Homosexuality Isn't Wrong - Even if the Bible Says So

Common sense is not just for atheists

Then for an instant he turned away from him, and when Isaac again saw Abraham's face it was changed, his glance was wild, his form was horror. He seized Isaac by the throat, threw him to the ground, and said, "Stupid boy, dost thou then suppose that I am thy father? I am an idolater. Dost thou suppose that this is God's bidding? No, it is my desire." Then Isaac trembled and cried out in his terror, "O God in heaven, have compassion upon me. God of Abraham, have compassion upon me. If I have no father upon earth, be Thou my father!" But Abraham in a low voice said to himself, "O Lord in heaven, I thank Thee. After all it is better for him to believe that I am a monster, rather than that he should lose faith in Thee."

Fear and Trembling, Prelude, Søren Kierkegaard

Many Christians have wildly implausible views about moral matters. I think that these are irrational to hold, even if they are in the Bible and Christianity is true.

The Moorean Argument

So for any view which is derived from an inerrantist reading of scripture, we can basically sum up the reasoning in a modus ponens:

1. The Bible says that X

2. If the Bible says that X, then it is true that X

3. Therefore, it is true that X

This is a valid argument - so far so good. Premise 2 is basically just entailed by an inerrantist reading of scripture. The truth of premise 1 will obviously depend on what is substituted in by X. But here is the general form of my argument (which is really a very trivial argument). Consider now the proposition:

4. It is false that X

So long as this proposition is more plausible than 1 or 2, then it is irrational to accept 3. Let’s now actually use an X. A common example where almost all non-christians think that X is false, and where a large part of christians think X is true is “homosexual behavior is wrong”. This is usually backed up by christians with passages like 1 Corinthians 6:9:

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men

Seems pretty clear cut! Your credence that the bible says that homosexuality is wrong should be your credence that this passage (along with others) say that homosexuality is wrong. The thing is that this is a text, which is something that can (almost) always be reinterpreted. In fact many non-stupid people think that passages like these do not literally say that, and should in fact be reinterpreted for various semantic and historical reasons. This should at least lower your credence that the passage says that homosexuality is wrong.

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. 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. If you accept this, then (assuming you accept inerrancy) you get very strong evidence against the hypothesis that the passage says that homosexuality is wrong and in favor of the hypothesis that the passage(s) should be reinterpreted.

I think that this evidence should be enough for most people to accept that the passage(s) ought to be reinterpreted. But perhaps you are just not moved; “Paul literally says it right there - are you stupid?”. Perhaps I am, but I still think there is more to be said. Even if you don’t want to reject 1 or 2 in a single case, more cases give more evidence. 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. For each of them, you may think that it is more plausible that the text says X than that ¬X, but we should probably now look at the other assumption, namely inerrantism.

Even if you think that inerrantism is super plausible, each implausible claim it entails (assuming the Bible states this implausible claim) will be evidence against inerrantism. And given how implausible some of these claims are (by my lights), it quickly becomes very unlikely that inerrantism is true, if it entails all these. In fact, even if you think that all the passages espousing strange moral views should be reinterpreted, you should probably still be an errantist. It is after all very plausible that the passages do in fact say what they seem to, even if we have strong reason, given inerrantism, to believe they don’t. And so, each passage that you need to reinterpret is evidence against inerrantism.

I think a much more plausible view is something to the effect that if the Bible says P, that gives you (strong) defeasible evidence that P.

Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him?

But should we not trust God above ourselves? Even if our moral intuitions say one thing, God is surely still the highest authority? I think this sort of reasoning is problematic for several reasons.

Firstly, it makes it impossible for moral predictions of the Bible to be any sort of evidence for or against inerrantism. Suppose that the Bible perfectly predicted all of the moral views of people in the 21st century (or perhaps people in the far future). In that case most inerrantists would think that that was great evidence in favor of their view - the Bible successfully predicted a lot of improbable data after all. But for something to count as evidence for a hypothesis, the negation of it must count as evidence against the hypothesis. And so the Bible making unintuitive claims must be evidence against inerrantism.

Furthermore, it seems like errantism doesn’t have to bite any big bullets on the status of God. Consider a mathematics teacher. One way for them to teach their students would be for them to just tell them the axioms they will work with, and the true theorems that derive from them. Another way is to let the students grapple with the system, and figure out the proofs for the theorems - let them have the eureka moments. It looks like there is some value to the latter method, which is not gotten through the former. And so we might expect God not to give the answers straightforwardly, but rather let us grapple with the truth, with our faculties designed for doing so.

One disanalogy is of course that the Bible isn’t just not giving us answers, but seemingly actively giving us the wrong answers. I think this is evidence against errantism, but not as strong evidence as the obviousness of the moral claims that the Bible seemingly denies is for it. We can easily come up with some explanation of why God would allow false claims in the Bible, which is more plausible than homosexuality being wrong. For example: Perhaps God had nothing directly to do with those false claims ending up in the Bible - rather it was just due to the free actions of Paul and the others, that they ended up there. This story is perhaps not the best one we could give, but it is still much more plausible to me than some of the moral claims seemingly made in the bible.

We should of course also consider how this bears on the truth of Christianity. I think that all of what has been said is clearly evidence against Christianity. If the Bible said only true things, that would be a lot of evidence in favor of Christianity, and so since it doesn’t do so, that is some evidence against it. Furthermore, many of the true false (especially moral) things stated in the Bible have been reasons why a lot of people have suffered unjustly, for example homosexual people and women. This is quite surprising, given Christianity, and so it is evidence against it.

Conclusion

You shouldn’t think that homosexuality is wrong - even if you’re a Christian. In fact you shouldn’t believe any radically implausible moral claims that the Bible makes, even if you’re a Christian.

These arguments can probably also apply to most religions which give moral prescriptions (or really make any claims). I have been mostly focused on Christianity since that is what I am most familiar with and lean most towards. There are also probable exceptions. For example, Muslims probably have less reason to accept what I have said, given their view of how the Quran came about.

Anyway: