign and the immune system would destroy the child. When scientists have removed this hormone, this is exactly what has happened.
You tell me. How and why is a creature with a separate heartbeat, separate DNA, separate bloodstream, separate immune system, and separate hormonal structure somehow part of the mother’s body until birth? When in utero surgeries are performed, the child is taken out and put back in to the womb. Is the child alive when it is out during surgery and non-live when it returns?
Personally, I’m an atheist. It logically follows that I think all religious people are wrong, but I respect your right to religion and tend to hope that you will respect my right to NO religion as well.
I respect you right to choose to ignore God. But that is freedom of thought, not freedom of action. Just because someone’s religious beliefs (like yours) would allow or mandate illegal things like rape, polygamy, or child sacrifice does not mean that it is somehow OK because it is your religious belief.
If there is no reason to suspect the practice is generally harmful (as in sodomy and premarital sex), then yes, I do think you are imposing your religion on others if you desire to criminalise it anyway.
Why criminalise it if its is “generally harmful”? Who decides what is “generally harmful”?
———————————
Just a few quotes from you:
I cannot take pleasure in inflicting pain.
Well, just because you can’t doesn’t mean someone else can’t. Who are you to be so intolerant of those who want to practice their lifestyle apart from you?
The Bible: I am sure we are in agreement that the holy texts of all religions other than Christianity were written by man. Personally, I see no reason to assume that the Bible wasn’t written by man as well. Not all religions can be right, but it is quite plausible that they are all wrong.
Either the Bible is right and all other religions (including atheism) are false, or the Bible is false and some other religion/conglomeration of religion is true. I will not bore you with the evidence that the Bible is, indeed, inspired by God. I am sure you have heard it. So, I will ask you how you explain thousands of explicitly fullfilled prophecies written hundreds to thousands of years before the event.
The first option [that atheism is true] seems more likely to me, especially as you have yet to make a convincing case that God exists. Your argument is circular logic. The Bible is true because it is God-breathed, God exists because the Bible says so. Do you see how unconvincing this is?
That would be circular reasoning. But try this. If a book is published in 1611 and predicts something very specific will happen in 1948, and that something happens in 1948, isn’t it reasonable to assume that the book is of supernatural origin? (What am I talking about? The formation of Israel was predicted to the date in Deuteronomy. Click here.)
My humanity is sufficiently explicable through evolution (and in fact is a lot more interesting that way).
Funny. Evolution lacks one shred of fossil evidence and had never been observed in nature or in a lab, and yet somehow everyone is sure it is true.
Face it. Evolution has been disproven. Get over it! Admit that there is a God who created you and admit that you are accountable to Him for every time you’ve lied, cheated, had a dirty thought, dishonored your parents, or failed to put Him first in your life.
—————————–
Yeah.
In debate/argumentation/dialogue, there are two things that a person can do to attack another’s position: tie knots or poke holes. It only takes a few seconds to tie a reasonably tight knot, but it might take several minutes to properly untie it.
So instead of “tying knots” by inventing rabbit trails and red herrings, please “poke holes” in what I have said by showing where I am wrong. This way you are refuting what I have said rather than slowing down the process.
Agreed?
April 9th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Anna V.,
The reason I believe God did it is because no other explanation makes sense of what I know. There’s more to my choices than simple reactions to my material surroundings.
April 9th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Gabriel,
Then I will agree to disagree, as I have pretty much the exact same reason for my position (no other explanation makes good sense). I can’t prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
April 9th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
Dear Anna,
Yes like david, I am very happy you have come to ‘debate’. I would like you not to feel at odds with us christians, we are not the ones really ‘attacking’ you. If you feel any emnity with us, it is not really us you hate, It is He whom we represent that you have the problems with, as we are just relaying on the message. I tell you these thing out of love, that you would come to know this wonderful Father and lord that I know, who I love.
I Really, Really reccomend that you read the book of Ecclesiasties, in the old testament if you have a bible. If you dont here is a website that hoasts an online bible(and many other things). http://www.biblegateway.com
to your question:”So, um, what exactly is the point of this life?”
Im not going to say “according to the bible”, because this is ultimatly True and sure, this is NOT just a view point, this is the purpose of life, as writted by Solomon in the end of the book of Ecclesiasties.
Ecclesiasties 12:
10 The Teacher searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true.
11 The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails—given by one Shepherd. 12 Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them.
Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.
13 Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.
14 For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.
Please, read it over, and over again, mabey a hundred times if you must, untill you understand this short text. And if you dont understand it, I would advise you to pray for understand, of these words, and to pray for all the other things that are on your heart.
God bless-
April 10th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
David, Walker,
I’m hoping to get back to both of you tomorrow, but Tuesdays are usually busy days for me, so it might have to wait until Wednesday instead. (And I could’ve sworn that when I replied to Gabriel, your comment wasn’t anywhere in sight, David.) Anyway, hope you’ll have some patience if I take a little while to answer; I’ll formulate a response as soon as I have a reasonable amount of time to devote to it.
April 11th, 2006 at 8:35 am
Tim has set his blog so that all comments have to be approved before posting … which explains why you didn’t see my comment.
Talk to ya later!
In Him,
David S. MacMillan III
April 12th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
David,
First off, I should note that I see no real difference in discussion tactics between myself and “your side” (for lack of a better word). If anything, I have given you (and Walker, Gabriel, etc.) the advantage by permitting you to “tie knots”, to borrow your saying. I have not come up with any new arguments of my own but have restricted myself to refuting the arguments “your side” thought up. Poking holes, so to say. I am not inventing rabbit trails and planting red herrings. Point out where you think I am wrong, certainly, but do me a favour and give me the benefit of the doubt: I am not attempting to “slow down the process” (what process?) in any.
On to the more important stuff, then:
When a policeman arrests a teen for drunk driving, he is imposing his beliefs on the teen. He believes that law, order, and justice should be upheld, and that the public should be protected. That is as much an imposition of personal belief as would be a law illegalizing homosexual acts.
The crucial difference between the two is that the teen is putting a lot of people’s lives at stake, whereas the homosexual is not. (I’ll get into why the distinction is important a bit later on, at the “public safety” bit.)
As reported at Wikipedia.org, there are an average of 12,000 murders per year in the United States. CIA.gov, however, reports that there are 14,000 deaths due to AIDS in the United States every year. Medical science (I didn’t include a link because I didn’t really want to search for “homosexual intercourse and AIDS†with Google) has shown a direct link between homosexual intercourse and the formation of the AIDS virus.
That is just one reason. Here is another. I do not have the statistics linked, but in the average population the number of child molesters per capita is tens of times less than the per capita figure in the homosexual population. Deviant sexual behavior only breeds further deviancy, progressing to child molestation and rape.
Your chances of getting AIDS through sex are practically nil if you practice safe sex. Likewise for a committed monogamous relationship. With the proper precautions, homosexual intercourse poses no danger at all. Campaigns to get homosexuals to practice safe sex have had some success; the rate of infection among homosexuals is going down, whereas the rate of infection among heterosexuals is still going up, probably because many heterosexuals are still inclined to view AIDS as an exclusively gay disease. (http://www.fpnotebook.com/HIV11.htm, although I originally got the info from a different source. Can’t find it again now, though.)
As for the child molestation, I will not disagree with you that homosexuals do seem to make up a disproportionately large portion of child molesters. The vast majority of homosexuals, however, does not molest children, just as the vast majority of heterosexuals does not. Clearly, “deviancy” (I disagree) does not necessarily lead to true deviancy. Furthermore, I doubt that making homosexual intercourse illegal will do anything, other than cause a lot of trouble for adults engaging in consensual acts. Correlation does not equal causation.
We do not make it illegal to drink alcohol just because some people abuse it and start attacking other people or driving drunk. We make the attacks and the drunk driving illegal, recognising that these behaviours are harmful, whereas drinking alcohol in itself is not.
Do you have a single good reason for criminalising murder that does not involve personal beliefs or a Judeo-Christian worldview? Don’t say public safety. Rather, tell me why public safety is important!
Public safety is necessary for the continued existence of civilization. If everyone played judge, jury and executioner all in one, society would quickly degenerate into anarchy. In such circumstances, quality of living would drop dramatically for everyone, as groups can accomplish far more than any one person can accomplish on his own. For groups to function properly, however, there must be some basic level of trust; unless dealt with, saboteurs can quickly destroy this trust.
In short: it is advantageous for humans to live in groups, but groups would quickly fall apart if the members could not put their trust in their fellow group members.
You tell me. How and why is a creature with a separate heartbeat, separate DNA, separate bloodstream, separate immune system, and separate hormonal structure somehow part of the mother’s body until birth? When in utero surgeries are performed, the child is taken out and put back in to the womb. Is the child alive when it is out during surgery and non-live when it returns?
The child is clearly alive. This does not necessarily mean it must continue to live. Non-viable fetuses are routinely aborted (spontaneously). Implantation (of the blastula in the uterine lining) fails on a regular basis. Ectopic pregnancies happen (would you permit abortion in such a case?). There is no end to the things that can go wrong.
Mother and child are interconnected during pregnancy. The fetus forcibly gains access to the mother’s bloodstream during implantation. It is provided with passive immunity through maternal immunoglobins. It is wholly dependent upon the mother for nutrition and gas exchange. It may have a separate bloodstream and all that jazz, but the mother is going to have to carry it around for nine months anyway.
In any case, this has little to do with my pro-choice stance. To me, there isn’t much difference between an embryo and all the other possible embryos that could’ve formed if the two parents had had sex on a different day. It doesn’t know it exists. At the beginning of its development, it can’t feel pain. If the parents would like it to go on living, it’d be nice if it did. If they don’t, and it doesn’t, well, I can’t feel very sad about that.
It would be ideal if both the father and the mother would agree, but if they don’t, the mother’s opinion is more important, since the embryo is in her body and chances are it’s going to change her life a lot more than it will the father’s.
I respect you right to choose to ignore God. But that is freedom of thought, not freedom of action. Just because someone’s religious beliefs (like yours) would allow or mandate illegal things like rape, polygamy, or child sacrifice does not mean that it is somehow OK because it is your religious belief.
And:
Why criminalise it if its is “generally harmful� Who decides what is “generally harmful�
“I respect you [sic] right to choose to ignore God.” Seriously, what a brilliant line. No offense.
See the “public safety” bit just above for the answer to the first question.
As for the second question, I discussed this up above in a previous post, a bit: “As a very general rule, I would say that anything that consenting adults (ALL parties) engage in is permissible.” I think you’ll find that for the vast majority of issues, pretty much everyone already agrees. There are only some fringe issues on which debate is possible. In that case, both the persons in favour of criminalisation and those not in favour should present their evidence, and afterward we’ll vote (or our representatives will, in any case). That is, after all, how laws are made.
The process won’t always lead to the outcome I’d like best, but I accept that because it’s the only halfway acceptable way of going about it, in my opinion.
My idea here is to establish “ground rules” to protect people from other people. I have no interest in a Nanny State. Government has no business infantilizing citizens and poking its nose into private matters.
Well, just because you can’t doesn’t mean someone else can’t. Who are you to be so intolerant of those who want to practice their lifestyle apart from you?
You are confusing matters. Walker asked what the point was of being a good person. We were not talking about what should be permissible.
In any case, I have no problem with someone taking pleasure in inflicting pain, provided that the “victim” is a consenting, mentally healthy adult. If these conditions are not met, however, we once again find ourselves breaking my very general rule I mentioned up above.
If a book is published in 1611 and predicts something very specific will happen in 1948, and that something happens in 1948, isn’t it reasonable to assume that the book is of supernatural origin? (What am I talking about? The formation of Israel was predicted to the date in Deuteronomy. Click here.)
I read that post some time ago. What I wondered then, and still do, is if there is actually any specific date mentioned in the Bible passage that contains that prophecy, because the author so glibly declares that it comes out to exactly May 14, 1948. I tried to find the passage, but there doesn’t seem to be any mention of Cyrus in Deuteronomy. Maybe I missed it. In any case, absent a date and taking into account the extra day in February every four years, it comes out to somewhere between 11 October 1947 and 10 October 1948. Which is pretty close, although it does seem to require some interesting math work and interpretation of the facts. Jews do not seem to agree that the Jewish prophetic year is 360 days and in fact claim that it is a nineteenth-century Christian invention to make dates coincide. (See also: http://www.jewsforjudaism.org/web/faq/faq121.html, http://experts.about.com/q/Orthodox-Judaism-952/Daniel-9.htm)
I can’t say anything specific about your thousands of other prophecies, but it seems likely that historical events were matched to prophecies afterward, and no-one ever said, “Today this-or-that is going to happen, based on this-or-that prophecy” and was right.
Funny. Evolution lacks one shred of fossil evidence and had never been observed in nature or in a lab, and yet somehow everyone is sure it is true.
Face it. Evolution has been disproven. Get over it!
I’ve read both your articles before and was not convinced. Your excessive use of sarcasm does not encourage anyone who does not already agree with you to continue reading. I realise you think you have access to divine truth and thus are utterly certain, but if you’re trying to convince “evolutionists”, you might want to make your tone a bit less off-putting.
I have no idea what the reference to George Mendel is about, as Mendel didn’t influence science particularly until the early 20th century, half a century after Darwin published the Origin of Species.
I am curious why on earth you think sharing 98% of our genome with chimpanzees isn’t evidence that we’re related to them. What is your explanation for the huge similarity between the genomes of different organisms?
You say: We haven’t ever seen a mutation that not only made its owner more likely to survive but also added to the genome and would eventually lead to a more advanced species.
How about retrotransposons? Or gene duplication? That’s two mechanisms of adding to our genome right there. Another way is to incorporate viruses into our genome, which seems to have happened extremely often. Estimates are that 30% of our genome comes from viruses.
It is hardly necessary for a mutation to both add to the genome and provide a selective advantage. The addition needs only to be neutral, and this provides raw material that can undergo mutation in the future.
Any imperfect combination would either kill the mutating organism or would be automatically filtered out by the individual cell’s copying mechanism.
This is dead wrong. About three codons code for every amino acid. Therefore, there are a lot of possibilities that would all end up with exactly the same polypeptide.
The whole thing here is rather confused. You sound like you’re building a gene from scratch. How often do you think that happens?
But we have yet to find a case of mutations acting in concert with natural selection to turn T Rex into a toucan or a monkey into me. And we also have yet to find a record of anything half-way to becoming something else set in the stone of the fossil record.
Exactly what do you mean when you say we haven’t found a case yet of a monkey turning into you? What are you looking for? Evolution happening so fast that we can line up your grandfather, your father and you and say, “Look, it’s a primitive primate, something halfway between, and a human being!”?
Frankly, having read your post about Tiktaalik, I’m inclined to think that it really doesn’t matter what the palaeontologists dig up. Nothing’s ever quite intermediate enough.
.
.
Walker,
I do not hate Christians, and I do not know where you got that impression. I may find individual Christians a bit annoying, but it’s a big step from there to hate. Mostly I just find Christians, and very religious people in general, peculiar.
I read the text you posted. Several times. I understand what it says, unless by “understanding” you mean “agreeing with and considering it sufficient”. I am not going to follow your advice to pray, because it’s kind of silly to pray to a being you don’t even think exists. I tried it when I was younger. Never really did anything.
Anyway, after this excessively long response, I’m going to head to bed. Pardon any stupid mistakes I’ve made; I’d proofread, but I’m falling asleep at the keyboard.
April 16th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
Anna V.,
You said that personality was materialistic. How, within that framework, do you explain the desire for truth that all human beings have?
Do you have a single good reason for criminalising murder that does not involve personal beliefs or a Judeo-Christian worldview? Don’t say public safety. Rather, tell me why public safety is important!
Public safety is necessary for the continued existence of civilization. If everyone played judge, jury and executioner all in one, society would quickly degenerate into anarchy. In such circumstances, quality of living would drop dramatically for everyone, as groups can accomplish far more than any one person can accomplish on his own. For groups to function properly, however, there must be some basic level of trust; unless dealt with, saboteurs can quickly destroy this trust.
In short: it is advantageous for humans to live in groups, but groups would quickly fall apart if the members could not put their trust in their fellow group members.
So you believe in criminalizing murder, but not that murder is morally wrong.
April 17th, 2006 at 9:35 am
Gabriel,
You said that personality was materialistic. How, within that framework, do you explain the desire for truth that all human beings have?
What do you mean by truth? Is it essentially the same as knowledge?
Humans tend to see patterns where there aren’t any, or meaning where there is none. Ignorance may be bliss, but those who have a lot of knowledge and desire to gain more stand a much better chance of surviving than do those who do not. A desire to learn more about the world thus seems a pretty easy thing to explain without bringing gods into the discussion.
So you believe in criminalizing murder, but not that murder is morally wrong.
From my point of view, morality is pragmatic and is in essence a set of rules that contribute to the well-being of a group of people and thus, ultimately, to the individual.
Are you familiar with Tit for Tat, a strategy in game theory? (See Wikipedia, if you’re not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_Tat) Although it is of course a bit more simple than real life would be, it does provide evidence that, in the long run, cooperation can be more advantageous to the individual than attempting to maximize one’s own gains. Thus why we are taught not to steal, even though it would help us in the short term.
April 19th, 2006 at 10:54 am
In my opinion, you’re right about morality being a system of rules for a well-functioning society, but I think there’s a lot more to it than that. People feel real outrage when they hear of people being tortured horribly for another person’s pleasure, and it’s not simply because the person doing it is upsetting some arbitrary human-invented order of society.
April 19th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
In my opinion, you’re right about morality being a system of rules for a well-functioning society, but I think there’s a lot more to it than that. People feel real outrage when they hear of people being tortured horribly for another person’s pleasure, and it’s not simply because the person doing it is upsetting some arbitrary human-invented order of society.
Well, no, I quite agree with you there. (Apart from the word “arbitrary”. I don’t think there’s much arbitrary about the order of human societies. There’s only so many ways to make them work.) However, what I suppose I have made insufficiently clear, is the distinction between ultimate causes and proximate causes. The ultimate cause is, in my opinion, that morality benefits the group (nowadays, I think many people conceive of the entire human species as “the group”).
I doubt many people get outraged at injustice out of concern for the stability of the group. They get upset because they can imagine themselves in the other’s position, because the other is considered to be part of “us”. (It’s amazing what we will do to other people if they are considered “them”.) Sometimes they get upset because they believe it is against God’s (or Allah’s, or whoever’s) will. There are probably other reasons to get upset. These are the proximate causes.
By my reasoning, the ultimate cause provided the impetus for the evolution of the proximate causes. Thus, we feel outrage because we empathise, and we feel empathy because it is beneficial for our survival to do so.
.
Anyway, this is kind of dragging on and on. I’m starting to feel as if I’m repeating myself. Unfortunately, with such fundamentally different perceptions of the world, it’s hard to reach consensus on, well, anything. Unless someone has anything substantial left to say, I’d like to call it quits.
April 20th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Andrew,
If you happen to stop by here, we could continue the discussion here. I still have my last reply, but don’t know if you replied to my 2 answers.
~Sparky