Panta Pei

wrong forum

Merely replace "porno/pornography" with "christianity" and morality and the consistency of topic becomes more clear, IMHO.

Still, I will refrain from further debate on this topic with this particular theist as my point has been abundantly made.

tronvillain

RogerLeeCooke:
Oh please, they are giving their customers exactly what they want. Also, as Dark Jedi points out, porn does come in more artistic and erotic varities - it's simply not as popular.

luvluv

"I seem to understand the question, luvluv, and the answer is still that it is more sincere, honest and real to do so."

Why should I be sincere, honest, or real?

"I already did."

I was looking for specifics, like why you believe Jesus never existed, why you believe James never existed, what, if Jesus never existed, prompted people to begin acting like he existed, and to give their lives for Him? Stuff you must have covered in your critical thinking.

"Please reread the stated ‘case’ again at your leisure. Be unconvinced if you will regarding your deity Yahweh, however, these are the same criteria you use to disbelieve in Zeus, Zoroaster, Krishna, Peter Pan, etc."

Well, I actually disbelieve in Peter Pan on the basis of the fact that I know it to be a make-believe story per the original writers specific intent. I disbelieve Zeus for various theoligical reasons: many of his attributes are incompatible with him being the Uncreated Creator. (Zeus himself was created, so perhaps a better question might be why I don't believe in the Titans). The laws of nature and the basic behavior of the universe leads me to disbelieve in pantheism, which I would have to believe in to believe in Zeus. If there was not one God, but many gods, disagreeable and each with extreme power, there would be no reason why nature would be consistent, orderly, and predictable. The work of the universe seems to be the work of more orderly, stable, deliberate hands. I disbelieve in Zoraster, or at least, the religion of Zoraster, on much the same grounds. The universe seems to orderly a playground to be the work of two competing, equally powerful deities. While human beings seem to be at each others throat, the universe does not seem in conflict with itself. The Christian explanation, that evil is not a created thing, but merely an explotation of that which is good (sex, language, intelligence) at the wrong times or under the wrong conditions (sex used in rape, language used to slander, intelligence used to exploit). Evil is not, as Zoraster would have us believe, a thing which exists in and of itself; there is no thing of which we might say "this is evil, and nothing else". Evil is simply a perversion of goodness. It's existences is dependant on a good to be strayed from. It is my inability to conceive of any self-existent evil which leads me to believe in Zoraster and his religion. Of Krishna, in all honesty, I disbelieve in him because I know next to nothing about him. Is he a Buddhist off-shoot?

At any rate, I don't disbelieve in anything "because it is a fairytale". Such an explanation seems too, you'll excuse me, hasty and lazy to be worthy of a critical thinker. Surely, some specificity, some exploration of the logical implications of the unique claims of these apparent fairy tales is necessary before one can lump them all into one category. That is why I asked you to list the trail you followed in the case of God.

"True, I do prioritize. However, I do not place above the love of real family and friends some imaginary supernatural booga-booga or the convenient representative authority of the deluded who do."

But you do place atheism, which is just an idea (or the lack of one) above your family and friends. God and atheism are both ideas about the truth. What makes it immoral to place one idea(God) over relationships and not immoral to place another idea (atheism) over relationships? Even if I am deceived, nevertheless my belief in the truth of God is as honest and compelling as your disbelief (and we could both be wrong), so why am I immoral for putting my beliefs ahead of some of my friendships and you are not when my beliefs are as "true" to me as yours are to you? If I am wrong for doing this, then you, sir, are wrong as well. Neither of us know with certainty what the truth is. We both operate on beliefs.

"I have never heard from “God” and neither have you, luvluv."

I have, actually. But the real question should be how do you know that I haven't? You can certainly disbelieve that I have, but you are confusing the intensity of your belief with knowledge. At any rate, in this case you are wrong.

"This was the motive for my initial post on this thread. You have done everything to confirm my worst fears regarding the cult of Christianity and its adverse effects on human relations."

Actually, in my own case, my Christianity has not cost me a single friend, and has in fact, made me a much more outgoing and empathetic person than the rat-terd S.O.B. I used to be. So it seems in our particular cases, your atheism has had more of an adverse effect on human relations than my Christianity.

"I will say it again, Christ is a mythical character similar to thousands of other mythic hero sagas and is not a real person to love. Appeal to emotion and escapist imagination all you like, it will not change this fact."

It might help if you told me how you came to the conclusion that this was a fact.

"Well, let’s see, one was when you said Christ was equal to human relationships and then said he was to be above human relationships."

Firstly, I never said Christ was equal to human relationships, I said he made Himself equal with human relationships. I have demonstrated how one cannot be a follower of Christ and not love people. It is apparent that a person would not be hindered from loving people at all by being a Christian, and the only ruptures in a Christians relationships would come between the Christian and someone that opposed some aspect of love for people. The people who had problems with my becoming Christians were those who wanted to continue to do things with me (sex, drugs, etc) that were harmful to me as a person and wanted me to discontinue things (prayer, charity work) that were helpful to me as a person. In short, the only relations that being a Christian kept me out of was relations with people who did not love me enough to want me to do what was best for me and instead only wanted FROM me what they thought was best for them. When Christ asks us to break relations with those people it is for our betterment and theirs. God would never ask someone to break a relationship with someone who is really primarily concerned with our best interests. He would probably ask us to break off a relationship with someone who would feel comfortable asking someone they love to give up all of their principles and beliefs and be shaped in the image of their lover's ideology. It is to prevent us from becoming the clay on the potter's wheel that our friends and lovers spin, for we are to be remade in God's image, and not that of our friends, parents, or husband's.

After all, to be remade in our image of God might simply mean to be remade in the image of what we perceive to be our best self. The key to loving someone is not demanding that their best-self match your idea of what their best-self might be for your intentions, but to give them the freedome to define their best-self (their "image of God") for themselves.

"You did it again when you said you were a non-literalist and then said you were a literalist."

By non-literalist I simply meant that I did not believe that EVERYTHING in the Bible was strictly factual. That in no wise means that I believe EVERYTHING in the Bible to be totally, factually, in error. I believe that some of the stories which do not even attempt to be history to be myths, and the stories that do make attempts at history (such as the letters of Paul. He did exist, didn't he?) to be literal. I don't necessarily believe there was a Job or a Jonah or an Ark, but I believe there was a Jesus and a Peter and a Paul. I don't think that is a contradiction on my part, but perhaps my statement did lead to some confusion. After all, even you might conceed that Paul existed, so that even you might conceed that Paul may have written most of his letters.

"…and you have now again confirmed that which I originally proposed, namely, that human beings are required ~ under the Christian dogma~ to place their allegiance and love in a fictional character above real loving humans before them in plain view."

See above.

"I will not believe that God(s), winged fairies, horned monsters, or other such nonsense is reality. That my wife still does, despite all real evidence to the contrary, is currently a burden that continues to sour that which, without Christianity, would be an unreachable romance."

But if you really place a premium on human relations, then this should be a no-brainer. Abandon atheism. After all, anything that interferes with human relationships must be bad and therefore abolished, right?

"My ‘commitment’ is to unmitigated honesty and reality"

If I may, your commitment seems to be to your limited perception of reality, or of reality as you, in 38 years, have experienced it. That is not reality, that is subjective experience. Even if the reality you speak of is knowledge, you can only be committed to what you know and I would wager you do not know everything. Your position would be much more honestly revealed if you were more honest about your limitations. You disbelieve on the basis of the evidence you have come into contact with based on your incomplete knowledge of the incomplete knowledge that humanity has produced thus far. You have made an honest guess as to what the true nature of the universe is and as to whether there is anything behind the universe. You may be very strongly intellectually committed to that guess, but it is nonetheless nothing more than a slightly-educated hypothesis( This is not an insult. Your knowledge, set against not just human knowledge but set against all that is knowable, is properly termed slight). So, I believe you use the term "reality" rather loosely. You are, properly, committed to your extrodinarily limited and parochial experience of reality. After all, reality contains things you have never even conceived of, things you are not even able to conceive of. One must not speak to the universe, to all that is, with such assurance.

"I'm glad you asked. The answer is, Yes. So far, after 38 years, this has been a constant."

The answer, actually, is no. If I, or anyone, trusts Him, and have found him to be reliable, it is obviously possible to trust something which has no corporeal existence. And it only took me 25 years. (26 this Sunday, if you were thinking about getting me something.)

"If, as has been shown, your mind can conjure up an imaginary friend you are willing to suspend all common definitions of what real love and basic compassion are and then make implausible excuses for this ‘friend’s’ behavior despite evidence consistently provided to you to the contrary, you have a very misguided perception of what real trust consists of."

Yes, but none of the above has been shown. You are here again projecting your convictions as if they are facts. I am not perfect, but I would imagine myself to be as capable of loving people as you. What makes you think otherwise?

"Please refer to the Dark Ages, Inquisition, Galileo, Bruno, Salem Witch Trials and slavery for a mere taste test of irrepressible Christian insanity."

Again, all of these things existed only to the extent that the people at their helms failed to be Christians. To imprison, to murder, all of these things contradict the notion that we are to "love our neighbors as ourselves" and are only possible to perform to the extent that one fails to be a practicing Christian.

"I’ll say it again, “it is my understanding” that those that hold to the “fundamentals” of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc. have interpreted the canon to include those ‘non-fundamentalists’ like yourself as cursed and damned as we non-believers. "

And I should care about this why, exactly?

"An intent that you magically glean from those within your cult. Have you made an attempt to glean the intent of the Koran? The Torah? The Book of Mormon?"

I actually do buy the Torah, it's in my Bible. I simply don't buy all of it as literally factual, though most of it is at least allegorically true. I did dabble in Mormonism until I found out a few things they believe about their prophets. I haven't had much contact with the Koran.

"My point, since you missed the relevance, is that another ‘christian’ may find your ‘myth, myth, not myth, myth, not myth’ interpretations equally objectionable. You, luvluv, are ‘in the same boat’ as it were, regarding your ‘non-belief’ in the fundamentals."

Well, in layman's terms, who cares?

"Again, your ability to pick and choose merely places you firmly in the realm of the credulous. Not much more to it than being a ‘non-literal literalist’ depending upon how far you wish to stretch consistency to defend ‘the faith’."

So you're saying that in order to be intellectually consistent, if I disbelieve in the fall of Adam that I must necessarily disbelieve in the letters of Paul? That these two seperate documents, seperated by hundreds, perhaps thousands of years of history, and authored by entirely different men under entirely different circumstances and for entirely different reasons, whose literary styles differ as much from one another as much as the Canterburry Tales differ from a letter to a group of my friends; are you telling me in order to be intellectually consistent I must disagree with both of these totally separate works just because someone but them in the same compilation of books? Is this what you call a commitment to honesty?

"‘Secularization’ did not create the bomb and science is not the foundation of secular humanism. Make for yourself all sorts of pretty strawmen to demonize, but, in your Christian world a loving God is omnipotent and could prevent annihilation at any time. It takes the tiresome theistic two-step to wriggle out of that one."

I could say many things here, but suffice it to say, your presentation of what a Christian is makes you the last person who should be speaking reproachfully about strawmen. It is almost your entire argument.

"As I have said before, I thoroughly enjoy escapist fiction (you seemed to have skipped over that part from my previous post). I do not find in them a proof for real talking monkeys, wizards who walk on water and cater fish and bread to hundreds with thaumaturgy or any other such nonsense."

This is an evasion of the apparent original intent of your previous statment, which said in effect that one could not get any morals worth having from a work of fiction. I am merely suggesting that myths can effectively transfer moral truths. If you agree to that, we can proceed to other topics of discussion. If not, then you have to prove why morals have been so succesfully transfered and preserved in fictional story form.

"a. Morality, responsibility and values do not come from a belief in a fairy sky king or representative authority figures"

They can, and often do. There is a real thing called Christian values. Whether you think they are the best values is not the case. You may say that morality, responsiblity, and values that come from religion are not the best ones, but you cannot say that they do not come from them. At any rate, morality, responsibility, and values do not come from disbelief, either, and neither do they spring from your subjective opinion of what you think is "honest and real".

"b. Science and humanism are not, at all, ‘value-free’."

The science and humanism you come into contact with may not be, but some brances of science and humanism certainly are. Many scientists value nothing over science. Can I reccomend a book to you? (It's not the Bible)

"Still, I will refrain from further debate on this topic with this particular theist as my point has been abundantly made."

I actually think that jubilex was saying that he accidentally posted something to the wrong forum, not that this discussion was occuring in the wrong forum.

At any rate, I still think some of your points are in need of slight clarification.

ju'iblex

first, spell my name right.

second, never assume gender.

third, yes you are correct, i had clicked on the wrong window and posted something irrelevant in here which i subsequently deleted.

fourth, i think your points are in need of clarification luvluv, and i would dearly love it if you would at least acknowledge my post, or the time it took to sort through all your unsubstatiated claims.

[ June 22, 2002: Message edited by: juiblex ]</p>

Panta Pei

Thanks for the clarification, juiblex .

My posts were derailing the 'porno/morality' topic while leaning heavily into more of a 'credulity of christians to defend their fairy tales while using critical thought to discount others of equal silliness' topic

luvluv, merely promotes this behavior confidently and with a 'straight face', yet. Who could ask for anything more?

ju'iblex

thankyou for the spelling for one, after the first hundred times it gets a bit tedious. and also sorry to have caused any confusion on that one.
how very true.

luvluv

jub I admitted VERY early in this discussion that I was never going to be able to objectively prove that pornography hurt any specific woman because that would take access to the woman that I did not have, and that at any rate she might not allow. However, my moral compassion for humans is intuitive: I do not need laboratory proof or empirical studies to know that some things are beneath the dignity of persons. I cannot prove the objectification of women in pornography on matierialistic grounds (which, I assume, are the only grounds which you would respect) I can only endorse that theory on the grounds of being, I hope, a human being. The only thing I know about porn stars is that it would cause me great pain if one of them was my daugher, my mother, or my sister.

The Other Michael

"Dignity of persons" varies with the person evaluating said dignity.

Endorsing the theory on the grounds of being a human being seems a pretty weak argument, since it should be quite obvious that different human beings have different thoughts on the subject - there is no unified agreement of all human beings on the topic.

And it seems pretty arrogant that YOUR pain should be the controlling factor for women to base their lives/actions upon.

cheers,
Michael

luvluv

"And it seems pretty arrogant that YOUR pain should be the controlling factor for women to base their lives/actions upon."

I don't expect it to be for other persons, only myself.

I say that I object to it because I am human being on the grounds that to TRULY be fully human means something. Namely, it means a belief in human dignity and in some things being beneath that dignity. I object to slavery on the grounds that it is a diminishment of the humanity of the people involved; both the slave and the slave owner. I object to pornography on the same grounds. In my opinion, everything that people devote themselves to (war for example) is not worthy of humanity, and a departure from true 'human-ness'.

[ June 22, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

The Other Michael

But if it is only for yourself you certainly appear to be advocating it as right action for many other people.

You might find a few people who object to religion on the same basis - that it is a "diminishment of the humanity of the people involved".

cheers,
Michael