Before Going Back To Kung - Answer To Some Sy-ranger Hate Mail

IF YOU WATCHED the video of Jeffrey Kaplan explaining Russell's paradox I linked to a while back you would have seen that mathematicians and philosophers don't know one of the most basic facts about mathematics, they don't know if numbers have an objective existence or if they are a product of human imagination.  I think we know enough about the thinking of articulate birds and apes to know that it would seem they can think about numbers to some extent too, or for anyone who is disposed to believe they can think that they can conceive of them, too.  I do happen to think they have demonstrated that they can.  But that doesn't tell us if they have some objective existence that doesn't depend on consciousness.  

It is not only extremely relevant to this argument that one of the reasons the objective existence of numbers can't be confirmed is that they cannot be observed,  they cannot even be known to have any kind of material existence.   They cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed to have only a knowably subjective existence for the same reason.   Yet I will bet you anyone who claimed to not believe in the existence of numbers would nearly universally be taken as a total nut-job.  And they probably should be.

If numbers do have an independent existence then they exist apart from consciousness, so even a materialist who insists that our minds are an epiphenomenon of the matter that comprises our brains would have to explain how they could so be perceived by our materially bound brains and to have such a significant impact on our thinking, our lives, our science which is a consciously invented human attempt to use an imitation of the methods of pure mathematics to come to some conclusions about the physical universe of our perception and observation.

That's not an insignificant problem for ideological materialism, though the vulgar materialism of human greed and pop-kulcha deals with such problems by doing what vulgar pop-kulcha so much does about anything, they choose to not think about it.  But when a pop-atheist wants to engage someone on things like "the hard problem" especially if they want to do so under a framing of something pretending to be science or philosophy then an anti-materialist such as I am has every right to use the claims of materialists, atheists, the scy-rangers of scientism against them.

I don't believe animal minds, consciousness, are epiphenomea of mater, I think it is of a rather obvious different nature than apparently unconscious matter. That is what makes the materialists' "hard problem" of consciousness hard, they are using inapt methods, models, etc. for trying to understand something and force it to fit within the narrow confines of the thing they insist is the only real thing there is, the substance of material existence.  The current life-boat of materialists, "panpsychism" to attribute "consciousness" to seemingly unconscious matter is not much more than a last gasp effort to rescue what was always an extremely shallow and presumptuous ideological preference. It would certainly be no more successful than the rejected framing of vitalism or plain old materialism to explain human experience of our consciousness which would certainly seem to be different from what electrons or atoms or quarks do.  They'd have to relate two apparently disparate "things" which don't seem to be like things to start with.

The old-fashioned debunking of the idea that minds were not physical entities asked how a "spiritual" thing could interact with the physical body.  The question makes the mistake of assuming something which is not physical would be bound within the same potentials that physicality encompasses and wouldn't have qualities, potentials and abilities that surpass those of the physical bodies we are familiar with through our senses (of course, they can't even account for how our minds perceive things outside of our minds, to start with). They insist that something proposed to be unlike physical things must have exactly the same quality as physical things which would, for any possibility of conceiving or discussing them, beg the question by insisting on the materialists' conclusion be a premise of the argument. That is what I meant by them "begging the question." You should look up what that or any other "logical fallacy" means before you start throwing the term around because it doesn't mean it forces a question to be asked in the way you believe it does.

Science is certainly a human invention, like most human inventions invented within recorded history, its provenance can be known.  It is a series of methods and procedures which are supposedly stuck to by those who get to be called "scientists" and their work which is supposed to gain the reputed reliability of the science which does seem to tell us very reliable things about some simple objects or about some of the simpler aspects of more complex objects treated as if they were simple ones.  

Those newly seen galaxies that by the currently reigning models of cosmology shouldn't have developed that long ago can serve as both:

- an example of the ability of science to tell us about even things as complex as entire galaxies while not being able to tell us very much about the, no doubt, enormous complexities contained in such things so very far away;

- and as an example of how seemingly certain and durable knowledge of even things as well studied as atoms and sub-atomic particles and the general movements of planets and stars can be presented with things those so seemingly developed theories can't account for in very big ways.

I don't know how cosmology and physics is going to account for such seemingly very old galaxies, though I'd take that to be a temporary explanation, now that such well-established science seems to not match observation.   I do think it's worth coming to the conclusion that while science can give us some very useful and important and reliable information on some things and some useful and important though less knowably reliable information on other things, it also has its limits, even within something as reliably falling within scientific method as physics. None of it is anything like a complete view of reality.  

Applied physics, that is, theoretical physics such as is being done today is a mess in regard to following scientific methods, some of them demanding they be allowed to ignore the most basic aspects of scientific method, observation and so have their mathematical imaginings declared to be physical reality by fiat, not only without observation but without any rationally hoped for possibility of observation.  It is truly ironic that the culture of high-sciencyness  can so easily come to match the worst of academic theology of the kind materialist-atheist-scy-guys love to mock, even when they don't actually bother to read what was said.

There's a remarkable amount of science done by fiat in these secular, materialistic, atheistic, scientistic modern times.

If that last criticism of theoretical physics is to be taken seriously, and I think it's true,  then the university-based practice of allowing junk that never followed real scientific methods because what they claim to study can't be observed, can't be measured, can't really be analyzed apart from the ideological and other desires of those who are doing it, is even more a symptom of the decadence that science fell into under the regime of ideological materialism.  That is most in evidence in the alleged study of minds.  I almost called that the study of "mental phenomena" but, of course, since you can't see them, nothing to do with our minds really are phenomena, we can't see them, we can't really observe them. And that's the problem.

When they were founding university departments and then schools of "psychology" they insisted that minds were to be taken as being vulnerable to discovery through scientific methods by ideological fiat, by declaration, when there was absolutely no evidence that they then could be studied successfully that way and there has only been disconfirming evidence since then as one school and framing of psychology has been erected, has rather quickly fallen into decay, fell apart and was replaced by another cathedral of "science" built on the same sands of dishonesty the first generation of university based psychology built on.

The same can be said of other alleged sciences dealing with minds, singly and collectively, sociology, anthropology, cog-sci, neurosci, etc.  The scandal of the inability of scientists to replicate studies that were published in reviewed journals, accepted professionally and, in many cases built on, relying on the claims of those non-repeatable studies, the numerous cases in which papers published turned out to be based on wishful thinking by university based researchers and, in some notorious cases, outright fraud (which was also built on by later "researchers") shows that some of the biggest scandals of science are a product of the original materialist ideological programs and the decadence of alleged educational institutions in allowing them to cut more than just some corners in order to keep up with "science."  

I don't think minds are material, they certainly can't be observed even indirectly.  At best they can be reported on by individuals reporting on their experiences of consciousness and the reliability of those reports can't be tested.  I don't think science can tell us much about them.  I do think, especially, within psychology that it is a scandal that the research which has been the most rigorously conducted and measured and analyzed, the controlled research into parapsychology is exactly the research which is most vigorously rejected BECAUSE MATERIALISTS SUSPECT IT VIOLATES THE IDEOLOGICAL PREDILECTIONS OF THOSE IN CONTROL OF "SCIENCE".  

If that research isn't valid to show us something real about human experience, some peoples' abilities to do things like guess cards or pictures hidden to them and shielded from any reasonable possibility of sensory information informing their guesses, succeeding at rates exceeding chance by anything from thousands to millions to one is a real thing that physics can't explain and so is rationally believed to not be physical and some extra-physical cause of it must or at least may be held to be demonstrably real.

The ability is proven to exceed any scientific explanation, if anything to do with human minds has passed the test of scientific experimentation, it is those "things."   To declare it nonexistent by fiat in a baldly ideological use of "science" is to use science for something it can't legitimately be used for, which doesn't stop the Harvard based phony Stephen Pinker from citing the atheist-ideological cosmologist Sean Carroll to do that. Among the reasons that that ideological use of science as ideology is so telling about the decadence of current science is that from the time of Bacon and Descartes and Gallileo one of the reasons for coming up with scientific method was to shield the study of objects from ideological input.  Now it rules so much of what is supposed to be science.  I guess that's what happens when you relieve science of having to follow the rules of science. I could say a lot more about the current violations of the rules of science, such as it not being shielded from economic or professional interests, though it never really was shielded from those sources of pollution from the star.

And something like rigorously controlled correct card-guessing is one of the more banal of unexplainable experiences people have and, as they are the ones having the experience, they have a right to believe. I go much farther and hold that others have a right to find them credible though, as is generally the case with "rights" you can exercise them wisely or foolishly based on little to no checking of evidence or the character of those reporting their own experience.

Some of the most extraordinary experiences people have, singly and in groups, are some of the most impressive examples of what we assume are "things" related to Rhine's style of card guessing or the impressive Ganzfield series of experiments or those into what Dean Radin calls "presentiment" some of the most impressive of those rigorously conducted experiments.

As those spontaneous experiences don't happen regularly or predictably or to order, they couldn't be studied by science. You don't have to believe anyone who tells you about it but if someone I know to be reliable tells me they've had such experiences, who am I to disbelieve them?  I know them, I don't know the scientists whose studies I read.  I do know that anything that is published as psychology or sociology or, these days, theoretical physics without rigorous scientific verification has a far higher than average chance of being anything from methodologically illegitimate to just plain wrong to fraudulent.  I do know that that one area of controlled, peer-reviewed and reviewed by those hostile to it, parapsychology, is held to the highest standards of rigor of any experimental science including of experimental physics or chemistry, these days.  I have to trust someone, I'll trust those who regularly face their critics and retest using those criticisms to tighten their methods AND STILL COME UP WITH STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT RESULTS, generally of very high statistical significance.  I don't, though, agree with those who work in the field who believe minds are material in nature.  Not all of them do.   

I've never been much afraid of being declared to have cooties, the first time someone tried that with me in about the second grade I thought it was pretty stupid. I'm sure I rolled my eyes, I don't know if I bothered to respond.  It's hilarious how many people do that into their adulthood and on to old age and how many university based, college-credentialed people still rely on it to deny when what they hear is what they don't like. And it's amazing how effective that kind of coercion is with the smart set.  It's like they never grew up. I don't care what they merely believe they think.

I don't think there are many entities widely mistaken as scientific that are less genuinely scientific than the materialist-atheist-scyrangers of CSICOP, CFI, the whole alphabet soup of Paul Kurtz-Corliss Lamont shell-corporations, clubs and cults.  When a person deputed to be a scientist tries to turn science into their ideological tool, they should be held to be unreliable because they are so prone to lying to do it.  They have to lie about something to do it and liars are rightly taken to be unreliable.

What Part Of Cease To Do Evil, Learn To Do Good. Devote Yourself To Justice; Aid The Wronged Goes Over Your Heads?

IT'S AN INTERESTING thing, you, a "traditional" Catholic, complaining about the posts debunking the use of the Sodom and Gomorrah story to condemn marriage equality on Tuesday when the first reading at mass the day you posted your whine dealt, specifically with the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, Isaiah comparing the sins of the Jerusalem Temple-political establishments to those cities, in Chapter 1. Nowhere is same-sex-sex mentioned, though "harlotry" is, what is mentioned are sins of injustice, especially economic injustice to orphans and widows (Scriptural shorthand for the poor and powerless).

Hear the word of the LORD,
You chieftains of Sodom;
Give ear to our God's instruction,
You folk of Gomorrah!
"What need have I of all your sacrifices?"
Says the LORD.
"I am sated with burnt offerings of rams,
And suet of fatlings,
And blood of bulls;
And I have no delight
In lambs and he-goats.
That you come to appear before Me
Who asked that of you?
Trample My courts no more;
Bringing oblations is futile;
Incense is offensive to Me.
New moon and sabbath,
Proclaiming of solemnities,
Assemblies with iniquity;
I cannot abide.
Your new moons and fixed seasons
Fill Me with loathing;
They are become a burden to Me,
I cannot endure them.
And when you lift up your hands
I will turn My eyes away from you;
Though you pray at length,
I will not listen.
Your hands are stained with crime
Wash yourselves clean;
Put your evil doings
Away from My sight.
Cease to do evil;
Learn to do good.
Devote yourselves to justice;
Aid the wronged.
Uphold the rights of the orphan;
Defend the cause of the widow.
"Come, let us reach an understanding,"
-says the LORD.
"Be your sins like crimson,
They can turn snow-white;
Be they red as dyed wool,
They can become like fleece."
If, then, you agree and give heed,
You will eat the good things of the earth;
But if you refuse and disobey,
You will be devoured [by] the sword.
For it was the LORD who spoke.
Alas, she has become a harlot,
The faithful city
That was filled with justice,
Where righteousness dwelt
But now murderers.
Your silver has turned to dross;
Your wine is cut with water.
Your rulers are rogues
And cronies of thieves,
Every one avid for presents
And greedy for gifts;
They do not judge the case of the orphan,
And the widow's cause never reaches them.

Isaiah 1:10-23 Jewish Study Bible

I have to say, everywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures that it talks about the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah after Genesis, it seems like it's news to them that it has something to do with condemning faithful, loving sexual relationships between Gay men or between Lesbians. You'd think that the later religious authorities who pretended to believe those later Prophets spoke with divine inspiration if not authority would have had more of an influence on their reading.  I have to wonder if maybe Isaiah and the other, later Prophets had a different version of the story than the one that survives in the far later manuscripts, both the Hebrew and the Septuagint. Or if the Prophets were competent enough readers to get that the story as written has nothing to do with adult, consensual same-sex sex in a context of equality and faithfulness in a committed marriage anymore than the one in Judges 19 has to do with adult, consensual opposite-sex sex in a context of equality and faithfulness. Though explain again to me how it is relevant to marriage equality as the Levite male is there to take his girl sex slave back into bondage (a concubine is a sex slave) before the asshole throws her to the FRICKIN' STRAIGHT RAPE AND MURDER MOB IN THAT STORY NOT A GAY ONE YOU FRICKIN' ILLITERATE LIAR.  It has nothing to do with adulthood (she was probably a young girl) consent, equality and faithfulness, it has nothing to do with what I advocated. AND IT'S A HETEROSEXUAL GANG-RAPE MURDER! as she was thrown to the straight mob by her total asshole of a sexual enslaver.  Yet I have never seen it used to condemn the grotesque inequality and injustice of most straight sex in history, married or not.

I would say there are areas of traditional Bible reading that are as seriously hypocritical and screwed up as that used to condemn LGBTQ+ People but there are none more hypocritical and dishonest and of such long standing.

It's Not About Speech Offending Me It's About Speech Getting Power For People Who Kill People, AND BAN DRAG SHOWS, You Willful Idiot!

ONE OF THESE THINGS is not like the other, and if The Law is too stupid to navigate that difference, the worst or those things will win.   That's the superlative because it is superlatively worse than it is presented. 

 

Of course I agree  with Ari Melber that the Tennessee drag show ban is wrong and should be overturned as an infringement on something, though I think calling what we choose to wear in public "speech" is, frankly, stupid.  I say that even though I've seen a lot of drag shows that are extremely offensive and some that were innocuous fun and a few which were very clever.  Like all kinds of show-biz, it's about 98% crap for 2% good.

I disagree with his contention that what it's about is a demonstration of power by Republican-fascists in a state their hold on power is probably as secure as it can get.  It has nothing to do with the power to enforce the law, I think even the Republican-fascist majority on the Supreme Court will strike it down if it's ever enforced, maybe even the Tennessee Supreme Court would.

What it's about is appealing to Republican-fascist and other LGBTQ+ bigots, it's a piece of legal agitprop to encourage them to give money to bigots, both those running for office and those others who rope in, mainly, cabloid TV watching elders who probably shouldn't have a credit card and an internet hookup without competent guardianship. It is a stunt-law which has nothing to do with much else.  It's like the idiots in the House who Kevin McCarthy put on important committees wasting time by trying to provoke Democrats into voting against saying the pledge of allegiance. Of course, in that case Democrats could reliably be counted on to vote for saying the meaningless thing.  Meaningless because it's certainly never led to a Republican-fascist not giving their allegiance to Putin, billionaires, the fascist dictator of Hungary . . . even as they screw the United States.

I even more disagree with Melber's extremely stupid citation of allowing Nazis to organize, to campaign, etc. because "The First Amendment."  I violently disagree with him because it's not a mere question of "OFFENSIVE SPEECH" as it really is whether or not people dress up in drag. If they want to see offensive dress and over the top makeup they couldn't do worse than look at what Kimberly Guilfoyle appeared in at CPAC last weekend.  She looked like she was trying out to play the lead in The Divine Story (John Waters, take a hint, take it live to Nashville and you might make history).  

Nazis openly, always, by self-definition intend to FRICKIN' KILL PEOPLE.  White supremacists really do what the history of the United States proves they are entirely able to do, get power through elections, persuading enough people to do everything from discriminate against people to keeping them from voting to enslaving them to, yes, FUCKING KILL PEOPLE. And to control the laws and manipulate the politics to allow even lynch mobs to get away with that.  There's all the difference in the world between Nazis and white supremacists and people who like to cross-dress, whether tastefully and subtly (I've seen a few who you'd never guess until they spoke) or in a parody of Bishop Raymond Burke or Kimberly Guilfoyle, a light-year over the top.

To pretend that we must allow Nazis to do here what we know they did in Europe within just barely living memory and what our native equivalent, white supremacists have done here throughout our history AND TODAY in order that harmless drag performers and cross dressers can do their thing with the cops leaving them to it (I am sure there are cops in Tennessee who enjoy drag shows, even as I'm not exactly a fan) is something so stupid that I think you need to have had training at an accredited American law school to think that it's impossible to discern and enforce the difference.

Ari Melber isn't naturally stupid enough to believe that Nazis and drag queens are equally innocuous. Or maybe you have to be a member of the ACLU or the United States Supreme Court to be that stupid.  His own report using footage of the Charlottesville Nazi thugs proves he knows they're not.

Laws distinguishing and administering and enforcing far more subtle differences than people who might want to dress funny and OTHER PEOPLE WHO FREAKIN'  WANT TO KILL PEOPLE, to allow one and not the other to try to get an audience. If it came to a matter of ownership of money or property, judges and "justices" can take the most minute care in adjudication in the matter.  When it comes to Nazis or the Klan organizing to control the state and put their agenda into effect as opposed to someone who wants to dress funny, no, they claim they couldn't possibly be trusted to make that distinction.  Drag queens might lead their audience to take a stroll on the wild side though I'd expect hardly any do, to try it out, Nazis and white supremacists want their audience to vote the like of the Republican-fascist majority in the Tennessee government into office to do far worse than making cross-dressing illegal.  If you think that's not a real and present danger, what part of the white-supremacists and worse are running the party in most of the states and have control of the House and the Supreme Court now don't you get.  If you want other examples, look at how Republican-fascists poisoned People in Flint Michigan, kept Black People from voting in a myriad of American States in the last election.   If the Bill of Rights can't protect We The People from being poisoned by our state governments, its value is way overestimated.

To make believe that we have to always, forever, allow our own, grotesquely and murderously effective form of fascism, white supremacists, the foreign import of Nazism the chance to gain power and hurt people because a bunch of property-owning white-guys voted into office by property-owning white guys (in many states only Protestant ones) in the 1790s were too clueless to make those kinds of distinctions as they wrote the First Amendment is far more dangerous than any drag show where the worst that can happen is someone might sprain their ankle when their heel breaks.  It's as dangerous as the lynch mobs incited by the free speech of white supremacists, as dangerous as those incited by online hate speech to kill People, as dangerous as those who were persuaded to vote for Trump by lies and appeals to their racism.   Frankly, I think one thing can be trusted, it is that the propertied white men, the slave holders the financiers could be counted on to not protect the truth as much as the lies that their hold on power and wealth depended on. 

The lawyers, the judges, the "justices" the media figures who don't want to have to go to the bother to fact-check what they put out even as they don't intend to ever support violence, themselves, but who pretend these differences are not real enough, THAT THE HISTORY OF VIOLENT SPEECH BECOMING MURDER, THAT THE HISTORY OF LIES DOESN'T TURN INTO THE WORST KINDS OF GOVERNMENT should be answerable for their epic misfeasance, their malfeasance, their non-feasance and, frankly, their knowing dishonesty on that count.  I'm especially disgusted with those in allegedly liberal media who never, ever seem to learn from the very reporting they've been doing for years, reporting the results of the kind of "free speech" "free-press" that more than just permits dangerous speech and organizing to happen, it helps it gain political power.

As an LGBTQ+ person of the kind who is the target of the Republican-fascists, I really don't want the support of such figures because their wider agenda is what have led us to where the country is, today.   I think that the eras of slavery, Jim Crow, lynch-law, native-American genocide, widespread discrimination and violence against people base on their ethnicity, even more widespread discrimination and violence and murder against LGBTQ+ People, the evergreen of hate-talk media and groups that the  Republican-fascists are hoping to make money off of and ride into power prove overwhelmingly that not only can it happen here, IT CAN BE COUNTED ON TO HAPPEN HERE.   I don't want people to have to live with that possibility because lawyers, judges, "justices" and journalists value the ability of white supremacists and Nazis to do what they're trying to do over our lives, our legitimate rights, our right to equality and a decent, peaceful life.

Elsewhere An Atheist Snarkily Makes Claims About Those Unexpected Galaxies

SOMEWHERE IN THE POSTS  I did on the debates between Christian apologists such as John Lennox and William Lane Craig with celebrity atheists, mostly those who were legitimate scientists, not so much the philosophers, soc-sy-entists or their allies in the dangerous semi-science-based field of evolutionary-psychology, I said that I didn't put too much stock in the attempts to tie faith in God to the current claims of cosmology because those were liable to change too drastically to make that a secure line of thought in the matter. Neither was it wise for cosmologists to put so much stock into current schemes of cosmology, especially the more theoretical schemes that could likely never be tested through observation.  Though trying to get them to understand why those were a pretty shaky support for atheism was a hopeless task.  Cosmologists are generally pretty bad at debate, that's something I concluded from listening and engaging with them.  Or maybe it's only the atheists among them who are so bad at it.

I will note that when those two capable apologists did that, one a mathematician, the other a rather good philosopher, it was in response to atheist cosmologists using their schemes of cosmology to attack religious faith, so I'm not saying that they were foolish enough to base their faith in the Big Bang or any other of the various cosmological claims, just that some may be foolish enough to do that.

In regard to those unexpected, well-developed galaxies so long ago, I'd wonder if all the bigger, older universe that they might at least temporarily settle on, for a while, would just mean that there was an even bigger bang somewhat earlier than their previous observations led them to confidently assert happened "smaller" and later.  In which case, some of the arguments might survive in some form.  I wonder if, eventually they'll conclude that the farthest back they can see (if they ever see that far) is a good clue as to half the age of the universe.  But who knows?  I'll have gone on past time by the time that happens.  

Or maybe all it will really lead to is a revolution in are the theories of how stars form, how galaxies form.  As with the evolution of life, speciation which has never actually been observed, unless you see how it happened you really can't know if your theories of that are accurate.  I wonder if they may, someday, conclude that there was no one way that it happened instead of the uniform theories about that which are current science, now.

I would wonder what that would do to all those speculations about the improbabilities of our universe being as it is instead of some other, merely theoretical way.  Though I have engaged over those before, I've got my doubts about using those enormous numbers in such debates because I don't really trust them to tell us much since the unobserved alternatives can't be observed or even, really, theorized.

Though the debates that I've entered into about the improbability of the first Earth-based organism forming, metabolizing, reproducing and surviving all of that on the life-unfriendly conditions presumed on the early Earth might be more useful. The assumed probabilities of those specific things happening, in all of there assumed complexity are, I think, far more reliably conjectured on than anything to do with "alternative universes."  If there's anything those newly discovered galaxies tell us, the one universe we have access to is plenty unknown enough to be getting on with.  I think the question of why life spontaneously arising doesn't seem to have happened all the time, now on a far more knowably life-friendly Earth, is far more interesting.

Before getting much farther on, because college-credentialed people get into such a swivet over the topic of evolution,  I should say that I have both areas of agreement on religion with Lennox and Craig as well as huge areas of disagreement with both of them. Before anyone accuses me of sharing all of their evangelical beliefs.* I think both of them believe, as I do, life on Earth evolved and has been evolving for a few billion years, though I certainly have far less faith in the accuracy of the tales of Genesis and some of the later books of, especially, the Old Testament.

One thing I'm pretty certain none of this will tell us whether or not life arose anywhere else in the entire universe or if Earth is the only inhabited planet anywhere.  I've found over the past two decades of engaging with the clever and sciency that when you pose the idea that it may well be that Earth is the one and only place in the universe where life arose, some of the people who have the most violent reaction to that skeptical proposition are materialist-atheist true-believers in scientism, even though science can have absolutely nothing legitimate to say on the topic absent an accurate listing of planets without life and those with, something which if you believe humanity is ever going to have such a listing, you are a credulous silly-billy.  No matter what the TV sci-guys have claimed on that subject.  

I have noted in the past that the wishful thinking in support of his materialist-atheism on his claimed ubiquity of life in the universe by the last generations favorite TV sci-guy, Carl Sagan was totally clueless as to its presumed implications.  He claimed that as soon as contact was made with another life form (perhaps next Thursday morning) that would put the final nail in the coffin of religion.  Alas, I never got to ask him what he would do if he found that the, presumably, smarter and more sci-tech advanced aliens who contacted us (we're certainly not likely to get there) were religious believers would do to his materialist fever-dream in that regard. And that whatever the first such example of "other life" held in that regard would not tell you what the second or n to the xth example would hold on the question of religion.  Ol' Carl was pretty sure that all those ETs would be atheist scientist-mathematicians, just like him and his colleagues. His imagination had its limits.  Maybe I'll get to tease  him about that in the next life.

I have no idea what the new findings of very developed galaxies so near the previously believed creation of the universe are. If they completely overturn Big Bang cosmology, if they force a new physics revolution to account for new evidence, I'm kind of old to go through that.   What I will conclude is that the arrogant beliefs of perhaps soon to be old-hat physicists and, so much more so, cosmologists are that they had anything like a full idea of those things was, as I suspected, somewhat premature.  I would also think they should be taken down a peg or more.  I've never had much faith in the announcements of the impending completion of physics, anyway. I think humanity will reach, perhaps already has reached, the limits of our technical ability to peel the perhaps eternal onion of physical law further down and that the project will always be incomplete. Once we cannot test theories in observation, theoretical physics is a pretty banal and useless religious faith.   I think maybe there are too many theoretical physicists, anyway.  They should be working on applications that will keep us from destroying the environment and getting us all killed.  I have a lot more respect for applied physics than I do theories that can't be verified.  That is if they're not building things that will get us all killed.  Those guys should all be isolated in a mental institution where they can't do any more harm.

As to its implications for religious faith, I don't think its implications can be reliably known by us. Faith is called "faith" for a reason.  It won't tell us why there is something instead of nothing, if there is a reason the universe exists, why it exists, why we exist, how we can know anything of it or any of the other less interesting questions of religion deal with. And I've never been that interested in those questions, either, to tell you the truth, though the idea of a cosmological completion is more satisfying to me than any idea of physical cosmology.  

I'm a lot more interested in all of us having their daily bread, to tell you the truth. The clothes and housing they need, the medical care they need, the truth that they need. I'm a lot more interested in the welfare of our fellow living creatures, the environment we must have to live.  I'm a lot more interested in where we're going on Earth than galaxies so many billions of years in the past, to tell you the truth.  There's nothing much I can do about them. And, frankly, I'm a lot more interested in our possible future life, what we can believe about that.  I'm a lot more interested in what near-death-experiencers tell us about their experience though that can never really be known by anyone but those who have those experiences, in that regard. I'd like some real and rigorous investigation of apparent mediumship, though I don't think science would be the most effective means of doing that, methods of legal evidence, the kind of evidence that rigorous history uses would probably be better at that.   I don't think science can tell us much of anything that can remain  legitimate science in that regard, it's not simple enough for science to tell us much about it.  

I'm a lot more interested in how the Prophets had their incredible insights into the real world, those being sufficiently counter-intuitive as to make them really remarkable, their consequences so often becoming so real in reality. If I can avoid having one of the scary, hellish ones I'd really like to avoid that.  Or at least try to. I suspect that The Law and The Gospels are more relevant to that problem than anything cosmologists can tell us.

* Even though, as an Irish Catholic+ believer, my orientation is far from evangelical Protestantism, I don't necessarily disrespect all evangelicals. Many sects, one God. I certainly think the Christianity of The Reverend Martin Luther King jr. Jimmy Carter, and so many others is both sincere and faithful to the Gospel.  Despite what Pew research, the American free-press, Republican-fascists would like everyone to believe, there are "white evangelicals" who voted for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, who would probably vote for AOC and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, are very egalitarian, very progressive and admirable figures, living lives of charity and service and self-sacrifice.  I certainly honor that as I only wish there were more Irish Catholics who could match them in that. Some I wish I could or had.  I don't know much more about Craig and Lennox than I've heard from them on video debates and reading some of what they've said, for all I know they, despite my religious differences with them, are as admirable in their activities as President Carter has been. I'm a works and faith Christian, I can't say as I am convinced by the claims of faith without the acts of works.  I think Martin Luther (the originator of Protestantism) was all wet in his claims about that, I think it is one of the worst ideas that a Christian theologian ever had. Yet I admire many Lutherans at the same time.

For now I can already hear the protests of the non-Christians. Essential Christian values! - Why I Am Still A Christian - Post 4

"That is to say, we cannot put religion aside without accepting the consequences.  We must accept that there is no unconditionally binding obligation to perform a particular humane action without the acceptance of an unconditionally binding authority which lays that obligation upon us. "

In the going on seventeen years that I have been publicly trying to figure out how the American left went so wrong as to have been in the political wilderness longer than Exodus says the Children of Israel were, there have been several breakthroughs in my understanding.  One of the most important was when I realized that it was equality and not the common and the typically childish and self-centered notions of libertarian freedom that was the actual basis of any kind of decent government and society.  Any legitimate freedom is based in equality, which, among other things is an explanation of why egalitarian democracy or, really any nearly decent government would be a new thing on Earth. It also explains the opposite, freedom based on inequality was a guarantee for government to be of, by and for gangsters and oppressors.  

Another was a result of these investigations starting in the context of the atheism fad of the 00's, my long disputations with materialists and atheists and the naive faithful of the secular religion of scientism, that everything from the absolute moral obligation to care for the environment, to treat others as we wanted to be treated to the concept of rights (probably as often misunderstood as the concept of freedom) that a government was obligated to protect rested on nothing less than the human understanding of the will of God putting that obligation on us.  Along the way I found that, in response to some of the more clueless slogans, bromides and pseudo-historical-philosophical lines of popular atheism, that that insight was certainly not limited to the Jewish religious tradition with which Christianity shares its wellsource of thought. And anyone who reads the Jewish Scriptures in which God is said to have made covenants with other Peoples and, also, animals, would not have been surprised at that. I think anything but an egalitarian-cosmopolitan reading of the Hebrew Scriptures misses the point.  God purposefully created all of us.

Among the head-shaking ironies of these years of investigating the problem, I think that there is no better example of the total depravity of refusing to accept the source of the commandment of equality and, so legitimate freedom, to treat others as we would be treated, to tell the truth and not lie, etc. than the God hollerers and Bible thumpers on the American-fascist right and their allies in vulgar materialism, such as the godless libertarians who are more likely to be watching sy-fy movies and series (in my experience, typically boy-men) than in trying to defend any ideology other than selfishness and who generally don't give a shit about much but their pleasure (there are similar people deputed to be on the American left, and I've devoted many a post to pointing them out). If I were in Britain or Russia or Hungary or China or Brazil there would be other named examples to cite but I looked at where the hits on this blog come from and most of them are from North America.  

Two The Nominally Christian and the Truly Christian

NOTE:  I couldn't think of any way to effectively break this up into smaller pieces.  That's because, as I said before, you figure you know where he's going till he gets there, you might just find he agrees with you more than he doesn't.

Here I should like to speak not only to Christians but to non-Christians also, as well as to the many people who simply doubt. Perhaps Christians and non-Christians alike can agree initially on three important points:

- In the present crisis of values, most people are convinced that without the minimum degree of consensus about systems of values it is impossible for human beings to live together at all.  Without the minimum degree of consensus about received, basic norms and attitudes (and these things are certainly under serious discussion in the different political parties today), it is questionable whether even the state can function,  in view of all the conflicting interests.  We can assume that there is agreement about one point at least - that there can be no civilized society and no state without some system of laws.  But no legal system can exist without a sense of justice.  And no moral sense of justice can exist without a moral sense or ethic.  And there can be no moral sense or ethic without basic norms, attitudes, and values

- If (as I have suggested) it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to justify ethics purely rationally, then we cannot recklessly ignore the significance and function of the phenomenon which for thousands of years has offered the justification of an ethic and for the basic values of men and women.  That is to say, we cannot put religion aside without accepting the consequences.  We must accept that there is no unconditionally binding obligation to perform a particular humane action without the acceptance of an unconditionally binding authority which lays that obligation upon us.  There is no unconditionally binding moral, humane action without religion.  And if it is not true religion which performs this function, it will be pseudo-religion or quasi-religion.  But for true religion, the sole authority which is permitted to claim absolute, unconditional obedience is nothing humanly conditioned at all;  it is the Absolute itself, to which we give the name God.

The problem with writing this into a series is that so many of the things contained in it beg for a whole post in themselves, in particular, this line, "there is no unconditionally binding obligation to perform a particular humane action without the acceptance of an unconditionally binding authority which lays that obligation upon us."  I believe that more every time I get back into these issues, I certainly haven't found anything like that in any rationalistic or materialistic or popular articulation, that is even if questions of morality arise under them.  Certainly none that isn't vulnerable to summary dismissal. Most typically, an appeal to mere predilection or habit is the best that can be had under those framings and there is nothing less reliable than those for reasons already stated.

It is my experience that in arguing this someone will bring up this or that atheist who is not a selfish, amoral monster who are that way because that's just how they are.  Such examples of those who behave well habitually or out of their personality are not relevant to the problem of the non-religious who are monsters of some degree, no more than Christians who behave well are part of the problem of professed Christians who are monsters.  The problem is how to get those who want to do evil, atheists, non-Christians, professed Christians, etc. to be good. I would not include those contented middle-class professionals who are content with what they have and are too lazy to actively do evil in those who are no problem, their indifference often becomes a problem in practice, they're especially gifted in committing sins of omission.  Many are mildly jaded faculty members in great universities and lesser institutions of somewhat higher learning.  Many are in research.

I will admit that there are professed atheists I know, some who I am related to, who believe, for good reason, that they behave morally without acknowledging any kind of religious belief and even a few who can be generally counted on to behave well as they are somewhat hostile to everything said in the last paragraph.  

Some people may be able to maintain a lifetime of superior moral behavior while denying or hostile to the the idea of God and certainly to religion even as their non-belief holds no assertions of moral absolutes.  I have known some professed atheists who I would trust to act well, generally, perhaps even more than many professed believers. I think the less intellectually based the atheism is, the more likely the non-ideological atheist will maintain that tendency to act morally. I wonder to what extent that may not be a residual vestige of religion in their family or social heritage.  That conclusion is based on my discussions with atheists and my observations of them.  

I would be least likely to expect that's likely if the typical ideological framings of atheism are held by the atheist, materialism, scientism,  etc. Materialism and scientism being present, the record of those being used as a basis for denying the reality of morality, its dissolution into some scheme of relativism or definition of it as merely a matter of social convention (which means it's not real even by the typical standards of materialst-atheist-scientism) is far more resonably expected than that the dedicated materialist and devotee of scientism will not have made those necessary logical steps in debunking morality. That is also a conclusion of my exposure to the thinking of atheists.

The literature of atheism denying the reality of even the most seriously necessary of moral absolutes, against murder and so against every lesser instance of immoral behavior, is a self-generated reason for anyone, atheist or believer, to suspect that those and similar framings of atheism eventually, followed to their logical conclusions  necessitate the impeachment of morality. I think that's more generally true of any rationalistic attempt to find a replacement for morality.

I would ask all of them, non-ideological and ideological atheists  what percentage of the general population would they want to depend on following their example in the total absence of the idea that God commands us to do to others what we would have them do to us.  I would say that even the claimed belief in God, even the claimed belief that the Golden Rule is a Commandment of God and, more so, merely notional religion isn't anything like a guarantee of good behavior.  I couldn't get farther from asserting the idea that a profession of Christianity is a guarantee of superior moral behavior.  Jewish and Christian scripture are full to the top of assertions and examples of why you should never settle for the idea that such a moral rule is merely a matter of social convention.

Religious appearance is one of the most commonly used tools of con men as Trump's infamous upside-down Bible stunt, the Marjorie Taylor Greens' or the TV preachers' professions of faith provide us with perfect examples of that.  As I noted last week you can see that exaggerated profession of belief is, if anything, at least an indicator you should be on your guard, especially among Christians who are commanded by Jesus not to make an overt display of religion, not to swear oaths, etc.  In light of that indication that a claim of religious belief is an unreliable predictor of moral behavior being in evidence, given the propensity of many, especially ideological atheists to attack the idea of the reality of moral commandments, religion's absence can't be counted on to be a more reliable predictor of the moral behavior that atheism does not have as an associated holding of belief. Despite the advocacy of it by some, I don't think that bold sinning which has the integrity of being within the amoral framing of the sinner is, in the end, superior to cowardly sinning which is sinned by a professed believer, hypocritically.  I say that having admitted that I know atheists who I think are quite as trustworthy of moral behavior as all but the greatest of saints who most sincere religious believers also cannot approach in goodness.

- Whether or not we are Christians, we have to admit that the purely humane, basic norms and values of the past were always Christian in character.  And this was entirely for the benefit of human happiness and well-being.  It was the Christian mind and spirit that enshrined the values of human dignity, liberty, justice, solidarity and peace. Without the Christian content that would be, and are equivocal concepts, manipulated at will in both East and West. (It is not only the Peoples' Republics and George Orwell's 1984 which make that plain.) Moreover, whether we like it or not, the Christian message does not offer merely a theoretical and abstract answer to questions about basic norms and values.  It is a practical and concrete answer.

It is here that I should remind you of the approved English title of the book, Why I Am Still A Christian.  It is clear that the European, the Swiss Catholic Hans Kung is saying why HE is still a Christian within what is a more general apologetic work.

I wouldn't have made this claim in this way though I certainly agree that anything good in the modern ethos is a development of the Jewish concept of universal justice and the Christian extension of that in universal love, as I've noted a number of non-Christian thinkers have held.  I've also said that there are other religious traditions that I think hold the same ideas and potentially could generate egalitarian democracy, which, I will repeat, we have only made some progress towards -only to have it turned back under secularism as much as would-be theocracy, theocracy having a nearly uniform history of being a bad idea.

I would stipulate that what Kung said may be true if you are talking about places where Christianity was predominant, I often get the feeling that Kung in this book is mostly thinking of Europe and, maybe the Americas. That is certainly not the case in places where Christianity had not yet been introduced or has never been a dominant religious profession. I think it is too broad to say it's true of the entire world. I think that there are certainly those who would be justified in questioning it, especially in European history.  Though I think in the past thousand years and more, depending on location, most of the moral behavior of Europeans and in other places where Christianity once held sway is due to some observance of the Gospel of Jesus.  I think that Christianity was certainly a moral advance over European paganism.  A comparison with religions elsewhere probably has to be decided on a case by case basis.  Whatever that comparison is, it must be based on performance of morality, not on professions or claims.  But Kung isn't done with this idea, yet.

The future belongs to the young and so it is they in particular who must face this urgent question:  Ought we not to take more seriously again the familiar system of values which can help us determine what to do?  I am not suggesting a nostalgic retreat into the past;  but perhaps we should chart our future course with the help of a certain ancient compass, which may not have outlived its usefulness after all.  A compass which -after many other instruments have proven to have given only unreliable bearings in the tempests of modern times- could perhaps point us a course toward a future of greater human dignity.  A compass that might reorientate us with essential Christian values once more, and in a new way, in an era whose values have been so impoverished. But here we have to make some distinctions.

For now I can already hear the protests of the non-Christians.  Essential Christian values!  What is Christian supposed to mean today?  Christianity is finished. But here I should like to explain myself to these people too, the non-Christians, the unbelievers.  Not only he unbelievers outside but the unbeliever within, in ourselves, who repeatedly raises doubts and objections, who says "I believe" but, like the man in the Gospel, adds: "Help my unbelief!" To these people I should like to give a frank and honest answer.

Frankly and honestly, if many people, whether they consider themselves believers or unbelivers, in considering the possibility of essential Christian values, reject everything that has to do in any way with an authoritarian, unintelligible dogmatics or an unrealistic, narrow-minded morality, then I cannot contradict them.  If they are exasperated with the legalism and opportunism, arrogance and intolerance of so many ecclesiastical functionaries and theologians; if they want to attack the superficial piety of the pious, the boring mediocrity of so many church newspapers and magazines [not to mention TV shows, radio shows and podcasts] and the absence of creative people in the church, I am on their side.  Nor am I by any means ignorant of the failure of Christianity in history.  For I have no intention of whitewashing the history of Christianity, or glossing over its defects;  not only the persecution of our Jewish brothers and sisters, the crusades, the heretic trials, the witch burnings and the religious wars;  but also the Galileo trial and countless wrong condemnations of ideas and people - scientists, philosophers and theologians;  and all the involvements of the church in particular systems of society, government, and thought;  and all of its many failures in the slavery question, the war question, the women's question, the class question and the race question;  and the manifold complicity of the churches with the rulers of various countries in their neglect of the despised, the downtrodden, oppressed, the exploited peoples; and the religion as the opiate of the people . . . . Everywhere here criticism, severe criticism, is appropriate.

But I ask you:  Is this even "Christian"?   Believers and unbelievers must affirm that it is "Christian" only in a traditional, superficial, and untrue sense.  Christendom certainly cannot shed its responsibility for what is called "Christian."  But none of this is Christian in the deeper, pure, original sense; none of it is truly Christian.  It has nothing to do with the Christ to whose name it appeals. In many ways it is part of what brought him to the cross.  It is in fact pseudo-Christian or anti-Christian.

There is so much that is called Christian.  But is it all Christian just because it is called Christian?  We must face up to this question. Even people who acknowledge that they belong to a Christian church - as I do, with complete conviction - would not wish to maintain that everything connected with institutional upholders of Christianity is Christian.

No, with the best will in the world I cannot call it Christian, or possessed of genuine Christian values, when in my own church, for example, ecclesiastical authority alone is involved, instead of Jesus Christ himself, in questions which are important for millions of Catholics.  I must repeat;  With the best will in the world, I cannot think that the One to whom Christianity appeals, Jesus of Nazareth himself, would today take up the same attitude as the Roman authorities in the questions at issue.  I cannot believe
 
- that he, who warned the Pharisees against laying intolerable burdens on people's shoulders would today declare all "artificial" contraception to be mortal sin;

- that he, who particularly invited failures to his table, would forbid all remarried divorced people even to approach that table;
 
- that he, who was constantly accompanied by women (who provided for his keep), and whose apostles, except for Paul, were all married and remained so, would today have forbidden marriage to all ordained men, and ordination to all women;

- that he, who said,"I have compassion on the crowd,"  would have increasingly deprived congregations of their pastors and allowed a system of pastoral care built up over a period of a thousand years to collapse;

- that he, who defended the adulteress and sinner, would pass such harsh verdicts in delicate questions requiring discriminating and critical judgment,like pre-marital sex, homosexuality and abortion.

No, I cannot think either that, if he came again to day he would agree

- that difference of denomination should continue to be considered an impediment to marriage -indeed that such a marriage should recently have been made an obstacle for Catholic lay theologians who wish to engage in pastoral service (as is also true for Protestant would-be pastors);

-that the validity of the ordination of Protestant pastors and their Eucharistic  celebration should be disputed;  that open communication and common  celebration of the Eucharist, shared church building and parish centers and ecumenical religious instruction should be prevented;  indeed that ecumenical services should be systematically forbidden on Sundays in an era of increasingly empty churches;

- that, instead of entering into open and reasonable debate, the attempt should be made to silence theologians, university chaplains, teachers of religion, journalists, organizational officers, and people responsible for youth work with decrees and "declarations" (and even, whenever possible, with disciplinary or financial measures).  

No, if we want to be Christian, we cannot demand freedom and human rights for the church externally and not grant them internally.  We cannot replace urgently needed reforms in the church by fine words about Europe, the Third world, and the North-South conflicts at synods, church assemblies, and papal rallies.  To put it briefly, justice and freedom cannot be preached only where it costs the church and its leaders nothing.

It has to be remembered that Hans Kung was a Catholic theologian, an ordained priest, one who dissented from the official teaching of the Church in a number of instances, including what was probably the most significant critique of the dreadful 19th century innovation of papal "infallibility" (something that led to serious consequences for him even before JPII and his protegee Karl Ratzinger stripped him of his license to be called a Catholic theologian). His later work in ecumenism, not only among Christians but world wide, across traditions, should also be remembered.  His focus in the book can be seen as a criticism of Catholicism first but of Christians in general even as he is presenting a case in favor of Christian belief.  

A lot of what may seem, at first, like presumption in his text can be counted on to turn out to be confession.  

Maybe We're Talking About A New Thing In The World That Paul Didn't Know

More Answers to Trad-Catho Objections To My Call For Faithful, Equal, Loving Marriages

I ADMIT THAT, given his language about Women, about slavery and about LGBTQ People, I had the typical, shallow disdain for Paul that is had only with the selective, distorted, superficial view of what he presumably did write and that which is traditionally ascribed to him  but much of which is probably not by him, some of which certainly contradicts much of what he did write. When you try to read entire letters, to really think about what is said in full instead of by picking out bits from it, those are seldom really understandable out of context.

As I have confessed, from now on I read all Scripture, judge all religious doctrine, dogma, tradition, theological claims according to what both Jesus and Hillel said was the encapsulation of The Law and the Prophets, does it lead you to do to others what you would have done to you.  If that were the way Christians behaved, slavery, Women's subjugation, inequality to LGBTQ+ People, oppression and cheating of workers, the poor,  and virtually every human created evil that has been the norm and which still persists would not happen.  There would be no scandal of Christians who did any of those things.  Christianity would be something wanted by all oppressed people, everywhere.  Equality, economic justice, social justice, charity for all, including the downtrodden and despised, especially for the downtrodden and despised. Those conditions of life might even disappear.

It is as perfect a commandment as any religion anywhere has ever come up with, I trust it entirely as the greatest rule of human conduct, the safest basis of human law.  I judge the obscure cases in which its application is not obvious with that other rule for judging the validity of claims of morality and religion given by Jesus, by their fruits YOU WILL KNOW THEM.  What comes of their application in life?  Do those results comport with the Golden Rule? Based on that, large parts of the Scripture have to be judged to be an invalid basis for human conduct, human law, while much of it gives good advice on how to act that way and even much of what is mistaken as a model for behavior is really a cautionary tale. I will note that it is the best way to view some of the worst passages in Scripture, such as those that command death for this or that transgression of law, things that an 8 year old knows violate the commandment against killing, among the earliest self-contradictions in the Bible that I recall noticing.

I am no student of the literature but certainly the Rabbis who studied the Hebrew Scriptures so minutely for so many centuries noticed that in one place God is said to have said that if a human kills another human they are to be killed by another human, Genesis 9:5.  How this doesn't eventuate in our committing suicide as a species as those who kill the killers must, as well, be killed, I'd like to know.  Of course the first thing to notice about that is it contradicts what God said to Cain when he killed Abel.  And there were certainly many in in Scripture of this or that hero killing many people, soldiers among the Children of Israel, Samson, Joshua, the later kings, etc. who were not held to that rule, many of them lived out their lives and died a natural death. David, Solomon . . . murderers, many are considered great figures in the same religions that maintain that passage in Scripture.

The last time I dealt with Paul on same-sex-sex I noted that you could only maintain the common view of his use of same-sex-sex, that he held it out as uniquely sinful only if you failed to read Paul's flawed and limited concept of it in the context of general, I would say universal human sinfulness that he mentions it in.  Of course nearly everyone who cites Paul to identify this or that act of sinfulness and, in the worst use of his writing, to condemn, to damn LGBTQ People, to support slavery, to tell Women to take a subservient role and to shut up in church is guilty of that dishonest use of him.  

And as he was merely human, his human limitations and flaws are certain, he certainly knew he was imperfect and we know his understanding was.  Things he said which were likely rejected by Christians of his own time.  I mentioned that while we can be certain from what he said that Women were speaking in church in Corinth but, as Elizabeth A. Johnson noted, what the Women of Corinth who were speaking out thought of Paul's instruction is not known. We do know that just as American slavers lied about his instruction to Philemon on slavery to defend them not following the entire context of his advice, that the slaver was to treat the slave as a brother, not as a slave, which would have freed the slave in fact if not under law.  St. Macrina talking her mother into coming to such an arrangement with the slaves in their household was one of few such instances where that was taken seriously. None of the rest of that use of Paul's less than perfect wisdom is even up to his written words.

I'd speculate that there may have been Pauline letters which don't survive including because they were rejected.  But that speculation isn't needed because hardly anyone takes full note of his whole text which, when you do take that in considerations, it changes your understanding of the attention-getting phrase or one or two sentence tid-bits concentrated on.  

Paul is an extremely subtle, at times, sometimes almost ecstatically  poetic writer.  The source of his inspiration was a profound mystical experience that left him traumatized, having serious physical consequences. A lot of it, not just the  word here or there is obscure.  And one of those "arsenokoitai" is not a word whose accurate denotation is not agreed on today.  It very likely did not mean "homosexual" or, as the goddamned KJV has it "sodomite" it is not useful for making hard and fast laws. It certainly did not refer to what we, today, would consider adult, mutually consented to, mutually respectful, responsible, faithful same-sex-sex.

I did state that my conclusion from Paul's words and what we know of Paul's life that he very likely could have been a man who felt exclusively sexually attracted to other men and, in a phenomenon not unknown today, he was scared and disgusted by some of his deepest desires.  But I think to limit him to that on the issue is to a. to presume we understand him on the basis of insufficient evidence and b. that his language (in the Greek) seems only to point to uses of same-sex-sex by others that were evil, the sexual abuse of adults and children in prostitution, whether or not that was in association with pagan temples, masters abusing those they held in slavery, adults preying on children, non-consensual sex among adults in a context of inequality.   I am not a very good Greek scholar and am reliant on scholars of the language but I do think it is a virtual certainty that when we talk about being a fair, responsible gay man or Lesbian woman, or bisexual or transexual, etc. today we are talking about behaviors that surpass what Paul and the majority of his contemporaries who wrote documents that survive, the basis of our understanding of Paul's and others vocabularies, could have talked about. It's clear that many people, both straight and even within LGBTQ+ people have a hard time wrapping their minds around that idea now.

I will take as my text Isaiah 43:19.  I think when we, today speak of real marriage equality we may well be talking about a new thing in the world.

I see no evidence that anywhere in the written record there is evidence that any writers, Christian, Jewish or pagan had a conception of loving, equal, exclusively faithful, adult, consensual same-sex sex.  I DON'T SEE MUCH OF ANY EVIDENCE THAT THEY MUCH CONCEIVED OF EVEN MONOGAMOUS STRAIGHT MARRIAGE IN THOSE TERMS. If there is any classical Greek or Hebrew text that talks about what I am talking about when I talk about marriage equality, I'd love someone to point it out to me. I would not be surprised if there were such relationships among, for example, male couples of that time, I think there is no evidence that any texts they may have written about that survived so what language they would use for that cannot be compared to the words of Scripture.  

I can point out we have little to no language of slaves who rejected their enslavement, we have no language of Women who rejected their subjugation, we have little to no language of so many "others" who are named in Scripture or classical literature but who are not known in their own words or who have had their thinking about their own experience preserved.  Given how rare authorship was, presumably even much rarer than the uncommon achievement of literacy, given the ravages of time on paper, it isn't surprising that we wouldn't have positive examples of same-sex-sex set down in the texts that survive.  If there were any such Jewish or Christian writings, I think it's a safe bet that the Church as they were accepting and rejecting what the bishops decided were to be included in the canon of Scripture would have rejected those.  If there were such texts, by that time, I think it's a pretty good guess that they would have been rejected out of bigotry, not inspiration.  For whatever good and even great things that would come out of the clearly post-Scriptural and novel development of monasticism, on which so much of the transmission of texts and writing and learning depends, it promoted an extremely morbid view of sex that would have guaranteed that.

I have gone back, several times, to the story in John's Gospel, the Woman Taken in Adultery, which so many moderns like to claim was inauthentic, that it was a later insertion because it's not contained in the oldest complete manuscript of John's Gospel.  We don't have any idea why that would be, it could have been not there because it was a later insertion -which, given the already present and extreme sexism of the Bishops and the Emperor who wanted them to select what was to be included, I doubt they'd have included it if they figured it was optional.  

I've got to wonder if whoever created that manuscript or the manuscript they copied may have left it out because they didn't like the story.  We don't have any way of knowing but we do know that its survival in the canon proves that many of the early Christians conceived of Jesus as the kind of messiah who would save the life of the poor woman, doing so overturning the ancient law that adulterers were to be stonned to death.  Which brings us to the sexual sin that rulers, certainly, not infrequently even the most sexually suppressive clerics wink and nod at, today totally accepted among the white-evangelicals among whom it is extremely popular, among the hardest right of Catholic cardinals, bishops, those kinds of young JPII era priests who I cannot find credible as ministers of religion, the Republican-fascists, the Trump voters, even as they are the most vicious voices against LGBTQ+ equality.  

There is no sexual sin that is more continually condemned in Scripture than straight adultery, its condemnation is ubiquitous as mentions of what is taken as the few instances where same-sex-sex is condemned.  Yet in practice, since the dawn of Christianity as an established state church, adultery by the rich and powerful was never much called out. You know, like the serial adulterer, Trump, like Ronald Reagan was, like I'll bet most of the House "Freedom" Caucus are.   Skipping over the long history of adultery being treated with a wink and a nod by clerics and and the legal system, today it is only under a few instances in Catholicism and a few other smaller sects that issues of straight adultery which, by the Words of Jesus has to include remarriage after a divorce, is perfectly legal and not problematical. I hear it's especially popular in "red states" and "red counties."  I would like to know when the last example of a public school teacher, a Catholic school teacher who was fired for adultery was, how many divorced, remarried men and women teach in our schools, I've known of a number who were openly known to be carrying on affairs within the faculty of the school while both were married, we all have. That certainly falls under the most frequently mentioned sin of sexual behavior in scripture AND NO ONE BATS AN EYELASH ABOUT IT.  And I'm certainly not advocating they all be fired (the unemployment rate among straight people would soar) though I do wonder what that example before them holds for students who do know it's going on.  One of my conclusions was that if I were ever married to another man I wouldn't want us to act so irresponsibly and selfishly or so openly.

I think even among the damned Ratzinger-cult bishops and priests who flipped out when Good Pope Francis contemplated allowing divorced remarried Catholics to receive Communion have no real problem with Catholics who commit adultery without remarriage after divorce because I don't hear much from them about it. They certainly have no problem with Newt Gingrich and his third wife, adulterers, both of them, no doubt having bought themselves an annulment, perhaps the most officially hypocritical practice in the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church today. The Catholic annulment industry with its high-price canon lawyers, etc. is a scandal in itself.  

The Catholic Church, the "white evangelicals" as mentioned in the media, the Republican-fascists, perhaps most of all the right-wing media whores, have no credibility on matters of sex, they are uniformly hypocrites in the matter, those who aren't personally hypocritical are typically clueless and have no problem being in league with the hypocrites they don't break with.  

No future Christianity will ever be able to go back to where it was, as my generation passes, as the generation of my nieces and nephews replace us, as the libertarian over-compensation for the oppressive suppression of LGBTQ+ people will have to give way to the consequences of that overcompensation, I have no doubt that LGBTQ+ life will become unremarkable and same-sex marriage equality will become as common as the reality that straight people often marry the wrong person and that a modern divorce with economic security for ex-wives is not the same thing as divorce was in the time of Jesus has become an accommodation for straight people living their lives the best way they can figure out how to.  My hope is that Gay men, Lesbians, etc. pursue marriage-equality so fervently that we will demand to have the best kind of marriages, loving, equal, mutually supportive, faithful and life-long instead of cranky, exploitative, unequal, unfaithful, hateful and ephemeral ones such as so many straight people seem to go for.  If I thought marriage-equality was to enable the worst kinds of marriages, the effort for it would be a waste of time.