Is It Bigoted To Have A Supported Opinion?

Couldn't we extrapolate that rationale to the era of the bronze age? For example . . ."I doubt the bible's views about genocide, infanticide, slavery, and sexism would have generally been regarded as immoral in, say, the first and second century."If true, wouldn't that say that god's inspiration for the bible was really half assed?

nwr comments: to which i reply:tsh2g

Er, yes, exactly. It's obviously a moral tale for its own time. Our ideas about morality change and develop over time. Phat's views are simply out of time.

Well, they are.

Yes. That and the fact that the pattern of the argument works equally well for discrimination that we all accept as bigotry, like not allowing marriage between people of different faiths, races, or ethnic origin. Hopefully these arguments will one day will be era relics like the 'Lost Cause' and the state's 'duty' to maintain racial purity.The argument is, in essence, that if one cannot discriminate gay people, then you ought to be able to marry your underage daughter.

CS puts forth: Even more, CS - the evidence in the Bible seems to indicate that Jesus, himself, was gay. He traveled around with these 12 apostles, all men. This big arm-wrestle over Mary Magdalene's sexual relationship with Jesus. The whole "turn the other cheek" thing. The "love your brother as you would love yourself" - what? what about your sister?? Connect the dots.Clever, that Bible.Never mind, an obvious SNARK from me.

In other words, you believe that ideas are entirely internal...with society? Society changes over time, thus our ideas also change over time...all well and good....our ideas about religion change over time also. Our ideas about God...those of us who acknowledge Him...also change, but not all of us. Some of us believe that God stepped out of eternity into time....and that His ideas are unchanging. Slavery, for example, was never Gods idea...God merely was dealing with humans whom had already chosen to adopt and/or institute slavery.God deals with humans where they are at. For those of us who don't believe in Him...He may deal with you differently from those of us who do.But lets talk about Phat's ideas for a moment.God created us male and female. Reasons?God created us all with unique characteristics...some of them shared by others.Did it ever occur to you that God may have created some of us with attraction for our own gender not to encourage procreation, nor sexual pleasure but, rather, for some deeper emotional bonding? In other words, ask yourself what the possible purposes of attraction really are.

Yeah, afterall, god isn't some kind of supernatural omnipresent, omniscient all-powerful being or something. Afterall, what could someone with so little influence possibly do? His reactionary hands were literally tied to what humans could or could not do. Yup, no doubt about it, god is a pip-squeak panty-waist.

He had a much more tolerant attitude toward slavery than He did toward, say, adultery. Adultery has a whole commandment against it, 10% of His effort. Slavery, not a word. If He really was against slavery, He could have just said, "Thou shalt not own human beings as slaves." Unless all of God's thoughts have occured to you (with more reliability than His thoughts on slavery), wouldn't it be a good idea to be more open to homosexual SEX - not just attraction - instead of less?

This is too weird for me - you're going to have to explain wha you think it means.

Well, maybe it would help if I offered a parallel example to Phat's:"Did it ever occur to you that Baskin and Robins may have created deserts for some of us but not with the thought of satisfying any mere taste/tactile attraction, nor desire for any oral delight, but, rather, for some deeper emotional bonding?Just take a look at the following photo. Doesn't it make you think of deep philosophical thoughts? Or are you just a pervert?

Is that a banana in the dish or is the sundae just trying to connect on a deeper emotional bonding?

quote:

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Did it ever occur to you that God may have created some of us with attraction for our own gender not to encourage procreation, nor sexual pleasure but, rather, for some deeper emotional bonding? In other words, ask yourself what the possible purposes of attraction really are.

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Well I'd think that if there's a purpose to same-sex sexual attraction then it probably involves same-sex sexual activity - either as a part of the purpose or as a part of working out that purpose. It would be a little odd to intentionally motivate someone to engage in any activity without the intent that they should engage in that activity.And indeed that would fit with your idea of emotional bonding. Or is it that you see sex as only for reproduction or pleasure ? For you, there's no intimacy, no closeness in it at all ?

PaulK writes: There may be an evolutionary advantage to having the %homosexuality rise under population pressure. This won't necessarily translate to those sub-populations with the highest pressure having the highest %, but overall there may be a correlation. When a species is selected to prevail to the next generation, the ability to respond to its own population demographics may give it a slight advantage.But actually, in the case of homo sapiens, I think the % has been fairly uniform over the last 2 million or so years.It also could be a residual archaic genetic attraction to all members of the species from the earlier non-hetero ancestor species that has faded and leveled off to its current % today.It certainly is natural.

Both true and false. I would consider a slave-owner from before the American Civil War to still be evil, even though the practice was morally accepted by society at the time. I see socially acceptable practices today that I find to be evil, and which I hope will eventually be considered by future society to be evil as well.One could say that the moral standards of a time are constantly changing, but those standards, if adopted, are constant throughout time. For instance, if slavery is evil, then it was always evil, and society has only recently become sufficiently enlightened to recognize it as such.Morality is about relative values, and not all moral systems are self-consistent. The American Founding Fathers extolled the virtues of free men, while simultaneously condemning other men to perpetual bondage.It appears that the evolution of social morality over time has been about redefining who should be included in the protections of ethical behavior, and in making the guidelines more self-consistent. The realization that slavery is immoral was not just a total change in social fabric, but rather the realization that the highly-regarded virtue of freedom had a rather glaring inconsistency.This is meaningless blather, Phat. Not a single word in these sentences combines to form any cogent though or meaning outside of your perpetual navel-gazing. "...stepped out of eternity into time" is perhaps one of the most absurd phrases I've heard in at least the last month. As has been mentioned, there's a rather glaring absence of rules against slavery in the Ten Commandments. In fact, the Hebrew Law in Leviticus explains in significant detail the rules by which a man may own slaves; regulating slavery is nt in any fashion the same as banning the practice. Indeed, by setting rules for its practice as opposed to its criminalization, your deity expressly permits slavery. Irrelevant. Within your premise "God" also "created us" to be of differing races. Reasons? Did it ever occur to you that nonsensical apologetics based upon the compiled ancient texts of societies that existed thousands of years ago may not be the best source for a system of morality?By locking yourself into the moral values of stone-age nomads, you restrict yourself from becoming better than they were. If you hold your ancient texts as morally supreme, you can never improve upon them, and must reject even an objectively superior idea. It's no different from Faith's rejection of virtually every discipline of science in holding to a young Earth - you just adhere to the outdated and demonstrably inferior values of the same books.