Well, I guess we should have a general principle that something isn't wrong unless we have reason to think so. We shouldn't be agnostic as to whether kicking footballs is wrong just because we have no reason to think it isn't wrong. Rather we should think it isn't wrong unless there is a positive reason to think it is wrong.
sure, I get that, but it still seems wrong to give it the level of credence to then use it as a premiss in another argument if you see what I mean
and then even more sus if you're using it as a premiss that has to be more plausible than alternative premisses for which we have good reason to believe
I'm not a strict Biblical inerrancy chap anyway but just feel this argument would need some work to demonstrate its conclusion
Yes, that makes sense, we certainly need a lot of credence in the proposition to use it in a Moorean shift. But I also think that we should put a very high credence in it. If there is literally no good reason to think that it is wrong, and no one has ever provided any good argument for the intrinsic wrongness of the act, then we should have a very high credence that it isn't wrong, I think. And here you cannot use the justification that the bible says so to lower your initial credence in the permissibility of homosexuality, since that would be circular.
But perhaps other examples like eternal conscious torment or not letting women be preachers would have been better examples.
Unless you think that there is a good reason to think it wrong, eg the Bible. And it isn't circular.
Consider:
P1 If there is no reason to consider X wrong, we should take it not to be wrong
P2 There is reason to consider X wrong (eg the Bible)
C Therefore, we cannot argue on the basis of P1 that we should take X not to be wrong
Not very neat but I think the above is a fine argument
It's therefore actually nonsense to insist a) there is no reason to consider it wrong (except the ones we're ignoring, eg religious sources), b) we can ignore the religious sources because we're ignoring them, c) it's not wrong
Whoops, sorry for the late reply, my comment didn't upload properly 😅
I think there is a sense in which you are right. I should maybe have been a bit more clear in distinguishing between prior and posterior credence.
We have the three jointly inconsistent propositions:
1. Not P
2. If the Bible says that P, then P
3. The Bible says that P
Where P is "homosexuality is wrong". We will have some credence in each of these, but we cannot consistently hold all at the same time, so one has to go. By prior I mean the credences we have in each proposition prior to resolving the contradiction, and posterior is the credence we have after the contradiction is resolved. It should be clear that if our prior credence in each of the propositions is >0.5, then we will also have to lower our posterior credences in the other two, when we reject the one, since they entail the falsity of something we thought more probable than not. So we have clear evidence against any of the propositions from the fact that they are all prima facie plausible.
But what would be wrongheaded would be to take the evidence that, say, 2 and 3 pose against 1 to influence our decision of which of the three to reject. Suppose that our prior credences in the three propositions are 0.8, 0.7, and 0.9 respectively. We have a high credence (0.8) in homosexuality being permissible, since there is no good reason to think it is false, and it is presumptively true (as discussed in previous comments). But now you raise the objection that the conjunction of 2 and 3 contradict 1, and so we do have a good reason to reject 1. This would be getting ahead of ourselves. When deciding which to reject, we look at the priors, and then pick the lowest - and only *after* that do we lower our posteriors accordingly.
It might help to take a parallel example. Suppose we have the three propositions:
1. Bob did not kill Alice
2. If Bob's footprints were found at the crime scene, then Bob killed Alice.
3. Bob's footprints were found at the crime scene
Suppose we have a parallel credence distribution as above (0.8, 0.7, 0.9). Maybe our reason for 1 is that Bob is a really nice guy, was best friends with Alice, and was at your place just prior to the murder, or something. Now someone objects: But we should not have such a high credence in 1 since 2 and 3 provide evidence against it. This would again be wrongheaded, since the evidence that 2 and 3 provide against 1 is accounted for when we update our posteriors, *after* having rejected 2 based on our priors. In other words, when doing a Moorean shift like this, it is circular to invoke some of the propositions in question as evidence against others, when deciding which to reject.
This can perhaps also be made clear if we consider that just as 2 and 3 provide evidence against 1, 1 and 2, provide evidence against 3, and 1 and 3 provide evidence against 2. So there is a symmetry in the arguments that we can make, meaning it would be wrong to only focus on the evidence that 2 and 3 provide against 1.
This was a bit long, but I hope it is not too convoluted/confused, hehe.
Nice, I think we agree on at least some of the epistemic reasoning front. But where is the actual reason for placing a high credence on P?
Re the circular bit, I'd agree if we had already weighed in 2 and 3. But I feel like you haven't done the analogous thing with homosexuality and religio , ie you haven't really factored in how much weight it adds
Actually, we should be agnostic as to whether kicking footballs is wrong in the absence of reason for or against. Then, if there is a command from God "you shall not kick a football", then kicking footballs is wrong. After all, in the absence of God's revelation we have no independent evidence that kicking footballs isn't wrong. We just don't know.
I generally agree with this reasoning, and it's a large part of why I stopped being a theologically conservative Christian. When your theology affirms evil things it seems like you need a new one.
But -- as a Christian who ends up pro - gay -- I think homosexuality is a bad example because a lot of conservatives don't find it odd that gay sex is wrong. When I was conservative, I didn't have any moral intuitions about it at all, and I actually remember remarking on this to some friends. I don't think I was a particularly odd case either, I've heard other people say similar things.
Yeah, you're probably right - I could maybe have taken a better example. But do think that it is still a good example:
While many people in fact do think that gay sex is wrong, it is really hard to come up with a reason why. There is basically no reason to be given (I think) except that it says so in the bible. And if there is absolutely no reason you can come up with for why something should be wrong, then that looks like very strong evidence to say that it is not wrong - it is at least neutral. Some people might give reasons to do with the family and what not for why it is wrong, but those are basically never anything to do with the thing itself (plus they are bad reasons).
Now, most conservatives probably haven't thought too much about that, and so I should maybe have included a bit more reason to think that it isn't wrong, rather than just saying so, assuming my target audience is conservatives.
"Some people might give reasons to do with the family and what not for why it is wrong, but those are basically never anything to do with the thing itself (plus they are bad reasons)."
Why do you think they are bad reasons? Why do you think they don't have anything to do with the thing itself?
Maybe to be more concrete, consider an argument along these lines:
The main function of the institution of marriage is to create a structure where raising and nurturing children is promoted. Children deserve to be raised by their biological parents (sadly, there are necessary exceptions e.g. when a parent dies, but these are not the norm). Only a man and a woman can become biological parents. Therefore, the institution of marriage is for 1 man and 1 woman only. If one of the parents dies or otherwise leaves, children also deserve to be raised by 2 parents of the opposite sex, so they have proper models of each sex close to them (boys need fathers as role models, but they also need mothers in order to understand how to relate to women). Acceptance of homosexual relationships poses therefore a danger to rights and wellbeing of children, since there is a risk of children being raised by same-sex "parents". Some of the negative consequences for children are hard to measure, while some good quality papers about the negative effects of same-sex unions on children are vilified not on the basis of their merits, but due to hostile LGBT activism (e.g. Regnerus 2012).
It's an objectively terrible example. Even three decades ago, an overwhelming majority of Americans thought it was obviously wrong. An overwhelming majority of people alive today view it as such. It's one thing to subject hermeneutically derived ethical views to the judgment of well-formed philosophical positions, it's another to do so to moral fads.
I don't think that it is a moral fad. Sure, most people historically, and maybe also contemporarily, believe(d) that it is wrong. But up to a certain point in history, most people probably thought that slavery wasn't wrong, or that people from outside your culture mattered less. But that doesn't mean that the negation of these views are moral fads.
The move from prohibition to celebration of homosexuality happened much faster than change of attitudes to slavery. Maybe that's just because things in general happen faster today, but it's consistent with it being a fad. The smart move for a bible believer is to hold off for another 50 years and see what happens.
It may or may not, it just makes its less likely it's a passing fad. I'm not saying in 50 years, we have to sign off on it, just that until then it's not even really worth thinking too hard about.
I should probably have been clearer that I am distinguishing prior from posterior cerdences. So we have the jointly inconsistent propositions:
1. Not P
2. If the Bible says that P, then P
3. The Bible says that P
Here P stands for homosexuality is wrong. One of these has to go. The argument I am giving is that we should reject whichever one we have the lowest prior credence in (makes sense I think). After having rejected one, we should of course lower our credences in the remaining two, in proportion to how confident we were in the one we rejected. But the crucial point is that we cannot use the tension of the three propositions as reason to lower the *prior* probability in any of them, even if we lower our *posterior* probabilities.
Consider a structurally similar example:
1. Bob did not kill Alice
2. If we found Bobs footprints at the crime scene, Bob killed Alice
3. We found Bobs footprints at the crime scene.
Suppose that prior to considering this evidence we have a 0.9 credence in 1 and 0.8 credence in 2. Perhaps our confidence in 1 comes from Bob being super nice, best friends with Alice, having been at your place just prior to the crime, etc. We should reject 2 then.
But now consider the following: The fact that we found Bobs footprints at the crime scene is evidence against Bob, so we should lower the prior in 1.
It should be clear now that this is a bad argument. We are using the evidence against Bob to update the prior, but the prior is exactly the credences we have *before* considering the evidence, and so the fact that we should have a lower credence in 1 after considering the evidence is not a good reason to have a lower credence in one prior to doing so. This point can also be made by noticing that we could make exactly similar arguments against any of the three propositions.
There actually is a very plausible argument against homosexuality that should convince any rational, unbiased person: the argument from proper final ends of things. Binary sex, be it in humans or other animals, seems (indeed, is) designed (either by nature or by God) to be a method of reproduction and continuation of the species. Thus, the primary function of sexual organs is participation in the act of reproduction (which may be framed as propagating the species or multiplying and filling the earth). The very shape of sexual organs indicates which of them are supposed to fit together and which of them are not supposed to fit together. Therefore, homosexual acts are contrary to the established function of sexual organs; they are acts of rebellion against the established order of things and therefore immoral.
Thus, I think even in the absence of a biblical command we should recognize gay and lesbian sex as immoral.
There are of course no good arguments in favour of homosexuality. All of them commit clear logical fallacies. For example, some people argue that some animals practice homosexuality, therefore "it is not against nature". Or some people would claim that sexual orientation is a spectrum and therefore one end of this spectrum is as moral as the other (which of course doesn't follow). In reality, all that pro-LGB people have to stand on is some intuition along the lines of "well, it's obvious that there is nothing wrong with it, and why would God care anyway?".
"On the other hand, it is not very obvious that homosexuality is wrong - in fact it looks very obvious that there is nothing inherently wrong about it."
What do you mean by "it looks very obvious that..."? Do you have an actual argument or are you going by your gut feeling? If the former, why didn't you give such an argument? If the latter, why do you think your gut feeling is more likely to be true than false?
"And there is of course not just one counterintuitive (moral) proposition seemingly espoused in the bible. Others include no premarital sex, eternal conscious torment, gender discrimination etc."
You can't just say "it looks very obvious that..." or "it is very intuitive that..." and pretend you made a rational argument. There is in fact no rational argument against waiting with sex until marriage, against eternal conscious torment nor against biblical gender discrimination. All I've ever seen are statements like "but we should be inclusive" "we should respect the feelings and love everyone".
"Many straight people do have a quite negative gut-reaction, but as I have mentioned other places, that is probably just a negative aesthetic judgement, and shouldn’t inform our moral judgements."
Except aesthetic judgements should totally inform our moral judgements.
Woah, okay, that is a LOT of comments! It will be very tedious to respond to have 7 different parallel threads going, so I will just make a rough response in one comment:)
So it seems like you don’t think that intuitions are a good way of judging what is moral and immoral. I would be curious to hear what you think should inform our moral judgments. I don’t really see what other route we have for making moral judgements - unless we just default to skepticism. I am guessing you may endorse a sort of divine command theory. I think that DCT is very implausible for many reasons. For one, it is just obvious to me that something being deemed good or bad from God is not a necessary condition for it being good or bad.
For example, if you were to slowly peel the skin off my flesh for no reason, I think it is pretty obvious that that would be bad. Furthermore, I just think that it is trivial that at least part of the reason (probably most of the reason) why that would be bad is because it would hurt a lot, and pain is just bad. If God had not said anything about peeling the skin off people being bad, I would not be agnostic as to whether what was happening to me was bad, and whether what you were doing was morally bad - I would be absolutely positive. So something can be bad even if God hasn’t said anything about it, meaning divine commands are not necessary for moral judgements.
I also don’t think they are sufficient either. If I was in this extremely excruciating pain, to the point where I would rather just die on the spot than continue living, and I then read in the bible “I, the LORD your God say to you: Peeling the skin off of people is morally good!”, I would not say “oh, okay then, carry on - you are doing something virtuous here”. The fact that an external agent says that something is good, just does not change anything about the fact that excruciating pain is really bad, and it is immoral to inflict it on others.
But if this is correct, then divine commands are neither necessary nor sufficient for something being good or bad, and so it just looks like divine command theory is false. If you actually think that it would be moral to peel the skin off of people who are alive and awake, if God said that it would be, I just think we may be using the word “morality” in different ways at that point.
More generally, it seems to me like for something to be wrong, it requires that some conscious agent is harmed in the process - or at least that some desires are frustrated or something. It is not just that I should be agnostic about whether kicking a football or tying my shoes is morally wrong (unless I am agnostic as to whether these objects are conscious), since I can just see that these actions do not harm anyone. For this reason I am not just agnostic as to whether I am committing a moral atrocity every morning when I tie my shoes - I am very confident that I am not doing that. And the reason is that something cannot have moral valence if it doesn’t affect a conscious agent; I just think that is self-evident. Though again if you endorse divine command theory, we may just be so far apart in moral frameworks that we can’t make any progress on this point.
One worry I suspect you might raise is that seemings are just not a reliable way of making ethical judgements, and that we need some further reason to make a judgment (for example a divine command). I think this has two problems. For one, it means that I don’t have reason to think that it is bad that you are peeling off my skin, because the only reason I think that is that it seems wrong - which I think is a totally unacceptable consequence in itself. But secondly, if you don’t accept seemings as justification, I just don’t think your view gets off the ground. After all, why should we think that divine commands are a good guide to morality? Surely it isn’t because God tells us so, as that would be circular. Rather it just seems like they are. Or perhaps you think there is some deeper reason, like that morality necessarily cannot exist without God, but then your reasons for thinking that will ultimately just come down to seemings: It seems like morality must be grounded in God, it seems like a law must have a law-maker etc.
Now as for your argument that homosexuality is wrong, I find it very unconvincing. First off, I am just very skeptical that natural teleology (if real) should have much if anything to say about morality. Secondly, the argument you give, would just commit you to some extremely implausible positions, I think.
For example, the purpose of fruits is that they trick animals into eating seeds, and then “planting” those seeds when they poop them out. Meaning when you eat an apple but don’t eat the seeds, you are committing an act of rebellion against the order of things. So if we take your argument seriously, it seems like we should think it is immoral to eat an apple, without eating the seeds and shitting in dirt to plant them.
Body hair also has a natural purpose: Aside from keeping us warm, it helps us sense when insects land on us, to avoid them biting etc. So when a woman shaves off her leg hair, she is frustrating the purpose of that hair, and so committing a sin.
In fact, circumcision seems to be immoral given this argument, since the foreskin has several purposes, meaning God commands jews to do something immoral. Though I expect you just think God’s command overrides the natural teleology in this case.
So it just seems utterly implausible to me that natural ends should be even a rough guide to morality - we don’t have to consider the natural function of a fruit before we decide whether it is okay to eat it.
But even if we accept this argument, there are several theories given for the purpose of homosexuality - for example the “gay uncle theory”. These would provide a purpose to homosexuality, and so I just think that your claim that homosexuality frustrates natural teleology is false. This also appears to defeat your argument about why homosexuality is wrong from the perspective of marriage as an institution. From a brief look at the literature, it also just seems like there isn’t a strong correlation between children having homosexual parents, and them being worse off - though you may just chalk that up to left-wing bias in academia.
To your point about my moorean argument, I think you did point out a flaw with it, as we probably shouldn’t look only at the priors, but also conditionalize on different possibilities. I am not exactly sure what the right answer is, but so far I am thinking something like this. Take the three propositions:
1. Not P
2. If the Bible says that P, then P
3. The Bible says that P
In the case you give, P is “Paul's companion was named Timothy”. Now consider if we conditionalize on each of the three propositions, and then consider the negation of the two others:
So given that the bible says that the name was Timothy is it more plausible that:
1. The name was Timothy
2. The bible is errant
Here 1 is clearly more plausible. After all, the name is just a trivial historical fact, and regardless of your view on inerrancy, you should believe stuff like that in the absence of defeaters.
Given that the name was not Timothy is it more plausible that:
1. The bible doesn’t say that it is timothy
2. The bible is errant
Here I think 2 is more plausible, since we can just see in the text that it says 1, and it is not plausible that the text could be reinterpreted in a way to make it not say that.
Given that the bible is inerrant, is it more plausible that:
1. The name was Timothy
2. The bible doesn’t say that it is timothy
Here 1 is again clearly more plausible, since you again don’t need a lot of evidence to be convinced of 1, and 2 is very plausible.
For this reason it looks like you should choose to reject 1 (that the name was not Timothy) and then 2 (inerrancy) is next in line to be rejected (for example if we get very strong independent evidence that the name was not Timothy).
Now take the case of homosexuality:
Given that the bible says that homosexuality is wrong is it more plausible that:
1. Homosexuality is wrong
2. The bible is errant
Here I think it may be close, but I think 2 is more plausible. The reason is that just the bible saying that some contentious thing is wrong, withholding judgment on inerrancy, will not be strong enough reason to think it was wrong. Furthermore, I think it is quite probable that it would say that homosexuality is wrong on the hypothesis of errancy and homosexuality not being wrong (a little more on that below).
Given that homosexuality isn’t wrong is it more plausible that:
1. The bible doesn’t say that it is wrong
2. The bible is errant
Here it is again sort of a tie, but for a single case like this, it may be that 1 is more plausible when we only consider one instance like homosexuality.
Given that the bible is inerrant, is it more plausible that:
1. Homosexuality is wrong
2. The bible doesn’t say that homosexuality is wrong
Here I think it is probably close, but I do think that 2 may be more plausible, given that the passages are not too clear.
If this is correct then we should reject that the bible says that homosexuality is wrong, and if not that, then reject inerrancy. I suspect that you would disagree with my assessment in this case, but when we consider all the cases of implausible stuff the bible says, then I think it quickly becomes very clear that inerrancy is the weaker assumption.
I will admit that I am not completely sure that this method is correct, so I am interested in what you think is the correct way to resolve antilogisms like these?
On the question of whether we should expect to find commands against homosexuality given errancy, I find your argument here very unconvincing. Sure, the greeks were okay with homosexuality, but Paul was a Jew, meaning he would certainly have a very strong bias against homosexuality. He was also definitely not afraid of saying stuff that would not go down well with the greeks, for example that there is only one God, and the only way is through Jesus etc. After all, many believe that he died a martyr for christianity, which is not something you do if you’re afraid to say unpopular stuff. So I just think it is very probable that the bible would say that homosexuality was wrong given errancy.
I also just don’t think that inerrancy is super plausible in itself. The bible never says that it is inerrant, and I just don’t see any positive reason to think that it is inerrant, even if inspired by God. This is especially true given the amount of loopholes you have to go through to resolve apparent inconsistencies, and the degree to which it appears that it is a story which is at least partly and gradually developed by humans (like that the character of God seems to change quite drastically throughout). I think you can certainly hold such a view of the bible while still being christian.
I mean, as long as you believe that P("Bible teaches that homos. is wrong" | "Bible is errant") > P("Bible teaches that homos. is wrong" | "Bible is inerrant") - which is influenced by P("homos. is wrong"), then the argument becomes formally valid. I'm not sure what's the point of all these paragraphs except the last two.
But my main point is that you shouldn't place too much credence in "homos. is not wrong", because this belief is founded on your fallible moral intuitions - see my other comments. I'm also not sure why you don't believe that homosexuality is harmful, when it's obviously associated with other evils such as promiscuous behaviour, polygamy, peadophilia, sexual offences, STDs (HIV and others, even the recent m-pox outbreak), intolerance, limitation of free speech, prosecution of people who believe in heteronormativity, possibly worse psychosocial outcomes for children raised by same-sex couples, etc.
On the association between homosexuality and pedophilia. It's really funny (but also sad) that the main counterpoint the left-wing media have for this is strawmanning the argument along the lines of "but actshully, most pedophiles are heterosexual". For example, https://zeroabuseproject.org/victim-assistance/jwrc/keep-kids-safe/sexuality-of-offenders/, "[M]ost men who molest little boys are not gay. Only 21 percent of the child molesters we studied who assault little boys were exclusively homosexual. Nearly 80 percent of the men who molested little boys were heterosexual or bisexual and most of these men were married and had children of their own." Since the proportion of homosexuals in the population is 2-4%, it is terrifying how strongly homosexuality is associated with sexual abuse of children.
As for the justification for inerrancy/infallibility:
I don’t really like the term “inerrancy”. The Bible might be sometimes inaccurate in matters that do not pertain to salvation and morality, it might exaggerate some numbers in the history of the Jewish nation for example. Hence I prefer “infallibility” which expresses the idea that the Bible is infallible in its teachings on matters of faith, doctrine and morality. I think there are 3-4 families of arguments for infallibility. I won’t do them justice in such a short comment, but anyway:
1. Historical records of the teachings of Jesus, the God Incarnate, demonstrate that He believed in the infallibility of Hebrew Scriptures. He repeatedly uses them in authoritative manner (“it’s true because the Scriptures say so”) and affirms that “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single iota or one little stroke will pass from the law until everything takes place” (Mt 5:17-18), indicating that not a single letter is incorrect in the Law. (I’m not relying on infallibility to make this argument – I’m just relying on the fact that the Gospels present an accurate representation of Jesus’ life and teaching, as I’m convinced they do.)
2. The disciples of Jesus were tasked with proclaiming the Gospel to all nations and hence we ought to trust that God guided them in the right doctrine. (This is again something that Jesus affirms). Hence, their writings (i.e. writings that the early church attributed to disciples, or to disciples of disciples) should be infallible. Further, it was actually one of their uncontroversial doctrines was that Scripture is infallible. For example, 2 Timothy 3:15-17 says: “and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Scripture that contains moral falsehoods mixed with truth is not “useful for training in righteousness”. Scripture that contains doctrinal falsehoods is not “useful for rebuking”. You get the idea.
3. Miraculous nature of the Bible is an argument for it being inspired by God, in its writing and compilation. I’m referring here to miracles such as fulfilled prophecies.
4. God wouldn’t allow the entire church to be so hopelessly misguided on doctrinal and moral matters in believing Scripture that was false.
I'm also curious - if you reject the infallibility of Scripture, how do you even know doctrinal matters such as the fact that Jesus died for our sins? Or that Holy Spirit helps Christians in our daily lives?
I do indeed support DCT. In the absence of a divine command or teaching that would imply something like “follow your moral intuition”, trusting them is simply irrational. Biblically, we know that divine commands are sometimes given through the moral intuition. But this intuition is still fallible, and that's why the Bible comes first: if our moral intuition contradicts an obvious reading of a biblical command, we should follow the latter.
Not all moral values are the result of a divine command. Some proceed from the qualities of God’s character. These are, in a sense, the foundational moral values, which cannot be changed, because God’s character cannot possibly change as a result of His command (He can’t possibly issue such a command).
“The fact that an external agent says that something is good, just does not change anything about the fact that excruciating pain is really bad”
In the case of God – yes, it does. If the omniscient, omnipotent being says something is wrong, then EVEN IF it wasn’t wrong before, it now becomes wrong for the people covered by His command, by virtue of the command (Romans 4-5: “And where there is no law there is no transgression.”, and “To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law.”). We accept the analogue of DCT even in the case of civil laws: if the government says driving over 100kmph is prohibited, we (or at least those who have sufficient degree of obedience in the government) accept that driving over 100kmph is wrong (even if we are confident we can drive over 100kmph safely), because it would be a disobedience to the government, which is (usually) wrong. How much morally worse is disobedience to God of the Universe!
God also provides mandates for people to exercise his judgement. For example, killing someone is usually bad, but when God commands it (e.g. death penalty exercised by civil authorities – see Romans 13), it naturally becomes permissible/good.
“After all, why should we think that divine commands are a good guide to morality?” Morality encompasses all things that we ought to do and things we ought not to do. By a simple syllogism:
1. God says that we ought to do X.
2. God is omniscient and always truthful.
3. Therefore, we ought to do X.
Of course, establishing premise (1) is always tricky. But in principle, this can act as a foundation of normative statements. Therefore, we don’t have to rely on any moral intuition to know that we ought to do as God tells us to do. We just have to know that God is truthful, omniscient, and use simple logic.
Natural teleology “counterexamples”
You are mistaken with regard to the purpose of fruits. One of their purposes (there could be many) is that they are given to humans and animals as food: Genesis 1:29-30 and some verses in chapter 2.
“Body hair also has a natural purpose: Aside from keeping us warm, it helps us sense when insects land on us, to avoid them biting.” That’s no longer a purpose of body hair in a culture in which we wear clothes and don’t need to worry about insects. Coincidentally, in Mosaic law men were prohibited from cutting their beards. A possible reason was emphasizing the distinctions between the sexes.
“there are several theories given for the purpose of homosexuality” – There might be some unconfirmed theories, but that doesn’t mean that any of them makes sense. The gay uncle theory doesn’t explain why engaging in intercourse with a person of the same sex would be necessary for the “uncle” to nurture their nephews/nieces (surely, you can be nice to your nephews without the need to put your dick in another man’s butt). This is just a theory that could explain the selection of “gay genes” (doubtful concept in the first place), and why they were not eliminated via evolutionary pressure, but it does not provide a moral purpose for homosexuality.
In summary: you seem to think you have rational reasons for rejecting biblical teaching against homosexuality and other controversial topics. However, you keep relying on intuitions and saying things like “it is obvious to me that…” without providing actual proof. In effect, you assume, without justification, some part of the secular worldview to be true (mainly: “it is not wrong if it doesn’t harm anyone”) and proceed to refute some part of the biblical worldview, which is a trivial step once you accepted the assumption.
"So it seems like you don’t think that intuitions are a good way of judging what is moral and immoral. I would be curious to hear what you think should inform our moral judgments."
Indeed, I don't think intuitions are a particularly good way of informing our moral judgments. What evidence do we have that our moral intuitions are more likely to be correct than wrong? Not much. We have some evidence from the Bible, like Romans 1:14-15: "Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them."
(By Gentiles Paul means non-Jewish Christians, not non-Christians.) But this is limited, as even Christians often differ in their moral intuitions.
You keep saying things like "I think it is pretty obvious that...", "it is just obvious to me...", “I just think that is self-evident”, but you never provide an actual argument. I see no reason why a rational person should be convinced by such statements. Indeed, in mathematics for example, some implications seem very obvious, but once we investigate them using logic, they turn out to be false. As my mathematics teacher liked to say: “If you claim something is obvious, you should be able to produce a two-line proof of it”; you did not produce such proof.
A major difficulty is that moral intuitions are largely a product of our upbringing and societal influences, and are therefore no more justified than the moral beliefs of society, which again haven't been the result of a rational process, but of a historical accident (although society is to some degree still shaped by the correct, biblical moral precepts).
"pain is just bad" - This is a bit of a tangent, but I disagree. This is a major mistake that I see more and more commonly in recent days. There is nothing intrinsically good or evil about pain/suffering. It's just an impersonal, natural fact. Goodness and badness are properties of actions, not properties of states of affairs. A better way to say this is: if someone started peeling off my skin without justification, that action would be evil*. Your (and my) intuition about it is not contradicted by biblical commands, and is supported by stories of God's anger directed against those who commit reckless cruelty.
* Most likely because that person, by exercising such power over me, is placing himself in the position of God; only God has the right to peel off my skin. Note that if God afflicts me with a disease that causes skin to peel off, that's not an immoral act, because God has rightful authority over my life and body. He does not violate any moral law by inflicting suffering on me (and He will only inflict it if justice permits). This coheres very well with the Bible, which teaches that God killed a lot of people by direct intervention and will torture a lot more after the final judgment.
“It seems to me like for something to be wrong, it requires that some conscious agent is harmed in the process or at least that some desires are frustrated” – this is already false. It’s so contradictory to the Bible that you might as well have started by admitting ”I just think it is self-evident that the Bible is false”. The Bible never endorses this principle, and it obviously includes many commands that have nothing to do with preventing harm (out the top of my head: Exodus 20:25-26).
If you believe there is nothing to morality beyond harm and the opposite of harm (fulfillment of some desires?), then I am not surprised you reject the Bible, and our discussion is doomed to be fruitless unless you are willing to challenge this assumption (which seems to be merely an intuition that you cannot justify). Have you considered the possibility that this axiom of yours might be a feature of a left-wing bias? (See J Haidt, The Righteous Mind, or his papers on Moral Foundations.) For my part, I do not share the intuition that an evil act requires harm or frustration of someone’s desires (not that I put that much weight on my intuition, but I’m using your own argument).
I don't think what Paul meant by love was "putting your dick in another man's anus".
1 Corinthians 13:4-6: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth."
Nothing about putting your dick in another guy's butt.
Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6:9 and Leviticus 18:22 do not condemn "putting one's dick into another man's butt unlovingly", but "putting one's dick into another man's butt" altogether (well, they prohibit "men bedding men", or having sexual relations with a man "as one does with a woman"; you know what I mean). There is no qualification/clarification that it's wrong only if it is done unlovingly. Therefore, the conclusion is that it is always wrong. It is always unloving towards the neighbour most likely because it makes the other participant in sex sin against God as well, and become defiled; pushing your fellow human into sin is unloving. It is unloving towards God because it is a rebellion against His law (that's why "loving your God" is the first and greatest commandment - because it implies obedience and following all other commandments).
You can't lie with a man as with a woman bc they don't have the same parts, well, except that one part. But anyways if you put a duck in someone's butt lovingly it doesn't matter if it's man woman or sheep, the law is fulfilled.
"You can't lie with a man as with a woman bc they don't have the same parts, well, except that one part."
What do you mean? Leviticus 18:22 says "Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable." Obviously, it doesn't mean "do not put your dick into a man's vagina" - that's impossible. "As one does with a woman" obviously doesn't mean "in literally the same way", it just means "Do not have sexual relations with a man - you can have sexual relations with a woman, but you must not have sexual relations with a man". There are parallels to this structure elsewhere in the OT, for example Lev 15:25: "“If a woman has a flow of blood for many days that is unrelated to her menstrual period, or if the blood continues beyond the normal period, she is ceremonially unclean. As during her menstrual period, the woman will be unclean as long as the discharge continues." The words "As during her menstrual period" provide a clarification of the way in which she will be considered unclean.
There is no point in giving a law against something that's physically impossible. The conclusion is that "Having sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman" is possible and it is prohibited. It is not made conditional on whether it is done lovingly or unlovingly. It is prohibited altogether. Same in the New Testament passages - it is not prohibited only in the cases of sexual abuse or exploitation, but it is prohibited altogether. (By the way, this is consistent with "love is the fulfillment of the law", because love includes loving your God, which entails obeying His commandments. You can't just rely on the statement "love is the fulfillment of the law" and make up commandments that are contradictory to the Bible on the basis of your flawed, human understanding of "love".)
Absence of reason to believe something is wrong isn't necessarily reason to think it isn't wrong. Seems potentially applicable here
Well, I guess we should have a general principle that something isn't wrong unless we have reason to think so. We shouldn't be agnostic as to whether kicking footballs is wrong just because we have no reason to think it isn't wrong. Rather we should think it isn't wrong unless there is a positive reason to think it is wrong.
sure, I get that, but it still seems wrong to give it the level of credence to then use it as a premiss in another argument if you see what I mean
and then even more sus if you're using it as a premiss that has to be more plausible than alternative premisses for which we have good reason to believe
I'm not a strict Biblical inerrancy chap anyway but just feel this argument would need some work to demonstrate its conclusion
Yes, that makes sense, we certainly need a lot of credence in the proposition to use it in a Moorean shift. But I also think that we should put a very high credence in it. If there is literally no good reason to think that it is wrong, and no one has ever provided any good argument for the intrinsic wrongness of the act, then we should have a very high credence that it isn't wrong, I think. And here you cannot use the justification that the bible says so to lower your initial credence in the permissibility of homosexuality, since that would be circular.
But perhaps other examples like eternal conscious torment or not letting women be preachers would have been better examples.
Unless you think that there is a good reason to think it wrong, eg the Bible. And it isn't circular.
Consider:
P1 If there is no reason to consider X wrong, we should take it not to be wrong
P2 There is reason to consider X wrong (eg the Bible)
C Therefore, we cannot argue on the basis of P1 that we should take X not to be wrong
Not very neat but I think the above is a fine argument
It's therefore actually nonsense to insist a) there is no reason to consider it wrong (except the ones we're ignoring, eg religious sources), b) we can ignore the religious sources because we're ignoring them, c) it's not wrong
Surely this is more circular?
Whoops, sorry for the late reply, my comment didn't upload properly 😅
I think there is a sense in which you are right. I should maybe have been a bit more clear in distinguishing between prior and posterior credence.
We have the three jointly inconsistent propositions:
1. Not P
2. If the Bible says that P, then P
3. The Bible says that P
Where P is "homosexuality is wrong". We will have some credence in each of these, but we cannot consistently hold all at the same time, so one has to go. By prior I mean the credences we have in each proposition prior to resolving the contradiction, and posterior is the credence we have after the contradiction is resolved. It should be clear that if our prior credence in each of the propositions is >0.5, then we will also have to lower our posterior credences in the other two, when we reject the one, since they entail the falsity of something we thought more probable than not. So we have clear evidence against any of the propositions from the fact that they are all prima facie plausible.
But what would be wrongheaded would be to take the evidence that, say, 2 and 3 pose against 1 to influence our decision of which of the three to reject. Suppose that our prior credences in the three propositions are 0.8, 0.7, and 0.9 respectively. We have a high credence (0.8) in homosexuality being permissible, since there is no good reason to think it is false, and it is presumptively true (as discussed in previous comments). But now you raise the objection that the conjunction of 2 and 3 contradict 1, and so we do have a good reason to reject 1. This would be getting ahead of ourselves. When deciding which to reject, we look at the priors, and then pick the lowest - and only *after* that do we lower our posteriors accordingly.
It might help to take a parallel example. Suppose we have the three propositions:
1. Bob did not kill Alice
2. If Bob's footprints were found at the crime scene, then Bob killed Alice.
3. Bob's footprints were found at the crime scene
Suppose we have a parallel credence distribution as above (0.8, 0.7, 0.9). Maybe our reason for 1 is that Bob is a really nice guy, was best friends with Alice, and was at your place just prior to the murder, or something. Now someone objects: But we should not have such a high credence in 1 since 2 and 3 provide evidence against it. This would again be wrongheaded, since the evidence that 2 and 3 provide against 1 is accounted for when we update our posteriors, *after* having rejected 2 based on our priors. In other words, when doing a Moorean shift like this, it is circular to invoke some of the propositions in question as evidence against others, when deciding which to reject.
This can perhaps also be made clear if we consider that just as 2 and 3 provide evidence against 1, 1 and 2, provide evidence against 3, and 1 and 3 provide evidence against 2. So there is a symmetry in the arguments that we can make, meaning it would be wrong to only focus on the evidence that 2 and 3 provide against 1.
This was a bit long, but I hope it is not too convoluted/confused, hehe.
Nice, I think we agree on at least some of the epistemic reasoning front. But where is the actual reason for placing a high credence on P?
Re the circular bit, I'd agree if we had already weighed in 2 and 3. But I feel like you haven't done the analogous thing with homosexuality and religio , ie you haven't really factored in how much weight it adds
Actually, we should be agnostic as to whether kicking footballs is wrong in the absence of reason for or against. Then, if there is a command from God "you shall not kick a football", then kicking footballs is wrong. After all, in the absence of God's revelation we have no independent evidence that kicking footballs isn't wrong. We just don't know.
I generally agree with this reasoning, and it's a large part of why I stopped being a theologically conservative Christian. When your theology affirms evil things it seems like you need a new one.
But -- as a Christian who ends up pro - gay -- I think homosexuality is a bad example because a lot of conservatives don't find it odd that gay sex is wrong. When I was conservative, I didn't have any moral intuitions about it at all, and I actually remember remarking on this to some friends. I don't think I was a particularly odd case either, I've heard other people say similar things.
Yeah, you're probably right - I could maybe have taken a better example. But do think that it is still a good example:
While many people in fact do think that gay sex is wrong, it is really hard to come up with a reason why. There is basically no reason to be given (I think) except that it says so in the bible. And if there is absolutely no reason you can come up with for why something should be wrong, then that looks like very strong evidence to say that it is not wrong - it is at least neutral. Some people might give reasons to do with the family and what not for why it is wrong, but those are basically never anything to do with the thing itself (plus they are bad reasons).
Now, most conservatives probably haven't thought too much about that, and so I should maybe have included a bit more reason to think that it isn't wrong, rather than just saying so, assuming my target audience is conservatives.
"Some people might give reasons to do with the family and what not for why it is wrong, but those are basically never anything to do with the thing itself (plus they are bad reasons)."
Why do you think they are bad reasons? Why do you think they don't have anything to do with the thing itself?
Maybe to be more concrete, consider an argument along these lines:
The main function of the institution of marriage is to create a structure where raising and nurturing children is promoted. Children deserve to be raised by their biological parents (sadly, there are necessary exceptions e.g. when a parent dies, but these are not the norm). Only a man and a woman can become biological parents. Therefore, the institution of marriage is for 1 man and 1 woman only. If one of the parents dies or otherwise leaves, children also deserve to be raised by 2 parents of the opposite sex, so they have proper models of each sex close to them (boys need fathers as role models, but they also need mothers in order to understand how to relate to women). Acceptance of homosexual relationships poses therefore a danger to rights and wellbeing of children, since there is a risk of children being raised by same-sex "parents". Some of the negative consequences for children are hard to measure, while some good quality papers about the negative effects of same-sex unions on children are vilified not on the basis of their merits, but due to hostile LGBT activism (e.g. Regnerus 2012).
It's an objectively terrible example. Even three decades ago, an overwhelming majority of Americans thought it was obviously wrong. An overwhelming majority of people alive today view it as such. It's one thing to subject hermeneutically derived ethical views to the judgment of well-formed philosophical positions, it's another to do so to moral fads.
I don't think that it is a moral fad. Sure, most people historically, and maybe also contemporarily, believe(d) that it is wrong. But up to a certain point in history, most people probably thought that slavery wasn't wrong, or that people from outside your culture mattered less. But that doesn't mean that the negation of these views are moral fads.
The move from prohibition to celebration of homosexuality happened much faster than change of attitudes to slavery. Maybe that's just because things in general happen faster today, but it's consistent with it being a fad. The smart move for a bible believer is to hold off for another 50 years and see what happens.
Why would it make any difference if the same false belief persists in society for 50 years?
It may or may not, it just makes its less likely it's a passing fad. I'm not saying in 50 years, we have to sign off on it, just that until then it's not even really worth thinking too hard about.
I should probably have been clearer that I am distinguishing prior from posterior cerdences. So we have the jointly inconsistent propositions:
1. Not P
2. If the Bible says that P, then P
3. The Bible says that P
Here P stands for homosexuality is wrong. One of these has to go. The argument I am giving is that we should reject whichever one we have the lowest prior credence in (makes sense I think). After having rejected one, we should of course lower our credences in the remaining two, in proportion to how confident we were in the one we rejected. But the crucial point is that we cannot use the tension of the three propositions as reason to lower the *prior* probability in any of them, even if we lower our *posterior* probabilities.
Consider a structurally similar example:
1. Bob did not kill Alice
2. If we found Bobs footprints at the crime scene, Bob killed Alice
3. We found Bobs footprints at the crime scene.
Suppose that prior to considering this evidence we have a 0.9 credence in 1 and 0.8 credence in 2. Perhaps our confidence in 1 comes from Bob being super nice, best friends with Alice, having been at your place just prior to the crime, etc. We should reject 2 then.
But now consider the following: The fact that we found Bobs footprints at the crime scene is evidence against Bob, so we should lower the prior in 1.
It should be clear now that this is a bad argument. We are using the evidence against Bob to update the prior, but the prior is exactly the credences we have *before* considering the evidence, and so the fact that we should have a lower credence in 1 after considering the evidence is not a good reason to have a lower credence in one prior to doing so. This point can also be made by noticing that we could make exactly similar arguments against any of the three propositions.
In addition to my other comment:
There actually is a very plausible argument against homosexuality that should convince any rational, unbiased person: the argument from proper final ends of things. Binary sex, be it in humans or other animals, seems (indeed, is) designed (either by nature or by God) to be a method of reproduction and continuation of the species. Thus, the primary function of sexual organs is participation in the act of reproduction (which may be framed as propagating the species or multiplying and filling the earth). The very shape of sexual organs indicates which of them are supposed to fit together and which of them are not supposed to fit together. Therefore, homosexual acts are contrary to the established function of sexual organs; they are acts of rebellion against the established order of things and therefore immoral.
Thus, I think even in the absence of a biblical command we should recognize gay and lesbian sex as immoral.
There are of course no good arguments in favour of homosexuality. All of them commit clear logical fallacies. For example, some people argue that some animals practice homosexuality, therefore "it is not against nature". Or some people would claim that sexual orientation is a spectrum and therefore one end of this spectrum is as moral as the other (which of course doesn't follow). In reality, all that pro-LGB people have to stand on is some intuition along the lines of "well, it's obvious that there is nothing wrong with it, and why would God care anyway?".
"On the other hand, it is not very obvious that homosexuality is wrong - in fact it looks very obvious that there is nothing inherently wrong about it."
What do you mean by "it looks very obvious that..."? Do you have an actual argument or are you going by your gut feeling? If the former, why didn't you give such an argument? If the latter, why do you think your gut feeling is more likely to be true than false?
"And there is of course not just one counterintuitive (moral) proposition seemingly espoused in the bible. Others include no premarital sex, eternal conscious torment, gender discrimination etc."
You can't just say "it looks very obvious that..." or "it is very intuitive that..." and pretend you made a rational argument. There is in fact no rational argument against waiting with sex until marriage, against eternal conscious torment nor against biblical gender discrimination. All I've ever seen are statements like "but we should be inclusive" "we should respect the feelings and love everyone".
"Many straight people do have a quite negative gut-reaction, but as I have mentioned other places, that is probably just a negative aesthetic judgement, and shouldn’t inform our moral judgements."
Except aesthetic judgements should totally inform our moral judgements.
Woah, okay, that is a LOT of comments! It will be very tedious to respond to have 7 different parallel threads going, so I will just make a rough response in one comment:)
So it seems like you don’t think that intuitions are a good way of judging what is moral and immoral. I would be curious to hear what you think should inform our moral judgments. I don’t really see what other route we have for making moral judgements - unless we just default to skepticism. I am guessing you may endorse a sort of divine command theory. I think that DCT is very implausible for many reasons. For one, it is just obvious to me that something being deemed good or bad from God is not a necessary condition for it being good or bad.
For example, if you were to slowly peel the skin off my flesh for no reason, I think it is pretty obvious that that would be bad. Furthermore, I just think that it is trivial that at least part of the reason (probably most of the reason) why that would be bad is because it would hurt a lot, and pain is just bad. If God had not said anything about peeling the skin off people being bad, I would not be agnostic as to whether what was happening to me was bad, and whether what you were doing was morally bad - I would be absolutely positive. So something can be bad even if God hasn’t said anything about it, meaning divine commands are not necessary for moral judgements.
I also don’t think they are sufficient either. If I was in this extremely excruciating pain, to the point where I would rather just die on the spot than continue living, and I then read in the bible “I, the LORD your God say to you: Peeling the skin off of people is morally good!”, I would not say “oh, okay then, carry on - you are doing something virtuous here”. The fact that an external agent says that something is good, just does not change anything about the fact that excruciating pain is really bad, and it is immoral to inflict it on others.
But if this is correct, then divine commands are neither necessary nor sufficient for something being good or bad, and so it just looks like divine command theory is false. If you actually think that it would be moral to peel the skin off of people who are alive and awake, if God said that it would be, I just think we may be using the word “morality” in different ways at that point.
More generally, it seems to me like for something to be wrong, it requires that some conscious agent is harmed in the process - or at least that some desires are frustrated or something. It is not just that I should be agnostic about whether kicking a football or tying my shoes is morally wrong (unless I am agnostic as to whether these objects are conscious), since I can just see that these actions do not harm anyone. For this reason I am not just agnostic as to whether I am committing a moral atrocity every morning when I tie my shoes - I am very confident that I am not doing that. And the reason is that something cannot have moral valence if it doesn’t affect a conscious agent; I just think that is self-evident. Though again if you endorse divine command theory, we may just be so far apart in moral frameworks that we can’t make any progress on this point.
One worry I suspect you might raise is that seemings are just not a reliable way of making ethical judgements, and that we need some further reason to make a judgment (for example a divine command). I think this has two problems. For one, it means that I don’t have reason to think that it is bad that you are peeling off my skin, because the only reason I think that is that it seems wrong - which I think is a totally unacceptable consequence in itself. But secondly, if you don’t accept seemings as justification, I just don’t think your view gets off the ground. After all, why should we think that divine commands are a good guide to morality? Surely it isn’t because God tells us so, as that would be circular. Rather it just seems like they are. Or perhaps you think there is some deeper reason, like that morality necessarily cannot exist without God, but then your reasons for thinking that will ultimately just come down to seemings: It seems like morality must be grounded in God, it seems like a law must have a law-maker etc.
Now as for your argument that homosexuality is wrong, I find it very unconvincing. First off, I am just very skeptical that natural teleology (if real) should have much if anything to say about morality. Secondly, the argument you give, would just commit you to some extremely implausible positions, I think.
For example, the purpose of fruits is that they trick animals into eating seeds, and then “planting” those seeds when they poop them out. Meaning when you eat an apple but don’t eat the seeds, you are committing an act of rebellion against the order of things. So if we take your argument seriously, it seems like we should think it is immoral to eat an apple, without eating the seeds and shitting in dirt to plant them.
Body hair also has a natural purpose: Aside from keeping us warm, it helps us sense when insects land on us, to avoid them biting etc. So when a woman shaves off her leg hair, she is frustrating the purpose of that hair, and so committing a sin.
In fact, circumcision seems to be immoral given this argument, since the foreskin has several purposes, meaning God commands jews to do something immoral. Though I expect you just think God’s command overrides the natural teleology in this case.
So it just seems utterly implausible to me that natural ends should be even a rough guide to morality - we don’t have to consider the natural function of a fruit before we decide whether it is okay to eat it.
But even if we accept this argument, there are several theories given for the purpose of homosexuality - for example the “gay uncle theory”. These would provide a purpose to homosexuality, and so I just think that your claim that homosexuality frustrates natural teleology is false. This also appears to defeat your argument about why homosexuality is wrong from the perspective of marriage as an institution. From a brief look at the literature, it also just seems like there isn’t a strong correlation between children having homosexual parents, and them being worse off - though you may just chalk that up to left-wing bias in academia.
(There wasn't room for all of it in 1 comment)
To your point about my moorean argument, I think you did point out a flaw with it, as we probably shouldn’t look only at the priors, but also conditionalize on different possibilities. I am not exactly sure what the right answer is, but so far I am thinking something like this. Take the three propositions:
1. Not P
2. If the Bible says that P, then P
3. The Bible says that P
In the case you give, P is “Paul's companion was named Timothy”. Now consider if we conditionalize on each of the three propositions, and then consider the negation of the two others:
So given that the bible says that the name was Timothy is it more plausible that:
1. The name was Timothy
2. The bible is errant
Here 1 is clearly more plausible. After all, the name is just a trivial historical fact, and regardless of your view on inerrancy, you should believe stuff like that in the absence of defeaters.
Given that the name was not Timothy is it more plausible that:
1. The bible doesn’t say that it is timothy
2. The bible is errant
Here I think 2 is more plausible, since we can just see in the text that it says 1, and it is not plausible that the text could be reinterpreted in a way to make it not say that.
Given that the bible is inerrant, is it more plausible that:
1. The name was Timothy
2. The bible doesn’t say that it is timothy
Here 1 is again clearly more plausible, since you again don’t need a lot of evidence to be convinced of 1, and 2 is very plausible.
For this reason it looks like you should choose to reject 1 (that the name was not Timothy) and then 2 (inerrancy) is next in line to be rejected (for example if we get very strong independent evidence that the name was not Timothy).
Now take the case of homosexuality:
Given that the bible says that homosexuality is wrong is it more plausible that:
1. Homosexuality is wrong
2. The bible is errant
Here I think it may be close, but I think 2 is more plausible. The reason is that just the bible saying that some contentious thing is wrong, withholding judgment on inerrancy, will not be strong enough reason to think it was wrong. Furthermore, I think it is quite probable that it would say that homosexuality is wrong on the hypothesis of errancy and homosexuality not being wrong (a little more on that below).
Given that homosexuality isn’t wrong is it more plausible that:
1. The bible doesn’t say that it is wrong
2. The bible is errant
Here it is again sort of a tie, but for a single case like this, it may be that 1 is more plausible when we only consider one instance like homosexuality.
Given that the bible is inerrant, is it more plausible that:
1. Homosexuality is wrong
2. The bible doesn’t say that homosexuality is wrong
Here I think it is probably close, but I do think that 2 may be more plausible, given that the passages are not too clear.
If this is correct then we should reject that the bible says that homosexuality is wrong, and if not that, then reject inerrancy. I suspect that you would disagree with my assessment in this case, but when we consider all the cases of implausible stuff the bible says, then I think it quickly becomes very clear that inerrancy is the weaker assumption.
I will admit that I am not completely sure that this method is correct, so I am interested in what you think is the correct way to resolve antilogisms like these?
On the question of whether we should expect to find commands against homosexuality given errancy, I find your argument here very unconvincing. Sure, the greeks were okay with homosexuality, but Paul was a Jew, meaning he would certainly have a very strong bias against homosexuality. He was also definitely not afraid of saying stuff that would not go down well with the greeks, for example that there is only one God, and the only way is through Jesus etc. After all, many believe that he died a martyr for christianity, which is not something you do if you’re afraid to say unpopular stuff. So I just think it is very probable that the bible would say that homosexuality was wrong given errancy.
I also just don’t think that inerrancy is super plausible in itself. The bible never says that it is inerrant, and I just don’t see any positive reason to think that it is inerrant, even if inspired by God. This is especially true given the amount of loopholes you have to go through to resolve apparent inconsistencies, and the degree to which it appears that it is a story which is at least partly and gradually developed by humans (like that the character of God seems to change quite drastically throughout). I think you can certainly hold such a view of the bible while still being christian.
I mean, as long as you believe that P("Bible teaches that homos. is wrong" | "Bible is errant") > P("Bible teaches that homos. is wrong" | "Bible is inerrant") - which is influenced by P("homos. is wrong"), then the argument becomes formally valid. I'm not sure what's the point of all these paragraphs except the last two.
But my main point is that you shouldn't place too much credence in "homos. is not wrong", because this belief is founded on your fallible moral intuitions - see my other comments. I'm also not sure why you don't believe that homosexuality is harmful, when it's obviously associated with other evils such as promiscuous behaviour, polygamy, peadophilia, sexual offences, STDs (HIV and others, even the recent m-pox outbreak), intolerance, limitation of free speech, prosecution of people who believe in heteronormativity, possibly worse psychosocial outcomes for children raised by same-sex couples, etc.
On the association between homosexuality and pedophilia. It's really funny (but also sad) that the main counterpoint the left-wing media have for this is strawmanning the argument along the lines of "but actshully, most pedophiles are heterosexual". For example, https://zeroabuseproject.org/victim-assistance/jwrc/keep-kids-safe/sexuality-of-offenders/, "[M]ost men who molest little boys are not gay. Only 21 percent of the child molesters we studied who assault little boys were exclusively homosexual. Nearly 80 percent of the men who molested little boys were heterosexual or bisexual and most of these men were married and had children of their own." Since the proportion of homosexuals in the population is 2-4%, it is terrifying how strongly homosexuality is associated with sexual abuse of children.
As for the justification for inerrancy/infallibility:
I don’t really like the term “inerrancy”. The Bible might be sometimes inaccurate in matters that do not pertain to salvation and morality, it might exaggerate some numbers in the history of the Jewish nation for example. Hence I prefer “infallibility” which expresses the idea that the Bible is infallible in its teachings on matters of faith, doctrine and morality. I think there are 3-4 families of arguments for infallibility. I won’t do them justice in such a short comment, but anyway:
1. Historical records of the teachings of Jesus, the God Incarnate, demonstrate that He believed in the infallibility of Hebrew Scriptures. He repeatedly uses them in authoritative manner (“it’s true because the Scriptures say so”) and affirms that “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single iota or one little stroke will pass from the law until everything takes place” (Mt 5:17-18), indicating that not a single letter is incorrect in the Law. (I’m not relying on infallibility to make this argument – I’m just relying on the fact that the Gospels present an accurate representation of Jesus’ life and teaching, as I’m convinced they do.)
2. The disciples of Jesus were tasked with proclaiming the Gospel to all nations and hence we ought to trust that God guided them in the right doctrine. (This is again something that Jesus affirms). Hence, their writings (i.e. writings that the early church attributed to disciples, or to disciples of disciples) should be infallible. Further, it was actually one of their uncontroversial doctrines was that Scripture is infallible. For example, 2 Timothy 3:15-17 says: “and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Scripture that contains moral falsehoods mixed with truth is not “useful for training in righteousness”. Scripture that contains doctrinal falsehoods is not “useful for rebuking”. You get the idea.
3. Miraculous nature of the Bible is an argument for it being inspired by God, in its writing and compilation. I’m referring here to miracles such as fulfilled prophecies.
4. God wouldn’t allow the entire church to be so hopelessly misguided on doctrinal and moral matters in believing Scripture that was false.
I'm also curious - if you reject the infallibility of Scripture, how do you even know doctrinal matters such as the fact that Jesus died for our sins? Or that Holy Spirit helps Christians in our daily lives?
I do indeed support DCT. In the absence of a divine command or teaching that would imply something like “follow your moral intuition”, trusting them is simply irrational. Biblically, we know that divine commands are sometimes given through the moral intuition. But this intuition is still fallible, and that's why the Bible comes first: if our moral intuition contradicts an obvious reading of a biblical command, we should follow the latter.
Not all moral values are the result of a divine command. Some proceed from the qualities of God’s character. These are, in a sense, the foundational moral values, which cannot be changed, because God’s character cannot possibly change as a result of His command (He can’t possibly issue such a command).
“The fact that an external agent says that something is good, just does not change anything about the fact that excruciating pain is really bad”
In the case of God – yes, it does. If the omniscient, omnipotent being says something is wrong, then EVEN IF it wasn’t wrong before, it now becomes wrong for the people covered by His command, by virtue of the command (Romans 4-5: “And where there is no law there is no transgression.”, and “To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law.”). We accept the analogue of DCT even in the case of civil laws: if the government says driving over 100kmph is prohibited, we (or at least those who have sufficient degree of obedience in the government) accept that driving over 100kmph is wrong (even if we are confident we can drive over 100kmph safely), because it would be a disobedience to the government, which is (usually) wrong. How much morally worse is disobedience to God of the Universe!
God also provides mandates for people to exercise his judgement. For example, killing someone is usually bad, but when God commands it (e.g. death penalty exercised by civil authorities – see Romans 13), it naturally becomes permissible/good.
“After all, why should we think that divine commands are a good guide to morality?” Morality encompasses all things that we ought to do and things we ought not to do. By a simple syllogism:
1. God says that we ought to do X.
2. God is omniscient and always truthful.
3. Therefore, we ought to do X.
Of course, establishing premise (1) is always tricky. But in principle, this can act as a foundation of normative statements. Therefore, we don’t have to rely on any moral intuition to know that we ought to do as God tells us to do. We just have to know that God is truthful, omniscient, and use simple logic.
Natural teleology “counterexamples”
You are mistaken with regard to the purpose of fruits. One of their purposes (there could be many) is that they are given to humans and animals as food: Genesis 1:29-30 and some verses in chapter 2.
“Body hair also has a natural purpose: Aside from keeping us warm, it helps us sense when insects land on us, to avoid them biting.” That’s no longer a purpose of body hair in a culture in which we wear clothes and don’t need to worry about insects. Coincidentally, in Mosaic law men were prohibited from cutting their beards. A possible reason was emphasizing the distinctions between the sexes.
“there are several theories given for the purpose of homosexuality” – There might be some unconfirmed theories, but that doesn’t mean that any of them makes sense. The gay uncle theory doesn’t explain why engaging in intercourse with a person of the same sex would be necessary for the “uncle” to nurture their nephews/nieces (surely, you can be nice to your nephews without the need to put your dick in another man’s butt). This is just a theory that could explain the selection of “gay genes” (doubtful concept in the first place), and why they were not eliminated via evolutionary pressure, but it does not provide a moral purpose for homosexuality.
In summary: you seem to think you have rational reasons for rejecting biblical teaching against homosexuality and other controversial topics. However, you keep relying on intuitions and saying things like “it is obvious to me that…” without providing actual proof. In effect, you assume, without justification, some part of the secular worldview to be true (mainly: “it is not wrong if it doesn’t harm anyone”) and proceed to refute some part of the biblical worldview, which is a trivial step once you accepted the assumption.
"So it seems like you don’t think that intuitions are a good way of judging what is moral and immoral. I would be curious to hear what you think should inform our moral judgments."
Indeed, I don't think intuitions are a particularly good way of informing our moral judgments. What evidence do we have that our moral intuitions are more likely to be correct than wrong? Not much. We have some evidence from the Bible, like Romans 1:14-15: "Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them."
(By Gentiles Paul means non-Jewish Christians, not non-Christians.) But this is limited, as even Christians often differ in their moral intuitions.
You keep saying things like "I think it is pretty obvious that...", "it is just obvious to me...", “I just think that is self-evident”, but you never provide an actual argument. I see no reason why a rational person should be convinced by such statements. Indeed, in mathematics for example, some implications seem very obvious, but once we investigate them using logic, they turn out to be false. As my mathematics teacher liked to say: “If you claim something is obvious, you should be able to produce a two-line proof of it”; you did not produce such proof.
A major difficulty is that moral intuitions are largely a product of our upbringing and societal influences, and are therefore no more justified than the moral beliefs of society, which again haven't been the result of a rational process, but of a historical accident (although society is to some degree still shaped by the correct, biblical moral precepts).
"pain is just bad" - This is a bit of a tangent, but I disagree. This is a major mistake that I see more and more commonly in recent days. There is nothing intrinsically good or evil about pain/suffering. It's just an impersonal, natural fact. Goodness and badness are properties of actions, not properties of states of affairs. A better way to say this is: if someone started peeling off my skin without justification, that action would be evil*. Your (and my) intuition about it is not contradicted by biblical commands, and is supported by stories of God's anger directed against those who commit reckless cruelty.
* Most likely because that person, by exercising such power over me, is placing himself in the position of God; only God has the right to peel off my skin. Note that if God afflicts me with a disease that causes skin to peel off, that's not an immoral act, because God has rightful authority over my life and body. He does not violate any moral law by inflicting suffering on me (and He will only inflict it if justice permits). This coheres very well with the Bible, which teaches that God killed a lot of people by direct intervention and will torture a lot more after the final judgment.
“It seems to me like for something to be wrong, it requires that some conscious agent is harmed in the process or at least that some desires are frustrated” – this is already false. It’s so contradictory to the Bible that you might as well have started by admitting ”I just think it is self-evident that the Bible is false”. The Bible never endorses this principle, and it obviously includes many commands that have nothing to do with preventing harm (out the top of my head: Exodus 20:25-26).
If you believe there is nothing to morality beyond harm and the opposite of harm (fulfillment of some desires?), then I am not surprised you reject the Bible, and our discussion is doomed to be fruitless unless you are willing to challenge this assumption (which seems to be merely an intuition that you cannot justify). Have you considered the possibility that this axiom of yours might be a feature of a left-wing bias? (See J Haidt, The Righteous Mind, or his papers on Moral Foundations.) For my part, I do not share the intuition that an evil act requires harm or frustration of someone’s desires (not that I put that much weight on my intuition, but I’m using your own argument).
“Love is the fulfilment of the entire law.”
I don't think what Paul meant by love was "putting your dick in another man's anus".
1 Corinthians 13:4-6: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth."
Nothing about putting your dick in another guy's butt.
Nothing about not putting your dick in another guy's butt either. If you do it lovingly, the law is fulfilled.
Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6:9 and Leviticus 18:22 do not condemn "putting one's dick into another man's butt unlovingly", but "putting one's dick into another man's butt" altogether (well, they prohibit "men bedding men", or having sexual relations with a man "as one does with a woman"; you know what I mean). There is no qualification/clarification that it's wrong only if it is done unlovingly. Therefore, the conclusion is that it is always wrong. It is always unloving towards the neighbour most likely because it makes the other participant in sex sin against God as well, and become defiled; pushing your fellow human into sin is unloving. It is unloving towards God because it is a rebellion against His law (that's why "loving your God" is the first and greatest commandment - because it implies obedience and following all other commandments).
You can't lie with a man as with a woman bc they don't have the same parts, well, except that one part. But anyways if you put a duck in someone's butt lovingly it doesn't matter if it's man woman or sheep, the law is fulfilled.
edit: close enough
"You can't lie with a man as with a woman bc they don't have the same parts, well, except that one part."
What do you mean? Leviticus 18:22 says "Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable." Obviously, it doesn't mean "do not put your dick into a man's vagina" - that's impossible. "As one does with a woman" obviously doesn't mean "in literally the same way", it just means "Do not have sexual relations with a man - you can have sexual relations with a woman, but you must not have sexual relations with a man". There are parallels to this structure elsewhere in the OT, for example Lev 15:25: "“If a woman has a flow of blood for many days that is unrelated to her menstrual period, or if the blood continues beyond the normal period, she is ceremonially unclean. As during her menstrual period, the woman will be unclean as long as the discharge continues." The words "As during her menstrual period" provide a clarification of the way in which she will be considered unclean.
There is no point in giving a law against something that's physically impossible. The conclusion is that "Having sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman" is possible and it is prohibited. It is not made conditional on whether it is done lovingly or unlovingly. It is prohibited altogether. Same in the New Testament passages - it is not prohibited only in the cases of sexual abuse or exploitation, but it is prohibited altogether. (By the way, this is consistent with "love is the fulfillment of the law", because love includes loving your God, which entails obeying His commandments. You can't just rely on the statement "love is the fulfillment of the law" and make up commandments that are contradictory to the Bible on the basis of your flawed, human understanding of "love".)
The problem with holy texts does not lie in how they're interpreted, but that they must be.