An AP article run in multiple news sources yesterday says “Some Gay-Rights Foes Claim They Now Are Bullied.” It begins,
As the gay-rights movement advances, there is increasing evidence of an intriguing role reversal: Today, it is the conservative opponents of that movement who seem eager to depict themselves as victims of intolerance.
To them, the gay-rights lobby has morphed into a relentless bully, pressuring companies and law firms into policy reversals, making it taboo in some circumstances to express opposition to same-sex marriage.
The article goes on to show that this is not just perception; it is an accurate depiction of the way things are. Homosexual activists actually have pressured companies and law firms into policy reversals, and it is taboo in many circumstances to oppose same-sex “marriage.” To which the activists quoted in the article reply (paraphrased), Well, it’s about time they got dished back to them what’s been dished out to us.
Power Struggles, Winners and Losers
What’s going on here is a rhetorical power struggle, one side trying to make the other look ugly. Let’s not forget that the article supports contentions that homosexual activists are bullying their opponents, so any ugliness being depicted there is being exposed in them, not being imposed upon them.
That makes a big difference, for a struggle over truth is not the same as a struggle over power. The difference exists both in practice, a matter of integrity, and in outcome, a matter of effect. Where public policy is defined just by power—who wins and who loses—things are guaranteed to look ugly. I’ve been to three of the four major Communist countries of the world (Russia was Communist when I was there many years ago). I’ve seen what it’s like to live under a principle of power, and believe me, I don’t recommend it.
But power conflicts are inevitable in a democratic society, for what is an election but a fight with winners and losers, where the winners get to set the policy? So we have to ask whether there is any way to guard against the ugliness of power. America’s founders wisely limited governmental power by distributing it among three branches, and by creating a Bill of Rights. That’s been crucial to our country’s social and political health. But that’s not all there is to it. Power employed purely for achieving personal goals (those of the individual or his or her group) is never pretty, but there can be good applications of power—even when when personal goals are part of the package.
Can Power Be Applied to Good Ends?
To explain that I need to back up some distance to present what is for me a strong belief; for others, I put it forth for as a thought experiment. Let us suppose that there is an underlying principle of truth in the universe. Let us further suppose that this truth is essentially good. If so, then there is the potential that one’s goals would align with that good truth; and that the struggle one engages in is a struggle on behalf of what is (a) true, (b) good, and (c) much larger than oneself or one’s group.
Not only that, but if such a good truth existed, then there could be a principle of social policy that transcends the power struggle: a principle of ordering society according to what is both true and good. We would have something other than winning and losing to adjudicate our policy decisions: we would have the potential of actually landing upon the right answer. This right answer would not be determined by any group’s preferences; rather, if one group’s preferences aligned with it, it could be because they had discovered what is actually right, independently of their thinking it is so. If that group won the next election and had opportunity to set policy, then the policy would not be just that group’s policy, it would also be the right policy. It would be the right policy even for the losing side. To exercise power on behalf of a good truth would indeed be good, not ugly.
Possible Truths About the Power Struggle
It’s hard now to imagine many people thinking this is possible. The current conflict over homosexual “rights” illustrates the problem nicely. For many, this “culture war” has every appearance of being one special interest pitched in battle against another, where each is fighting just for what’s theirs. But what if that’s not so? What if one side really is aligned with some good, transcendent truth? There are two broadly possible ways this could be:
1. Neither side is aligned with any transcendent truth, or
2. One side but not the other is aligned with transcendent truth.
But here’s how I think the options really play out:
1. Neither side is aligned with any transcendent truth, or
2. Homosexual activists are misaligned with transcendent truth, whereas defenders of male-female marriage are aligned with it.
In other words, it’s possible that defenders of male-female marriage are aligned with transcendent truth. It is not possible that homosexual activists are. Further, if the world is actually the way homosexual activists conceive it to be—a world without transcendent truth to guide public policy—then the world is a place where the ruling ethic can only be the ethic of power; for there is no other means by which to adjudicate ethical decisions for public policy purposes.
The Possible Truth That There Is Truth
Here’s why. The homosexual advocacy position entails that we have the right or privilege in our day to re-define male and female, marriage, and family, casting aside millennia of heterosexual ethics and practice. This belief in the malleability of human meaning has an identifiable source. It will be easier to show you that source if I start from the other side of the question; with the contrasting view that male and female, marriage, and family have enduring meanings. For this I refer you to my monthly BreakPoint column of a few weeks ago. In it I quoted two defining Scripture passages on these topics (Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24), and continued,
Right from the start, these passages begin clearly to define humanness, manhood, womanhood, and marriage, based on the way we were created. Our Creator is also our sovereign King, so to attempt to alter these things would be to rebel against him in both his goodness and his rightful authority.
Some, however, see God as having no part in what it means to be human. That being the case, naturally they see human nature and ethics as matters for us to figure out for ourselves. We can redefine marriage if we want. We can decide for ourselves at what stage in a baby’s life there might be moral ramifications to killing him or her.
On the Genesis view there is a right and true answer to the question, what is marriage? That answer is embedded in our nature and in the decrees of God who created us the way we are.
The Possible Truth That There Is No Such Truth
The prevailing alternative view is that there is no true view of humanness grounded in the way we were made, for we were made through a mindless process of evolution, and are continually being re-made through that same process. What we were has no authority to define what we will be. There is no such authority anywhere, except as we create it for ourselves. There is no enduring right answer to the question, what does it mean to be human? Humanness for this generation need not be defined as it was for the previous one; and as for the next generations, well, it’s up to us to define that, and it can be anything we want it to be.
I do not mean to say that every homosexual “rights” advocate adopts this view of humanness, but generally speaking the movement depends on it. Homosexual activists regard the world to be the kind of place where male and female, marriage, and family have no enduring definition. Their meanings are all up for grabs. Their meanings in the end will be—can only be—determined by who grabs best. There is nothing else to decide what they mean, except the cold and brutal principle by which the winners win and the losers lose.
So in our pair of options (1) and (2) above, we can be quite sure that homosexual activism does not fit the role of the advocate for truth in (2). Either both sides are misaligned with truth, or homosexual activism is misaligned with it while opponents of homosexual activism are in fact defenders of true marriage and true morality: aligned with truth, in other words.
The Impossibility of Homosexual Activism Doing Good
I am convinced that (2) is the case. I will not argue here why I think this is so; I have done so in the past, and it is not my purpose now. My purpose rather is to show what I am nearly finished demonstrating: that if there is no fundamental enduring truth that defines male and female, marriage, and family, then both sides of this conflict are in serious trouble. If there is such a truth, then homosexual activists are bucking that truth, and we are in serious trouble of a different kind.
If there is no enduring truth regarding these human attributes and institutions, then we’re in for a long battle that will in the end be won by the most effective wielders of power. I dread the thought of being governed that way. I cringe at the prospect of living under an ethic decided by power. It is an oxymoron from the start, and it has never turned out well in history. Nietzsche was wrong. The will to power, if successfully carried out, leads inevitably to oppression and subjugation of the less powerful; to loss of freedoms; to tyranny in the end.
If on the other hand there is some enduring truth against which homosexual activists are fighting, then we are in for a long fight anyway, and along the way many people will opt for what is truly wrong. Our society is being urged in the direction of what is truly wrong, and away from what is both true and good. This cannot be healthy.
Do you see where this leaves us? Suppose the homosexual activists’ view of reality is accurate. In that case their activism can lead to no good. Suppose it is inaccurate. In that case their activism can lead to no good. Take your pick: do you think it does no good, or that it does no good?
Where Is It Possible To Do Good?
Finally, we need to look at what opponents of homosexual activism, supporters of historic marriage and morality, are doing. There are two options here as well.
Suppose homosexual activists’ view of reality is accurate. In that case opposing them can lead to no real good, either. But suppose their view is inaccurate. In that case there is every reason to stand against them. I’m putting my money on that last option. It has two very powerful virtues going for it. First, I’m convinced it’s true. At the same time, it hasn’t escaped my attention that it’s also the only one that stands a chance of a good outcome.
That’s basically the conclusion that I’ve come to. It’s God’s Word versus man’s word.
Hi Tom,
You’re really doing outstanding work here.
Thanks for really drilling deep down into the heart of things. Even if the collateral damage is that some people are offended by you or your arguments.
Thank you, TUAD. Bryan, too.
Even if moral realism was viable, yours isn’t the only possible moral realist position.
Marriage has historically been about property. Over time, it has evolved into something else. Today, more people view marriage as being about love, commitment, and rights for couples, and they now see exclusion of gay couples as unfair and unjust. To the extent that most people are naive realists, most people see moral reality different from you.
You might as well make the same sort of argument against interracial marriage. In theory, you can come up with some natural law/historical argument, or a biblical argument for anti-miscegenation laws (something that was actually done by religious fundamentalists). Suppose a religious case was being made against interracial marriage, and the case was based on Bible passages, philosophy and natural law. Suppose also that social stigma of interracial marriage caused interracial couples to suffer more stress and social ills than same-race couples. How would you view such fundamentalists? As champions of reason?
Moreover, how would you take the claims of hypothetical anti-miscegenation advocates if they said that interracial couples were destroying the institution of marriage? Would your inference be that these advocates were not bigots, but that their conclusion was the result of a calm, rational philosophical analysis?
How does the ability of interracial couples to marry affect your own marriage? Or the marriages of your children?
Interracial marriage is a clear threat to racists because their children might marry someone with different color skin. However, not being bigots, you and I see interracial marriage as a beautiful thing.
Now imagine that conservatives and fundamentalists were pushing the Defense of Marriage Act to ban interracial marriage, and fighting to stop interracial couples from getting rights as married couples.
In my experience, people who oppose gay marriage believe that homosexuality is contagious. And this terrifies them.
The fact is that homosexuality is not a matter of fashion, but primarily biology. I know a lot of gay people, and have even attended queer burlesque shows. Personally, I think it would be awesome to be bisexual – the best of both worlds, as it were. But I’m not bisexual. And hanging around gay people hasn’t caused me to fancy the same sex. Sexual preference and identity is not like taste in food or music. It’s more hard-wired than that.
This is a losing battle for you. Even if you’re not bigoted against homosexual love, you’re going to come out looking like the racists who opposed interracial marriage. And your arguments against gay marriage will look as limp and transparent in the eyes of history as the arguments made against interracial marriage.
Per his usual dumb anti-scientific ideas:
Let’s see: plunging the organ intended for the propagation of life into the orifice intended for the expulsion of death and decay. Yep, that certainly is “natural” biology… and a very specific part of all “natural” biological processes–it’s called “disease and death”.
Oh, but wait, we can “avoid” that biologically-natural deterrent with an artificial piece of latex… at least most of the time… maybe… we hope. Oh oh… but then, it’s not “natural”–it’s not really biological, is it?
So, here we have two things operating against our natures as human beings:
(1) anti-fecundal and anti-biological functions, which through the Natural Law, translate into a moral repugnance (supported by theological admonitions against homosexuality acted out), and
(2) an anti-biological, artificial “band-aid” (condoms) to try to stop the terrible results of the male homosexual act: an anti-biological, anti-human tragedy in two acts.
Even if “natural” genetic precursors are positively identified as influencing a propensity for homosexuality, we already know there are “natural” genetic precursors for alcoholism… and yet we don’t view that as “good” for us, do we… and we certainly don’t permit pilots to fly in a drunken stupor, do we?
Moreover, doesn’t multiple-sclerosis arise from “naturally”-occurring genetic flaws? Does DL suggest that just because something is “natural” that then–by definition for him–it’s a “good”. Logically, we would be “bigoted” (in DL’s words) to avoid and to heal MS, wouldn’t we?
I think this all reveals a darker side of DL’s thinking… a 1984-ish EastAsian side. And maybe that is what is partially animating his transhumanist nonsense…
DL’s position is pretty much as anti-human as one can get… and he promotes it with a smile! Could it be that DL actually hates homosexuals, and knowing what I’ve said is true views homosexuality as controllable through the inherent negative feedback mechanisms known as disease and death? Is DL a closet bigot of the foulest, scientistic kind?
Here’s some reality for you, same-sex behaviour is pretty standard in animal species, even fruit flies engage in it, see Bailey et al. Same-sex sexual behavior and evolution. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, June 16, 2009.
Hi lc,
Your presuppositional biases are showing again lc. To deny the existence of God would lead you to naturally conclude that you are nothing more than a highly evolved animal. But this is what needs to be argued. The Judeo-Christian Scriptures given in propositional form tell us that we were created in God’s image, thus not an evolved animal, with certain characteristics that distinguish us from animals, one of which is to comprehend and understand this God and His requirements as Creator. Thus He as the infinite Creator of the Universe sets the standards for man’s behavior, and He has clearly said that ‘you shall not lie with a male as with a female; it is an abomination (Lev. 18:22).
I said nothing about belief in God. Just reported on animal behaviours. Though I’m wondering, do you think that shellfish are an abomination as well? See Leviticus 11:12.
Hi Lc,
The law against shellfish was nullified in our New Testament by the words of Jesus the Christ Himself. Would you like for me to cite the reference? But this is just a red-herring for your rebellion against this God that you already have knowledge of. That’s the real issue, I think, although I am glad you are here on this ‘Thinking Christian’ blog, and have enjoyed our dialog together, as well as learned from your dialog with the others on this blog. I pray (yes, there is a God who listens to my prayers) that you will lay down your intellectual autonomy and come to see that the claims of Christ in Scripture are what you have been looking for all your life.
Hi Le,
The law against eating shellfish was nullified by our New Testament in the words of Jesus the Christ Himself. Would you like for me to cite the reference? But this is really a red-herring for the real issue which is the rebellion you have against this God that you already have knowledge of. I pray (yes, there is a God who is there and who listens to my prayers) that you lay down your intellectual autonomy and come to this knowledge of Christ and His claims as an answer to what you have been looking for all your life.
lambda.calc,
I presume your comment #6 was intended in some way to support same-sex marriage or homosexual practice. If so then you win two prizes:
1. Worst argument ever for homosexual practice.
2. Most disconnected, irrelevant response ever offered to a blog post by someone claiming to know something about philosophy.
Congratulations!
doctor(“logic”),
Your comment runs equal to lambda.calc’s for irrelevance. You’re arguing for the morality of homosexual practice. That wasn’t what my post was about. It was actually about — no, wait a minute. I was about to remind you what the post was about, but then it occurred to me that you could just scroll up the page, read it yourself, and discover the topic for yourself. (What a concept—you should try it!)
Here’s a clue for you: though you might think Christians have only one thing ever to say about homosexuality, that’s not the case. I have the ability to think more than one thing about a given topic. Do you?
I’m curious whether the reason you missed the point is because you didn’t read what I wrote, didn’t pay attention, were unable to see past your prejudicial expectations of what you thought I would write, or didn’t think you had an answer to what I wrote so you decided to try to answer something else instead.
The only thing remotely relevant you wrote was “this is a losing battle for you.” It was relevant only in its blindness to what I actually wrote. If you’re curious as to how that might be the case, I invite you to read the blog post and find out.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that for a few weeks now I’ve been showing that your claim to having some facility in logic is unsupported by your performance on this blog. You could have helped your cause today by demonstrating that you noticed something that I had written. But you didn’t do that, and your reputation for logic continues to wallow.
(By the way, if we were talking about the morality of homosexual practice, I’d be inclined to direct you to an article showing that there is no valid analogy there to anti-miscegenation laws. We’re not—but hey, what the heck?)
Asserting things doesn’t make it so.
Bad presumption Tom, but congratulations on revealing your true character. Think about it, I just brought it up as an article worth considering. I didn’t specify it as an argument. You leapt to that conclusion. Time to grow up Tom.
Ha. Just an article to wile away the time with if you have nothing else to do and have some curiosity.
Here’s another:
http://crochet.about.com/od/learntocrochet/tp/crochet-for-beginners.htm
Tom,
I understand you want to rule a lot of issues out of bounds as irrelevant to your circular argument (which I bet you think is oh so clever), but I’m just telling it like it is. No matter what your true feelings, you come off sounding like a bigot making lame rationalizations for his prejudice.
Your argument is weak and, frankly, rather embarrassing. Your argument is that, if you assume your perverse Christian moral realist worldview, then the only things “truly” wrong are things that your primitive, backwater Christian morality says are wrong. And thus you conclude that either no one is “truly” wrong (since wrongs not under your flag don’t count), or else only gay rights advocates are wrong. Bravo! Bravo! Hope you don’t get too dizzy with that one!
You’ve cooked up an elaborate technical analysis for something simple. People today see gay relationships as emotionally comparable to straight ones, and equally deserving of the rights extended to straight couples. They see your kind of Christianity as harming good people. They’re outraged, and they act to prevent discrimination by people who have no decent case against homosexuality. Your argument is impotent in comparison with the moral outrage you perpetrate. But then your argument was never meant to persuade people who champion gay rights. No, your argument was built to soothe the consciences of people who find homosexuality disgusting.
Hi Lc,
No, it doesn’t, but that’s still not the issue. Jesus the Christ is making a claim on your life, lc. You know it and I know it, because He makes a claim on everyone’s life. You currently possess all the knowledge necessary to recognize this. But you refuse to acknowledge this, preferring to suppress this knowledge and claim autonomous rights to yourself that don’t really belong to you. I can pray, and I am, my friend, that through these discussions, (I have enjoyed all your discussions here on this blog), you will come to ask the hard questions of yourself and not remain in your rebellion against this God that you already have knowledge of, but if honest, ask the ultimate question, What do I have and should I do with Him?
Bad answer, lambda.calc. I said, “I presume,” and “if so.” I think that revealed an awareness that my supposition might have been wrong. What “conclusion” did I leap to? Surely you can tell the difference between a conditional and a conclusion?
So, just what is it about my character that was supposed to look bad in that?
Charlie, you bad, bad commenter! Surely you should have known that your crochet argument in favor of same-sex marriage was irrelevant! I’m sorry, lambda.calc, but I’m taking one of your prizes away and awarding it to Charlie, for he has indeed, somehow, gotten even further off the topic than you were.
Amazing. Charlie, we’re going to have to teach you some lessons in reading and logic if you’re going to continue here.
It shows how petty you are. Instead of asking me a question, “Is that supposed to be relevant to my argument?” You instead embed an insult into a conditional.
Even though you used a conditional, you’re still implicating an insult. Grow up.
doctor(“logic”), you say,
Your reputation for logic has jumped from the ditch into the latrine.
Can you point to anything at all in my argument above that assumes that homosexual practice is wrong?
I did argue that it is impossible that homosexual activism could be aligned with timeless, transcendent truth, but (a) an argument is not an assumption, and (b) “not aligned with timeless transcendent truth” is not logically equivalent to “wrong,” and I did not treat it as such in this article
You are displaying not only illogic but an amazing level of prejudice. You read that into the article because you expected it to be there, but it wasn’t there! Don’t you know how stereotyped and bigoted that is? Don’t you see (oxymoron warning) just how blind you are?
And aren’t you embarrassed at yourself? You should be.
My, my. What a deliciously-absolutist moral judgement, and this coming from a moral relativist. What a hypocrite… many times over! Doctor Illogical strikes again. Anything, I guess, to hide his (increasingly evident) closet hatred of homosexuals… and his real hatred of faith and bigoted hatred of Christians. You’re losing your grip, DI.
Tom:
What exactly and objectively could “embarrassment” mean to a moral relativist? I just read up on sociopaths: they’re morally numb people who use their emotional coldness against their victims, and it got me thinking…
As I said on the other thread, lambda.calc, even though you’re an interesting and thoughtful debater, and it’s been a very educational series of discussions we’ve had—and this blog’s traffic statistics have been very high lately, which is gratifying—still that’s not sufficient for me to overlook the “lying through your teeth” thing you’ve been pulling on the other thread, or your “grow up” nonsense here.
I don’t ban commenters without warning, but I’m reminding you now that I have discussion policies here. I am warning you now the third and final time.
Holopupenko,
It seems to me a moral relativist can, and usually does, believe that he believes what he believes. So if doctor(logic) believes that he eschews bigotry, prejudice, and stereotyping, I think there is room for him to experience embarrassment when it’s pointed out that he is clearly practicing the same.
But your language of “sociopath” is over the line, too, at least as much as what I just called lambda.calc for. I have no reason to believe that of doctor(“logic”), and you have no reason, either.
As I said on the post I linked to in my last comment to d”l”, I have an intentional purpose behind the way I’m pushing him on his illogic. I will continue to treat his “logic” the way it deserves, which is without respect. I think it’s fair to ask what it is about him that causes him to promulgate such an unsupportable position as calling himself “doctor(logic).” But you went way too far with that one.
Let’s see what words the “rationalists” are using these days…
Bigot
Lame
Prejudice
Weak
Embarrassing
Perverse
Primitive
Backwater
Cooked up
SteveK:
This is quite the trend, isn’t it?
Tom,
Gee, I don’t know. Can you point to anything at all in my argument above that assumes that you assume homosexual practice is wrong?
Really?
Don’t stabbeth the messenger.
But now you’re saying you didn’t mean “truly wrong”, you meant “transcendentally wrong under Christian assumptions,” or something like that. You meant to say that, given Christian metaphysical assumptions, either neither side is transcendentally wrong, or only the gay rights activists are transcendentally wrong. That word “truly” must have sneaked in there by accident.
You should stick a Post-It note reminder on your computer because it seems you’re always conflating “really wrong” or “truly wrong” with some exclusively moral realist definition of morality.
You still really think there’s no reason, Tom?
doctor(“logic”),
You’ve done it again.
In your prior comment you said,
But that wasn’t what I had argued. Even if you remove the gratuitous pejoratives. I argued rather that if there is some timeless, transcendent truth, then it is possible that homosexuality is wrong. That’s not a false argument, and it’s certainly not prejudicial like your distorted version is.
Your answer to what I wrote about “not aligned…” etc. is displays your logical incompetence again, for three reasons:
First, I wrote that in response to your charge that my argument assumed that homosexuality was wrong. it was part of a two-part (a) and (b) answer. Read both parts again.
Second: The fact is that although I believe homosexual practice is wrong, my argument in this blog post did not assume that it was. Second, “not aligned with timeless transcendent truth” is not necessarily wrong.
Third, I did suggest a conditional situation in which “not aligned with timeless transcendent truth” was equivalent to “truly wrong,” which you quoted here. Notice that your own quote of that passage begins with “if.” And I also suggested the possibility of a situation in which it was not equivalent to “truly wrong.” That was clearest in my option 1, where the possibility exists that there is no such thing as “truly wrong” for there is no timeless transcendent truth that homosexual practice even could be aligned with.
So therefore, my argument did not assume that homosexuality is wrong and Christianity is right. I happen to believe those to be the case, but my argument this time did not call upon or depend upon that belief in any way.
I offer no apologies, meanwhile, for using “really wrong” or “truly wrong” in realist terms. That’s what I intend those terms to mean when I use them. I could append “in moral realist terms” to those word pairs every time, but that would get tiresome, don’t you think?
Meanwhile, doctor(“logic”),
1. Do you have a personal belief that treating another person prejudicially and as a stereotype is wrong, or do you think those are morally neutral or possibly even good?
2. Do you recognize that you read into my argument something that wasn’t there, but rather that you expected to be there based on some preconception of yours?
3. Do you realize that to treat another person according to your preconceptions rather than according to their reality is of the essence of prejudice and stereotyping?
4. Do you recognize any inconsistency in your beliefs and behavior here?
(Holopupenko, I know you’ll have an opinion on this but I’m going to request that you let doctor(“logic”) answer first.)
Tom:
No. I’ve said enough… but I believe my worries can find partial justification.
Title of post:
Homosexual Activism: Truth or Confrontations
For those commenters who are arguing against Tom Gilson and his arguments, do you think and/or feel that he has confronted, presented and spoken the truth-in-love or the truth-with-love of his arguments to you?
Why or why not?
TUAD:
That’s a good question. I’ll be interested to see the responses.
I am intentionally pushing hard on doctor(“logic”)’s illogic, for reasons stated near the end of this post. I don’t expect him to see love in it until he sees the light that is in it, which I don’t think is likely for a while yet. Maybe someday, I pray.
Tom,
Bearing in mind that I consider my moral beliefs to be beliefs about my own cares or about my idealizations from my own cares…
1) It’s often, but not necessarily wrong. If I have no data apart from my prejudice, and I believe there’s extreme danger involved, then stereotyping could be justified. For example, if I see a guy in a ski mask with an AK-47, he might be a law-abiding NRA member, but I will probably stereotype him as a terrorist.
2) Nope. You’re constructing something like Pascal’s Wager. I can see that. And you think that you’ve covered all the bases, namely (a) there’s no moral reality, or (b) there’s your Christian moral reality. And because you explore two possibilities, you want to say you don’t assume only (b). But the complement of (b) is not the same thing as (a). In short, it suffers from the same problem as Pascal’s Wager. The Wager is rigged to include only one conception of God, and your wager is rigged to include only one conception of moral reality. That conception is that if there’s moral reality, then homosexuality is immoral in it. You seem to have omitted the possibility that same-sex marriage could be objectively morally good. Put that in the mix, and the wager argument collapses, requiring you to retreat to defending your own moral views as you usually would.
3) Yep.
4) Nope.
It’s possible that you don’t find the thought of people having gay sex disgusting, and that you are not bigoted against homosexuals. You might instead be so committed to your branch of Christianity, that you feel compelled to rationalize every element of its doctrine. I don’t believe your position on gay marriage is anything more than a rationalization for something else. If you tried to argue for the morality of drowning kittens in sacks, I would think either (1) you had never seen a kitten, or (2) you were kitten-phobic, or (3) you thought there was a heavy social stigma associated with saving kitten from drowning.
doctor(“logic”),
1. You had data apart from your own prejudices. You had my post, which you represented yourself as having read.
2. You persist in misreading my post. The options I presented were that (a) there is no timeless transcendent moral truth concerning sexual practice, or (b) there is some timeless transcendent moral truth, which, for reasons I did not assume or “rig,” but explained by way of argument, would entail that homosexual practice is not aligned with such truth. I did not mention Christianity or my conception of God in the course of the argument.
You are displaying your logical incompetence still. When, oh when will you see that?! I know this strikes at the heart of your identity, but you have constructed and are living in a false identity, and it’s time you recognized that and lived according to at least that much truth.
Going on: You assume that my stance on homosexual practice is based in disgust and therefore must be rationalized. Or you assume that I am rationalizing Christian doctrine. That’s prejudiced, too.
And it’s also irrelevant to the topic and argument of the post, for the argument does not assume Christian morality. Now admittedly I did take a stand in my argument for one point of ethics, which wass that any ethic of power should be avoided, for it leads to bad, even horrific outcomes. If you disagree with that, then my argument will have no effect on you; you can wave it aside as if it were a Pascal’s wager. The problem with that is that we living upon this earth have strong, publicly available, non-faith-based evidence to believe that an ethic of power has bad outcomes.
Otherwise I just presented and compared two positions: one in which there is no timeless transcendent moral truth, and one in which there is some timeless transcendent moral truth that opposes homosexual practice. I discussed the potential implications of those two options. Your repeated references to Christian ethics and faith are repeatedly irrelevant to the argument I made.
A couple of comments ago I refrained from re-explaining what I had already said in the blog post. I was hoping you might be able to read it for yourself. But now I’ve gone and done the work for you. Hope it helped.
Kitten-drowning? I’m starting to wonder if Holopupenko was right.
Gosh, maybe your presentation was more confusing than you think. No Christian assumptions went into this at all?
And then we have this gem…
I think this is silly. Depending on how you define the “ethic of power” either it doesn’t exist, or everything is an example of it. Gay rights activists aren’t campaigning for rights for gays merely because they have the power to do so. They’re not just doing it to toy with y’all, or for personal wealth. They’re campaigning because they believe they are morally right. Likewise, I don’t think that Christians are trying to stop gay marriage merely because they have the power to do so. But Christians don’t have a monopoly on perceived moral principle.
Granted that I used the Genesis passage to illustrate a timeless transcendent truth. The argument does not depend on that timeless transcendent truth being that of Christianity. The core of that argument was generic:
You have completely misunderstood what I wrote about the ethic of power. “Perceived moral truth,” for example, is totally irrelevant.
And to deny the existence of the ethic of power is ignorant, whereas to affirm your alternative, “everything is an example of it,” begs the question utterly. Re-read the post.
Further:
Suppose my argument actually had depended on Christianity’s being the timeless transcendent moral truth in question. If so, then your view of the two major options, applying the terms with which you described one of them in this thread, would come out this way:
In other words, the two contrasting options brought forth for comparison are:
1. doctor(“logic”)’s view of transcendent moral truth, or
2. doctor(“logic”)’s view of transcendent moral truth.
Notice the self-contradictions in your version of (2). What you exclude with this, even from hypothetical consideration for analysis, is a view of transcendent moral truth that is transcendent, moral, and true.
Last night my 16-year-old daughter said, “Hi, dad. I’m playing a two-person card game against myself.” (She must have been bored to do that.) I said, “I hope you win!”
What you have done here, doctor(“logic”), is you have set up the argument such that it is your view of transcendent moral truth pitted against your view of transcendent moral truth. I expect that even you would be able to win that moral argument.
Meanwhile there is another argument in play, in which your view of transcendent moral truth is contrasted—by way of a hypothetical, let’s-examine-the-implications-if-this-were-true thought experiment—with a view of transcendent moral truth that is transcendent, moral, and true. I think that argument is probably more interesting than yours, don’t you?
Here’s the form of what you have done. The first three steps are mine; the fourth and fifth are yours.
1. P, Q, or Q’
2. Suppose hypothetically that P; what are the implications of P?
3. Suppose hypothetically that [Q or Q’]; what are the implications of [Q or Q’]?
4. Q ≠ Q.
5. Therefore not Q, and not Q’, either.
Nice bit of logic you accomplish that way!
(P=Neither side is aligned with any transcendent truth.
Q=One side but not the other is aligned with transcendent truth, where that transcendent truth is Christianity as Tom understands it.
Q’=One side but not the other is aligned with transcendent truth, where that transcendent truth is something other than Christianity as Tom understands it.)
Ban me if you like. It’s your blog. The fact stands that you used the instance to insult, rather than work towards the truth.
The fact stands that you used the instance to insult, rather than work towards the truth.
Here’s some reality for you, insults are pretty standard in the human species, even academics engage in it.
Time to grow up, Lambda.
It’s not my style to engage in insults. I apologize for coming across that way, lambda.calc.
Tom,
Your “argument” has a gaping hole. You fail to consider the possibility that granting gay rights is a timeless, transcendent good. You only consider the possibility that your anti-gay position is a timeless transcendent truth. It’s the same problem that plagues Pascal’s Wager.
Now, maybe I misunderstood your post. Maybe I took your post to be saying something about the space of possibilities, when all you really wanted to say was “Homosexual activists are misaligned with transcendent truth, whereas defenders of male-female marriage are aligned with it.”
Tom,
Do you believe that homosexuality is contagious?
doctor(“logic”),
I did not fail to consider the possibility that granting gay rights is based on transcendent, timeless truth. See my entire section under the heading, “The Possible Truth That There Is No Truth.”
It’s one thing, d”l”, to accuse someone of producing a poor argument or a disputable argument. It’s another thing to miss an argument that’s there under your nose, and to accuse someone falsely of not considering what is right there in what they wrote.
My post was about the space of possibilities. I presented an argument to the effect that the possibility space does not include homosexuality being aligned with transcendent, timeless truth. So the possibility space is limited for the reasons I stated.
A person applying (‘logic”) and reading with their eyes open to what’s really there, rather than what they prejudicially expect to be there according to stereotypes, would have seen that and would have responded to the argument rather than pronouncing it’s non-existence.
You’re batting 1.000, d”l”. (I trust you’re familiar with the sports reference there.) You have hit a fallacy, a stereotype, or an evident blindness in every comment in this thread. (“logic”), indeed. Your image of yourself as a rational person needs some close examination.
That is not evidenced. He is arguing the nature and content of those rights.
His position is not anti-gay.
You, on the other hand, comment only out of your anti-Christian position and do so while denying timeless transcendent truth.
Now, is it possible that I failed to consider the possibility that granting gay rights is a “transcendent, timeless, good,” even though I did present an argument about its not being based on a timeless transcendent truth? The language I used in the OP was that of timeless transcendent truth, and my argument flowed through that stream. If you want me to make the connection from timeless, transcendent truth to timeless, transcendent good, I’ll be glad to do it. But I think you ought to have a chance first to say, “Nah, that’s not necessary, I can see it plain enough for myself.” Because it’s not that hard, really. Not for a thinking, rational person.
Do I believe homosexuality is contagious?
Do you realize you’re still batting 1.000? That’s a red herring.
In fact if one were cynical one might wonder whether your “gaping hole” comment was a red herring, too, to deflect discussion from your blatant illogic, identified in my comments #40 and #41, in which you based several arguments on a denial of the principle of identity. (I’m speaking of your dependence on the proposition that Q≠Q.)
But maybe you’re working on your response to that, so I won’t jump to conclusions. I can’t recall your ever owning up to an identified error like that in the past. There were numerous opportunities for you to do that, but then, maybe my memory is weak, and you actually have done that once in a rare while. Still it does lead me to be intensely curious whether you’ll own up to it this time.
So people who support gay rights are predominantly philosophical materialists? They are not moral realists?
There are many Christians who support gay rights. Are they just the moral relativist Christians?
You could make that same claim (with equal impotence) about people who advocated for equal rights among the races. Who are these upstarts to challenge the centuries-old mores that keep the white race separate and pure?
But you don’t say the same thing. Realists, whatever their moral view, integrate their personal morality under their realist picture. There were realists on both sides of the race debate. Now, there are realists on both sides of the gay rights debate.
I’ll take that as a yes.
As for 40 and 41, I just think you’re being silly. You went to all that trouble to distinguish “timeless transcendent good” from “truly good”, and now you want to call them identical.
Quoted from the blog post:
d”l’, do you think the homosexual activism movement really takes the position that male, female, marriage, and family have enduring, timeless, transcendent definitions? Is that what you want to argue? If so, do you agree with that belief yourself?
Have you forgotten what I just wrote, that my argument is not based on moral realism? It’s based on realism with respect to the meaning of male, female, marriage, and family. Are there that kind of realists on both sides of the debate? Maybe you think there are. Maybe you’d be willing to mount a counter-argument to my argument. But so far your answer to my statement S has been “No, Tom, I think you’re wrong about T!”—a “T” that was not part of my original argument.
(I do think I carelessly let the word “moral” slip into some of my comments since the original posts in places where I did not intend. I hereby acknowledge that error and retract that. When I have been talking about timeless transcendent truths, it should have been timeless transcendent truths regarding humanness, male and female, marriage, and family.
If it occurs to you to admit an error, d”l”, this is an example of how it’s done.)
You are palpably, patently running on some principle other than evidence and logic. Amazing! You could regard my refusal to discuss a red herring as a “yes” only under these conditions:
a) You are willing to bank your conclusions on an obvious non sequitur, and
b) You are willing to form your conclusions based on what you ought to regard as an immoral act, namely, prejudicial stereotyping.
You’re still batting 1.000. If we had the ability to count the ratio of fallacies, misrepresentations, and etc. to the comments you have posted, you would be batting over 1.000. Maybe we could use the slugging average instead. But I don’t care to run the count on that.
Oddly enough, I do. But to be banned for calling Tom out on doing so? That’d be funny.
Look, d”l”, concerning your 9:54 am comment:
You are the one who said that what I presented as a hypothetical supposition as a timeless, transcendent truth (Q or Q’) should be described as primitive, outrageous, perverse, and backwater (not Q or Q’), and that it should be rejected on those grounds.
You are the one who failed to see that the point of (Q or Q’) was not to argue that (Q or Q’) is true, but to explore the implications if Q or Q’ is true.
You are the one who said, the way we judge the implications if (Q or Q’) is true is by pronouncing that (Q or Q’) ≠ (Q or Q’).
You are the one, in other words, who (a) failed to see the place that (Q or Q’) had in the argument, and (b) violated the principle of identity.
That was the thrust of my comments #40 and #41. If you think that’s silly, then you must be laughing your head off at your own logical incompetence; because that is really what those comments were about. As for me, I’m not laughing. I think it’s pretty grievously sad, and I think it would do you well to see it for what it is, for your own good.
Tom,
Wow. Yeah, I missed that. But given the way you intertwined the two in your OP, I don’t feel incompetent.
Suppose you insist that marriage is grammatical term referring exclusively to a form of civil union between a man and a woman. I then create a new word called Smarriage which is just a comparable civil union between two people of any gender. The gay rights movement wants the state to recognize Smarriage and not marriage. This debate is obviously not about the word “marriage”. What’s in question is a synthetic fact: what kinds of relationships are deserving of rights?
That is, it’s a moral question.
Indeed, it’s not about what God calls marriage, but what marriage means in moral terms. Words change meanings over time, and this generally isn’t a problem. Try your game on mundane, morally neutral terms and you’ll see your game is absurd. Consider the word “torch”. In the UK, the word means flashlight. In the US, the word means a flaming stick. If it is a transcendent truth that “torch” really means flaming stick, then the British are in violation of transcendent truth! This is a very silly idea when applied to morally neutral and analytic (as opposed to synthetic) terms.
Again, the question isn’t whether marriage is defined as between a man and a woman, but about what relationships deserve social accommodations. The X = “union between a man and a woman” and Y = “union between man and man” are morally neutral descriptions. They are analytic terms – true by definition. What we call them is irrelevant (to us and, I dare say, God). Being a realist about definitions is absurd. You can only be realist about synthetic claims.
The issue at stake here is what kind of relationship (X or Y or both) is worthy of social concessions, and I don’t see how that’s not a synthetic and moral claim.
Wow. Seven times wow!
First wow: you admitted an error. I’m glad to see that for a change.
Second wow: you think homosexual activism is over the meaning of civil unions, or that there is some sense in which that ought to be regarded as the socially relevant sense of the changes they want to impose upon culture. Amazing.
Third wow: You think that there’s something interesting about considering this proposition as part of the argument: “Suppose you insist that marriage is grammatical term referring exclusively to a form of civil union between a man and a woman.” I don’t insist that, and there is no point even in supposing as a thought experiment that I insist that. If you’re going to suppose that in a thought experiment, you might as well say, “Suppose you insist that you disbelieve what you believe.”
Fourth wow: You think that the way to deal with the thought experiment that I have put forth—in which one option is that there is timeless transcendent truth concerning the definition of humanness, marriage, male and female, and family—is to pronounce that timeless transcendent truth concerning these things is irrelevant (“It’s not about what God calls marriage, but what marriage means in moral terms.”)
Fifth wow: You think that the way to deal with the thought experiment that I have put forth—in which one option is that there is timeless transcendent truth concerning the definition of humanness, marriage, male and female, and family—is to solve the problem by declaring that the timeless transcendent truth is neither timeless nor transcendent (“Words change meanings over time…. the question isn’t whether marriage is defined as between a man and a woman.”)
Sixth wow: You think that in a blog post where I examined the social implications of two contrasting viewpoints, there is something relevant to be said about that post in declaring the two viewpoints morally neutral. You have studiously avoided discussing what the post was about. In fact, you have studiously avoided noticing that for purposes of this post, I made no assumptions about which viewpoint was actually more or less moral. I only discussed their social implications, and (as I have noted for you by way of review at least one time previously) the only moral point I called upon had to do with the ethic of power. You are just persistently off topic, and oblivious of the fact.
Seventh wow: You think that God can only be a realist about synthetic claims.
Seven wows. One good one and six examples of persistent failure in paying attention or in reasoning. If we were taking a slugging average, I would call that a home run-and-a-half!
Now: Is your point that there is some kind of moral implication attached to my original options (1) and (2)? I’ll grant that. Option (2) may or may not entail, but it certainly does allow, the possibility that homosexual practice is always wrong in a moral realist sense of wrong, and that male-female marriage can be right in a moral realist sense of the term. Option (1) does not seem to me to allow for either to be right or wrong in the moral realist sense.
Sam Harris might be a moral realist/evolutionist, but I don’t think either you or I think he’s right about that, so we need not pursue that question.
(Note on my statement concerning option 2: if the “transcendent truth” to which one side is aligned is in accordance with historic orthodox Christianity, then the real wrongness of homosexual practice is indeed entailed in every situation. This is the position I labeled Q in the comment thread. But I did not specify that, and my argument did not specify historic orthodox Christianity in this argument. For all I know—though I can’t think of a way off hand—there might be some transcendent truth Q’ concerning the meaning of marriage, family, and male/female that does not entail that homosexual practice is wrong in every situation.)
I’m not sure my last paragraph makes sense. I’m going to see where it goes, and I’ll be open to retracting it if it turns out not to work.
Tom,
Let’s take this one step at a time.
Are you saying that it’s possible that the British are in violation of transcendent truth because they refer to flashlights in their own language as torches?
And that the Spanish could be equally in violation of transcendent truth when they refer to flashlights as linterna eléctrica?
That it could possibly be transcendent truth that only American mappings from symbols and sounds to perceived objects are correct, and all others incorrect?
Because this is a novel philosophical theory to me. Most people would say that symbols for things are true by definition, i.e., they are analytic to the subject.
For example, suppose I say that x = 5, x + y = 7. It’s difficult to maintain that I am in violation of some transcendent truth because I do math with the symbols x and y instead of, say, p and q.
I expect you to say that transcendent truth is not something that pertains to a unique symbology because such definitions are analytic, but I want to clear that up first.
If there was some transcendent truth by which flashlights were only to be called flashlights, then the British would be in violation of that transcendent truth. Since no one has ever believed that, and there is no sense in which anyone might ever believe that, and because symbology as you say is not a matter of transcendent truth, your analogy is silly and worthless. Why bother?
On my option (2), the transcendent truth concerning humanness is not a matter of symbology. The transcendent truth concerning male/female, marriage, and morality flows out of what it is to be human, on option (2).
So let’s take this one step at a time, and back it up to the step where you should have begun.
Are you trying to suggest that [Q or Q’]≠[Q or Q’] in my thought experiment? Sure seems like it.
You see, the point of my thought experiment was to explore what happens if in the case of both option 1 and option 2, where in option 2, [Q or Q’] = [Q or Q’]; and where [Q or Q’] stands for there actually being a timeless transcendent truth concerning the meaning of humanness, male and female, and marriage.
You can say, if you want to, “I’m not interested in your thought experiment. I’m interested in proving that there’s something perverse, backwater, primitive, and outrageous about [Q or Q’].”
To which I would answer, if you have nothing to say about my thought experiment, then I’ll feel free to regard its conclusions as unchallenged.
Or you can say, as you have been, “[Q or Q’] ≠ [Q or Q’].” At which point I would repeat my question concerning your commitment to rationality, logic, and (in this case) the principle of identity.
I’m hung up on the very first part of this argument.
Let’s call the following paragraph A.
Let’s call the following B.
I don’t see any compelling reason why we should or ought to go from A to B. And it seems to me that in the context of this particular social issue, most anti-gay marriage / defenders of traditional marriage assume that there is an ought between A and B.
For a reason that I’ve yet to be convinced of, or even seen argued much if it all, is why what is “true” — in this case, monogamous marriage between one man and one woman — ought to be what is legislated.
Certainly, there are times when it should be — I’ve yet to meet anyone who argues differently — but especially around issues of sexuality and marriage, there seems to be an enormous chasm that most Christians simply gloss over as if it didn’t exist.
To put it another way, why is B not something like, “Because there is a transcendent truth, we who believe we are on the side of it ought to spend all of our time and effort living in that truth and persuading others of it.”
Why B at all and not something else?
I find it particularly troubling in this particular case because of how inconsistently Christians apply this transcendent truth to sexuality and marriage.
Is lust sinful and thus contrary to transcendent truth? If yes, why don’t we have organizations lobbying to make masturbation illegal?
Is divorce sinful … If yes, then why not make it just as illegal as gay marriage?
If Paul is right, and it’s better to remain single so that one can focus on Jesus’ work in the world, then shouldn’t we be at minimum encouraging young people to consider celibacy as an option?
If Paul is right, and widows shouldn’t remarry, shouldn’t we be lobbying for legislation to that effect?
To me, the obvious answer to all of those questions is, “Of course not!” In other words, I’ve come up with an entirely different B that, to me at least, is reconciled with my understanding of what is true.
So to end where I began, what is the “ought” in this debate that makes conclusion B necessary? Beneficial? The law of the land?
Maybe it’s my own lack of communication skills.
brgulker, you seem to think that this is an argument that has to do with the morality of or the public policy decisions to be made concerning homosexual practice or same-sex “marriage.”
It isn’t. It never was. I do not intend it to be, and I never intended it to be.
It is about what I predict to be the social/cultural outcomes to be expected from homosexual activism.
It is also a thought experiment. You say there is no “compelling reason we should or ought to go from A to B.” Well, I didn’t say there was. (An argument from A to B could be made if one also inserted a certain set of propositions, evidence, and reasoning C, D, E,…; but I didn’t do that this time because it wasn’t my intent.)
If you read what I wrote, you’ll find I said this:
(Emphasis added.)
I used the subjunctive, not the imperative or indicative mood. It is the language of possibility, not of necessity. But that wasn’t the end of the argument. It was part of the setup for a thought experiment. If one supposes both A and B, then one could come up with what I labeled (2) in the thought experiment.
Therefore you see that I did not say that B followed necessarily from A. I said that if A, then possibly B; and if A & B, then … and I proceeded from there to design a scenario for a thought experiment, the result of which (after intervening steps I will not rehearse here) was that the best homosexual activists could hope for would be a culture ruled by an ethic of power, which is unconscionable to me.
Do you see better how it works now?
As to what should be legislated, that’s a different issue for a different blog post, as far as I’m concerned. I have my opinions, to be sure, and I have my arguments for those opinions, but I didn’t develop those arguments here and I did not intend to. So I will avail myself of my right to leave that portion of your questions unanswered.
I should add something to this paragraph:
Note the full extent of my thought experiment. I said if A, then possibly B. That’s true, I am quite sure. I could also have added (and in different words, in the original post, I did) that if not-A, then not-B. That is, given A there might or might not be B; but without A there can be no B. Though A may not be a sufficient condition to ensure B, it is a necessary one.
And without B, there is no exercise of power on behalf of some higher, transcendent principle. (See the original post for the rest of that argument and its implications.)
I said two comments ago, “Maybe it’s my own lack of communication skills.”
I wonder, though. Maybe everybody has been trained by culture and media to think in just one way about homosexual practice and/or same-sex “marriage:”
I’m for it! <—–> I’m against it!
He’s for it! <—–> He’s against it!
We should pass laws for it! <—–> We should pass laws against it!
It’s not a uni-dimensional social issue. There are other things to be said about it. I’m saying some of those things. I urge you all to think with me about it.
If that feels like a mild slap on the hand, know that I recognize the way this thing has been framed in culture and media. It has been very one-dimensional. No one expects any one to break that mold, so no one can be entirely faulted for not noticing that’s what’s happening when it is. But that’s what I’m intending to do here.
Tom,
Okay.
Since it’s not a matter of symbology, you must be talking about a synthetic statement about humans. Maybe you would like to take one such statement as an example, just so we can be quite clear whether or not you’re talking about a moral realist claim (assuming you are).
As for #41, I don’t have a problem with [P or Q or Q’]. I just don’t think you presented your argument as a serious consideration of these options, but as a consideration of [P or Q].
Moreover, I don’t understand your attempt to show that I violate the law of identity. Obviously, I feel Q is “perverse, primitive, backwater, and outrageous”. But how do you translate that to [Q or Q’] &neq; [Q or Q’]? I don’t think Q’ is necessarily outrageous, even if I think it is incorrect.
I realize that you’ve mentioned Q’. Are any Christians in camp Q’? Or are we just gonna ignore them?
The majority of Americans now support gay marriage. Is the majority of the country now in camp P? Because that would be awesome!
Here’s my answer to your question about the law of identity:
Suppose my argument actually had depended on Christianity’s being the timeless transcendent moral truth in question. If so, then your view of the two major options, applying the terms with which you described one of them in this thread, would come out this way:
In other words, the two contrasting options brought forth for comparison are:
1. doctor(“logic”)’s view of transcendent moral truth, or
2. doctor(“logic”)’s view of transcendent moral truth.
Notice the self-contradictions in your version of (2). What you exclude with this, even from hypothetical consideration for analysis, is a view of transcendent moral truth that is transcendent, moral, and true.
Last night my 16-year-old daughter said, “Hi, dad. I’m playing a two-person card game against myself.” (She must have been bored to do that.) I said, “I hope you win!”
What you have done here, doctor(“logic”), is you have set up the argument such that it is your view of transcendent moral truth pitted against your view of transcendent moral truth. I expect that even you would be able to win that moral argument.
Meanwhile there is another argument in play, in which your view of transcendent moral truth is contrasted—by way of a hypothetical, let’s-examine-the-implications-if-this-were-true thought experiment—with a view of transcendent moral truth that is transcendent, moral, and true. I think that argument is probably more interesting than yours, don’t you?
(Does that look at all familiar to you?)
But let me add this for further clarification:
I proposed in my thought experiment a transcendent, timeless truth concerning the nature or meaning of humanness, marriage, male and female, and family. If this proposed [Q or Q’] is indeed transcendent and timeless and true, then it is a description of the way these things are. You describe [Q or Q’] as perverse, primitive, backwater, outrageous. Thus you propose that the way these things are, in their transcendence, timelessness, and truth, is primitive, backwater, perverse, and outrageous. But transcendent, timeless truth, if it exists (and this is a thought experiment, remember) is not primitive, backwater, perverse, or outrageous. So you have proposed a transcendent, timeless truth which is neither transcendent nor true. See it now?
Q’ was a term I introduced to cover any hypothetical person who believed in transcendent timeless truth concerning the meaning of humanness, family, marriage, and male and female, but who did not go as far as agreeing with the Genesis passages I quoted. I don’t think it matters whether we analyze that group separately.
As for me, two examples of realist statements about humans that fit the description of [Q or Q’] are Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24.
If the majority of Americans are in camp P, then the majority of Americans are in the camp that believes there is no way to resolve social issues except through power conflict. That is the severely dangerous situation I wrote this post to warn against. Awesome? Do you know your history?
I want to congratulate you. You committed no identifiable logical fallacies in that last comment, as far as I was able to see. You did seem to miss the point of my entire OP, which seems a shame…
Tom,
I don’t comment much, but I read your blog and comments (almost) daily.
Quite often when someone challenges you or pushes back at you, your response is, “Read what I wrote.”
Tom, I did read what you wrote (twice, actually before commenting and twice since), and I understand that the intent of the thought experiment was to get at your conclusion. I’m not as well-read Philosophically as you are, but I’m not completely ignorant either. I can follow simple arguments like this one.
As a reader, the impression this gives off is, “My arguments are so clearly communicated and convincing that anyone who reads them will naturally come to my conclusions.”
I know you don’t necessarily intend it that way, but it does come across that way.
Further, I find it odd that you won’t actually turn the “could” into an “ought,” when everyone who reads your blog knows that’s exactly what you would argue (and honestly, Tom, if it’s impossible for homosexual activism to do good, then that’s what you’re arguing whether you admit it or not).
I want to think it through. That’s why I read blogs like yours.
But I don’t think the media is as strong a force as you’re saying it is here. It doesn’t feel like a slap on the hand because of the media. It feels like something much worse because most people who are sympathetic to gay marriage because of their experience with gay friends, gay family members, etc. And you’re saying that it’s impossible for that sympathy to actually be good, and any attempt to act on behalf of that sympathy is in immoral exercise of power.
Even if your argument is technically correct, you have to realize the force with which this will hit many, many people.
My wording of “the majority of American are in the camp that believes there is no way to resolve social issues except through power conflict” was rather loose. I urge you to re-read what I said (and said more carefully) in the original post to get the sense of what I am saying.
brgulker,
I am not so naive as to think that everyone who reads my posts will naturally come to my conclusions. I do hope, however, that they will not say that my argument X was unsuccessful when my argument was actually Y.
The reason I’m not turning the “could” into an “ought” is because I want to focus on just one point, and not have to wade through all the ancillary arguments concerning the ought, which are many and which are also fraught with emotion. I really did want this to be a post about the social/cultural implications of homosexual activism, and I really did want it to be the kind of post in which my conclusion did not require anyone to accept my moral premises. I was hoping to be more broadly persuasive than that, if possible.
My conclusion may not be as tight as I think it is; that’s for others to judge and to talk to me about. I’m certainly open to that. So far doctor(“logic”) has only barely begun to engage with my argument for what it is; he has until very recently been treating it just according to his prejudices. I am intentionally pushing hard on doctor(“logic”)’s illogic, for reasons I have referenced more than once already in this thread. If you, he or anyone else has something to say about what I’ve argued, I’m all ears.
Thank you for being a regular reader. I hope you’ll continue in spite of the mixed impressions I know I send.
Tom,
This is the source of the confusion:
Transcendent, timeless truth, if it exists COULD BE primitive, backwater, perverse, and outrageous from my perspective. I think this is quite easy to imagine in a thought experiment. Imagine that Allah is God, and the Taliban philosophy is what Allah declares to be moral. In that case, transcendent, timeless truth would be primitive, backwater, perverse, and outrageous from both our perspectives.
This has long been a sticking point between us. As far as I can tell, the only transcendent, timeless moral truths you can entertain (even hypothetically) are those that conform to your own moral tastes.
Our debates about morality always come down to me pushing you on this issue. Your reaction to the prospect that morality doesn’t fit your gut is to say that such moralities are irrelevant, or not on the table, or something like that. My approach is to ask what the word good means if it doesn’t have anything to do with my moral cares and feelings. Indeed, why would you want to be good if being good entailed executing a command from God to, say, stone a teacher to death for teaching girls?
For the sake of a thought experiment, I can imagine a transcendent moral truth that is neither primitive, backwater, perverse, nor outrageous. It’s in Q’ somewhere.
Actually, it occurs to me that you might disagree. Maybe, if Allah is God and he declares teachers of girls should be kidnapped and killed or burned with acid, you might not consider such acts primitive, backwater, perverse or outrageous because Allah declares the act good. Instead, you might somehow conclude that your instinct for kindness and empathy are the things which are perverse and outrageous. Which, again, raises the question: why be good?
Timeless and transcendent implies rock-bottom grounding such that the truth is necessary and immutable. In other words, a truth that could not be otherwise. It has nothing to do with personal taste.
doctor(“logic”),
You are wiggling out of your violation of the principle of identity by introducing a new term: “from my perspective.” First, you’ve changed the term midstream. That’s rather sneaky. Second, I don’t think you could successfully plug that terminology in to the thought experiment and carry it home to the completion of the argument. Third, if your view of this hypothetical transcendent, timeless truth concerning humanness, marriage, male and female, and family were that it was perverse, backwater, primitive and outrageous, well then in term of the conditions of the thought experiment you would be wrong. See #40 again for how that works out. If I thought that way about it too, then I would be wrong too.
If you think the answer is in Q’ somewhere, I remind you that when I first identified this contradiction in your writing, you had no inkling that there was a Q’. I introduced that later. That’s old stuff; it means you were illogical then; maybe not so much now.
Funny thing. I’ve spent most of this thread explaining to you that this isn’t about the morality of homosexuality, but about the social/cultural effects I predict from homosexual activism.
I’ll have to come back after another event here to respond to what you said about Allah.
Okay. I was multi-tasking. Let me carry this thought further. I didn’t get there last time. Hang on a moment.
According to the thought experiment, there is (on one option), some timeless, transcendent truth about humanness, marriage, and male and female, and family. If there is some truth regarding those matters, then it is true. Whatever this truth is, it is true about humans, marriages, men, women, and families. It is true about me, and it is true about you.
Suppose you regard that truth about yourself and every other human to be perverse, backwater, outrageous, and primitive. Then you consider it true that there is something fundamentally perverse, backwater, outrageous, and primitive about that which is timelessly and transcendently true about yourself. This is absurd; for from what position shall you judge the timeless transcendent truth about yourself to be that way?
This is the contradiction in your position. It is impossible to stand in that kind of disagreement with what (according to the terms of the thought experiment) you take to be true of yourself, timelessly and transcendently.
What about Islam? First, if you knew Islamic theology you would know that its moral strictures are not based in what is timelessly and transcendently true of humans, or even of Allah. In that sense it is vastly different from Judaic or Christian theism. It is in that sense more like P than Q. Really. Islam, unlike Judaism or Christianity, teaches that there is no knowable essential nature of the deity, and his moral commands are quite arbitrary. It lands on that particularly uncomfortable horn of the Euthyphro dilemma and stays there. (I don’t think Euthyphro’s dilemma is really a dilemma, properly speaking, but at least you know what I mean when I describe Islam in those terms.)
You say you can imagine a timeless, transcendent truth that meets your description of what morality should be like; and that it is in Q’ somewhere. Please feel free to elaborate. Please bear in mind what I said in the original post in the section, “The Possible Truth That There Is No Truth,” for at least some of that argument will bear on yours. Please make your timeless, transcendent truth at least believable to some person, too; it would be tedious, don’t you think, for you to invent something that everybody knows is impossible.
Tom,
From my own position. What did you think?
From what position shall I judge that Mozart is beautiful and that Tchaikovsky makes an awful racket? Surely, it is on appearances. If you could prove that it is a transcendent truth that Tchaikovsky is better than Mozart, I’ll still think that Mozart is more beautiful. The thought that Tchaikovsky is better than Mozart would be perverse, even if true.
Not all truths are pleasing to me. Some truths will appear to me to be outrageous or perverse.
What’s the contradiction between apparent perversity and transcendent truth? None that I can see.
And, if you want to talk about wiggling-out, your response to my comment about Allah is the best example evar. The only moral reality you’re willing to consider is one that’s largely compatible with your own. You dare not imagine that deeply morally offensive behaviors could be part of moral reality. If only you could imagine it, you would see that isolating feelings from moral reality renders morality pointless at the very least.
Islam is a moral realist faith. Everyone knows this. Your denial is equivalent to me saying that differences in Old Testament and New Testament morality means Christianity is a moral relativist faith. So, go back to my example. Allah demands you kidnap and kill teachers of girls. Now, is the moral reality expressed in this command primitive, backwater, perverse and/or outrageous?
If you say that it is none of these things, then you divorce all these terms from their emotional meanings. “Oh, no, it’s not actually perverse to kill teachers of girls, it’s perverse to treat them with respect.”
If this is the kind of flexibility you want in terminology, then are we allowed any words to refer to subjective feelings? Can I at least keep the word “sickening” to refer to my negative feelings? Discrimination against gay couples sickens me. It sickens me even if it turns out to be a transcendent moral truth that gay couples ought not have the same rights as straight couples. The fact that a transcendent moral truth sickens me is not a contradiction.
Tom,
Just to be clear… I proposed a Q’ moral reality that Taliban Muslims believe in. You ignored my Q’, declaring Islamic morality to be relativist. I think that’s a ridiculous assertion, but it’s also irrelevant to the thought experiment. In the thought experiment, Q’ is a Taliban-like moral realism. Do the terms backwater, perverse and outrageous apply to Q’?
Then, doctor(“logic”),
We are talking about a hypothetical case in which it was transcendently, timelessly true that you were made in alignment with some truth D. You say that if based on your own opinion and from your own position you thought D was bad, you would judge D to be wrong.
In that case, my friend, you would be wrong. Re-read the prior paragraph if it’s not immediately obvious.
You may say I’m slipping categories: that if you were truly made in accordance with design D, you could dislike it regardless, and your dislike need not be wrong. I agree, it could express truly the state of your feelings. But your feelings would be expressing a disjunct with reality, with that for which you were truly and transcendently designed.
Besides the logical errors there are existential problems that flow from that. You would be fighting yourself. That’s foolish. And you would be one small creature in a vast creation, telling the timeless and transcendent truth that it is false and bad. That’s extreme hubris. (In point of fact, since I think this hypothetical is true, I think that is the case.)
You think the question of Allah is a diversion, but your response to it has no relation to the reason I said it does not apply.
If Allah were to tell me to kidnap and kill teachers of girls, I would say, “No, that’s not right.” Which is entirely consistent with what I told you about Allah in the previous comment. Allah does not command what is right; Allah commands what he wills. There is no rightness to his commands, based either in his own character or in the way in which he intended people to be; it is only in his arbitrary choice. I see no connection there to the discussion I initiated.
Judeo-Christian theism, on the other hand, sees God’s good nature, and the image of God in men and women, as the basis for moral truth. There is a transcendent timeless truth there, not an arbitrary choice on God’s part.
Now you may say, “but if you believed in Allah you would not think so.” But that is a question of psychology, not of logic or reason. Still irrelevant.
The Taliban, therefore, do not believe in Q’. They believe in a form of P, in which there is no transcendent truth to which their morals are aligned. It’s actually a great illustration of my point that a P-world is one in which there is no ethic but power. In Islam, with no transcendent truth to which the good is aligned, there remains nevertheless a power with an arbitrary opinion; and the result is even more horrific than cases where men have ruled with power and arbitrary opinions.
By the way, I did not declare Islamic morality to be relativist. I declared it to be arbitrary and have now added the term authoritarian. I recognize that in Islamic belief it applies universally upon humans; I never questioned that. There is a difference between universal arbitrary authoritarianism and relativism. I trust you can see it now.
If you had a better track record I might also have added this:
“I trust you will acknowledge that you read something into my opinions that wasn’t there, and that you called it ‘a ridiculous assertion,’ an error for which I am sure you will be quick to apologize, or at least acknowledge and retract.”
I’m still hoping you might show that much commitment to evidence and reason; and that much commitment to integrity.
It’s understandably easy to be fooled about Allah. They say there are three great monotheistic religions, as if their three monotheisms were the same. They aren’t. Allah is considerably more different from the God of Christianity than the Trinity is from the Jewish conception of God.
Islam teaches that if Allah has some essential moral nature, it is absolutely unknown and unknowable; he has not revealed it. His commandments are expressions of pure will, his will being unimpeded by anything, including his own moral nature (if such a thing even exists). Islam teaches that Allah is merciful and loving, but that is more accurately what he does, not what he is; and he could change his mind about that this afternoon.
All of that is completely different from both the Jewish and Christian conceptions of God.
Tom,
I’m disappointed yet again. I described a Q’. I based it on Taliban ethics, and asked you to imagine a hypothetical in which such ethics were firmly in the Q’ camp. Instead of considering and answering the main question of my comment, you instead went out and attacked Islam for not being in Q’.
You simply have a huge blind spot. You are either unable or unwilling to think about a Q’ (an moral reality) that disgusts you. And because of this, your ability to understand the implications of your own Q is severely crippled. The people you want to persuade see your Q as a disgusting Q’. You apparently can’t see the world through their eyes.
That’s you in Q’.
No, I would not be fighting myself, and it isn’t foolish. I might be materially worse off, but that’s not the same thing. My interests are not composed exclusively of material comforts, but also of my values. If I destroy all that I value, I effectively cease to exist. You offer me a fate comparable with death. Now, it might be that in Q or Q’, I have an objectively evil nature. Saving the teacher from being killed in Q’ might be objectively evil, but not saving her is subjectively evil to me. You’re telling me that rather than fight the universe, I should destroy my values and conform. Now, that would be fighting myself.
Of course, through conditioning, we can alter our own values. Though it is rather difficult to imagine, experiments suggest that many of us could eventually be conditioned to kill girls school teachers and like it. And after we’ve been so conditioned, we would probably like the new selves we’ve become. We would be living happy lives in harmony with Q’ (assuming we’re not teaching any girls).
But if anything at all about this scenario gives you the creeps, then, by analogy, you might understand why your Q is so repulsive to so many of us, and why your attempts to persuade us to accept your values through abstract argument fall so flat.
Again with the morally absolutist pontification from a moral relativist.
You do understand, don’t you, that by your own silly rules of moral relativism we can respond with “so what?”. And then, you do understand, don’t you, that all you’re left with is force to impose upon others… for which atheism has a blatant track record in leaving millions and millions of bodies in its wake?
Moreover, your silly moral relativism undermines reasoned discourse because, at the end of the day, it’s the strong that win–not the truth… which, again, is what atheism is about, isn’t it?
And your apparent lack of moral or emotional concern for the results of your deadly nonsense (in the form of theoretical deflections or atheist apologetics) again leads me to wonder about sociopathy… or possession.
Per your earlier self-declared idealism (we can never know the object itself, only the idea of the object), you live in a convenient, emotionally-disconnected, hypothetical world that fails at the first instant you’re confronted with an existential moral dilemma… inevitably followed by more rationalizing difficulties away — many times with misapplications of mathematics, but most of the time with logical fallacies (which Tom has nicely documented and which we’ve endured for four or so years).
You’re neither a very smart nor very logical guy… are you DI?
He said “pontification”. Hehe
Yeah, I’m not smart, not logical, sociopathic, an enabler of mass murderers, blah blah blah. Yawn.
YES! Finally he’s getting it… except with “enabler”, per your usual non-reading MO you “missed” it: the “enabler” is atheism–YOU are an apologizer for atheism. And the “yawn” was delicious: emotional detachment.
doctor(“logic”),
I have a longer response to your last comment in process (lots of meetings this morning to slow that down) but I want to respond further to what Holopupenko lifted from your comments:
First, I do understand why it’s repulsive. I have a good feel for it, mostly by way of conversations with homosexual friends of mine. I have listened, I have heard, and I have been affirmed by them for my listening and hearing. If you think otherwise, you are drawing conclusions apart from evidence. That would be both prejudicial and sterotyping.
Which is odd, considering that you claim the position of “doctor(logic).” There is more. When you offer your reasons for your position, you answer with words like “repulsive.” When you want to say what’s wrong with our position you use words like “primitive, backwater, outrageous, perverse, bigoted, disgust, the creeps.” These words are freighted with emotion, not evidence or reason. Have you noticed?
For evidential reasoning to support your position, you offer “most people think…” in comment #4; but when you go on throughout the thread to talk about “most people,” what you have to say is what they feel, not what they think (in your opinion, of course). You offer a failed analogy to inter-racial marriage (you have been suspiciously silent concerning the failure there as I have identified it). You say that homosexuality is a matter of biology, which is as weak an argument as I have ever heard: alcoholism is a matter of biology, after all.
You say “people see gay relationships as emotionally comparable to straight ones.” More language of emotion, not logic.
Most telling of all, you say,
You blatantly, openly, and with apparent intentionality tell me that my argument is overcome by outrage. Would you explain for me how that fits in the thought processes of a doctor of logic?
I will answer further when and if you explain to me how that works logically and rationally.
Tom,
It’s clear from your response that you don’t actually know what rationality is.
Rationality does not mean acting like an emotionless robot. Rationality consists primarily in deductive and inductive logic. Finding “is” facts. Rationality serves an agent’s values and cares, whatever they may be. If rationality did not serve, then we would be unable to make any rational decisions at all. (Indeed, this is what happens to patients that lose their emotion centers. They can think rationally, and identify consistency, but can’t decide on anything.) We need emotional value in order to take one course of action over another.
This is just another window on why your worldview is so messed up. The thing you desperately want is for morality (your own morality, of course) to be the only rational course. You think that moral persuasion is a matter of pure, abstract, emotionless reason. To do this, you have to construct a system in which good and evil are arrived at via some form of deductive process. You don’t see any flaws in the system because the deductive process matches your emotional cares.
But, as I’ve been trying to explain for a long, long time, human minds don’t reason to moral conclusions by pure logic. In order to prefer a course of action, it has to better appeal to my subjective values. If you try to isolate good and evil from my subjective values, then I will value neither good nor evil, and any argument for good action would be rendered pointless and ineffective. An argument for such a good would be like an algebra problem – consistent, but pointless. Who wants to be good independent of what good entails?
You’ve done your utmost to avoid this issue for years, and I don’t know why I continue to try to get you to understand it.
One more vector. To deny gay marriage offends my conscience. I’m not supporting gay marriage to be rebellious. I support gay marriage because it serves justice as I see it. You want me to kill my conscience in favor of a particular Q. But, should I decide to do that, whatever motivation I had to kill my conscience must be stronger than my conscience. What is that motivation?
It’s a weak argument that homosexuality should be valued. I don’t think it’s a weak argument that homosexuality is not contagious.
Since you didn’t answer my question, doctor(“logic”), I’m not going to answer yours at this time. I told you that at the end of my previous comment here.
But I do want to apologize for missing your point that you were proposing a hypothetical Q’ that was not actually based Islam’s doctrine of God. That was an oversight on my part. I’m not at all sure how I made that error, though conceivably it might have had something to do with your saying,
So, pardon me for misunderstanding that, and for thinking you were proposing something for your thought experiment like “Allah is God, and the Taliban philosophy is what Allah declares to be moral.” I can certainly see now why you would be disappointed in me for thinking that.
If we get to pick up this conversation again, I’ll bear your true intentions in mind, now that I understand them better.