quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Of course you can. We have those all the time.
I would imagine that for an ethical theist, divine law would only trump secular law when trumping is necessary.
opposing definitions dont work well when drafting laws. and trumping becomes necessary according to the discretion of whom?
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Well, yes, actually. It's just that I think one of the most important 'divine laws' (and I don't even like that term, because of its propensity for misuse-my definition of misuse, obviously) could be put this way: 'make up your own mind so long as it's not hurting anyone!' And gay marriage wouldn't hurt anyone. Even assuming God really does dislike gay marriage in the extreme, a notion I don't grant, well, we're already doing all sorts of things by Christian lights that God just can't stand.
Tons of things. And yet when it comes to gays shackin' up and bein' recognized for it, suddenly a bunch of Bible thumpers come out of the woodwork and suddenly say, "This far, no further!" Suddenly it's Thermopylae or something. It's not for divorce, it's not for booze and drunkeness, it's not for care for the poor and welfare, it's not for warfare, it's not for the death penalty, it's not for adultery, it's not for, it's not for...but gays getting together? Ohhhhhhh, no sir!
And that's why I dislike it when folks start talking about divine law. They don't mean it's 'divine law'. What they mean is, "It's a personal opinion I don't want you to be able to object to."
for not liking when folks talk about divine law you just said a mouthful about it. doesnt divine law reflect divine will and isnt the discovery and fulfillment of divine will one of the underlying objectives of most religions?
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Okay. Right now those are trumped by sex other people are having. A future prophet may decide otherwise.
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quote:No. This is wrong. That is not what people are saying.
I believe they mean it when they say it, katharina, but when you examine how often God gets invoked with respect to other things that, according to Christian lights particularly would clearly be upsetting, I'm afraid it just doesn't stand up.
Unless the divine law against gays shackin' up and callin' it marriage is a much more important divine law than other divine laws, which isn't a stance I think many Christians would seriously commit to.
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quote:for not liking when folks talk about divine law you just said a mouthful about it. doesnt divine law reflect divine will and isnt the discovery and fulfillment of divine will one of the underlying objectives of most religions?
Well, cap, by all means let your pursuit of a pithy one liner permit you to avoid the entirety of the other points addressed. There aren't words for that sort of behavior, no sir. Setting aside the pretty obvious fact that my beef isn't with people who talk about it, but rather people who talk about it as though it should have weight in legislating.
Those other points being: if the 'discovery and fulfillment of divine will' is one of the underlying objectives of most religions, why is suddenly, as kmbboots says, this one 'divine law' - not that it's a universally accepted divine law by any means (but let's not let that stop us from behaving, in secular terms, as though it was, right?) that we focus on?
If religious people are going to be concerned with divine law and the discovery and fulfillment of them, they have to be consistently concerned with it, else lay themselves open quite fairly to charges of hypocrisy and of being interested in other things when they start making talk about divine law.
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Rakeesh, I think that was the point that Scott was making. For Mormons, right now, it is the most important thing. Or at least been declared to be so.
You and I might find that bizarre, but they don't need our approval.
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There's a mildly amusing joke to be made here about SSM and not needing approval in conducting one's own affairs...
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quote:I believe they mean it when they say it, katharina, but when you examine how often God gets invoked with respect to other things that, according to Christian lights particularly would clearly be upsetting, I'm afraid it just doesn't stand up.
You not believing what they are saying is true is NOT the same thing as them being dishonest when they are saying it.
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Immorality is the obstacle lots of our leaders are pointing at as our generation's particular devil.
I totally read this as "Immortality", I was like, "Oh man, what Ensign magazine is Scott reading that I missed!?"
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Yes, katharina, I'm perfectly aware it's not what they literally mean, or what they intend to mean. It is what I said, though, given that I said they are mistaken about their own beliefs. It is possible for that to happen.
Why to I believe they're mistaken about their own beliefs? By an examination of other 'divine laws' and the interest in having them be supported by secular law. It's pretty straightforward.
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quote:they are mistaken about their own beliefs. It is possible for that to happen.
Maybe a better way of putting this is that they have multiple beliefs that conflict with one another. So it's not that they don't believe that divine law is important - just that they are giving more weight to the primacy of divine law in this context in order to justify a given conclusion while at the same time giving less weight to other relevant concepts like "free agency", a commitment to secular government, etc. which may weigh more heavily in other contexts.
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Does anyone believe that a law against a behavior destroys a person's ability to choose that behavior?
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Does anyone believe that a law against a behavior destroys a person's ability to choose that behavior?
When the behavior in question is "entering into a legally binding marriage contract with person of same sex", Yes, absolutely. Laws against that behavior destroy a person's ability to make that choice.
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So you aren't saying they are dishonest. You're saying they are too stupid to know what they mean.
Not actually better.
It would better, when lecturing about having charity, to actually have charity and respect for those with whom you are disagreeing.
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At least when I was refering to "charity" I was using in the sense of helping those less fortunate - giving to the poor, taking care of the sick-rather than the more colloquial usage.
That said, I think that Rakeesh's interpretation is pretty "charitable".
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quote:Why to I believe they're mistaken about their own beliefs? By an examination of other 'divine laws' and the interest in having them be supported by secular law. It's pretty straightforward.
They're not mistaken about their own beliefs; it's hard to mistake something that is self-generated.
They may not have a complete understanding of the doctrine of the organization that they claim to be adherents for, though. They may not know the mind of God as completely as they feel they do. They might be wrong.
Rabbit:
That's true; I don't think I would have called that particular act a "behavior," though.
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quote:Right now those are trumped by sex other people are having. A future prophet may decide otherwise.
Yes. Like I said, when someone is having a heart attack, for the moment you don't worry about their breast cancer.
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That's true; I don't think I would have called that particular act a "behavior," though.
To the best of my recollection, it IS the ONLY act we are discussing making legal or illegal. Which was my point.
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quote:they are giving more weight to the primacy of divine law in this context in order to justify a given conclusion while at the same time giving less weight to other relevant concepts like "free agency"
I don't know that the concept of free agency is denigrated by this law, or any law. I dunno-- it doesn't quite fit my conception of what agency entails.
To put it another way: if you take away my freedom to vote, I don't think you've affected my agency. You've affected my rights; but I'm not sure that all possible actions need be available to an individual in order for that individual to retain a full complement of agency.
So I don't accept that opposition to SSM, expressed through legitimate legal channels, equals giving less weight to the idea of free agency.
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quote:So you aren't saying they are dishonest. You're saying they are too stupid to know what they mean.
And no, that's not what I'm saying either. Being mistaken =/ stupid, but please feel free to assert whatever opinions grant the right to the most outrage. I'm also not looking for a fight with you, as this conversation appears sure to be building into.
quote:It would better, when lecturing about having charity, to actually have charity and respect for those with whom you are disagreeing.
Actually, I wasn't lecturing about charity, that was incidental. Case in point. See, I think, "You're (general 'you') mistaken about these belief sets you hold," is a pretty charitable opinion to hold, particularly when held up against another potential outlook, "You're (again, general you) homophobic and despise homosexuals."
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quote:They're not mistaken about their own beliefs; it's hard to mistake something that is self-generated.
I don't think it's hard to be mistaken about the motivation for doing something though, do you?
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quote:I don't know that the concept of free agency is denigrated by this law, or any law. I dunno-- it doesn't quite fit my conception of what agency entails.
I think that any time you create law for the purpose of curtailing a behavior that you oppose you are attempting to impinge on agency. Any time you make something harder to do you are decreasing the opportunity for someone else to make an independent decision to do - or not do - it.
That's not necessarily a *bad* thing on its own, but it's still a thing.
quote:They're not mistaken about their own beliefs; it's hard to mistake something that is self-generated.
It's actually pretty easy. We commonly generate post-hoc justifications for conclusions already reached. Because they are post-hoc justifications, they aren't actually the reason we hold those conclusions - i.e. we are mistaken about what we believe. This becomes clear to others when we don't use the same justifications for other situations where they might apply.
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It depends on who is judging the motivation. I am much more likely to misjudge someone else's motivations than I am to misjudge my own. I guess that I trust that people know what they're talking about when they talk about themselves.
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quote:We commonly generate post-hoc justifications for conclusions already reached. Because they are post-hoc justifications, they aren't actually the reason we hold those conclusions - i.e. we are mistaken about what we believe. This becomes clear to others when we don't use the same justifications for other situations where they might apply.
They're not actually mistaken about what they believe, though. They may be mistaken about WHY they believe what they believe, but that's different from the actual belief.
For the sake of utility, I'm not terribly interested in someone's subconscious reasons for their belief. It's hard enough to talk about an individual's conscious rationale.
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It's certainly true that I may very possibly be mistaken when I speculate as to the motivations of large groups of other people, Scott. I'll certainly grant that. But I'm not just guessing-there are a host of other factors, like MattP says-I can look at very similar situations which ought to use similar standards but very clearly don't and see that something is missing and compare differences and draw conclusions, and then see what's different in terms of rhetoric and politics, that sort of thing.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: It's certainly true that I may very possibly be mistaken when I speculate as to the motivations of large groups of other people, Scott. I'll certainly grant that. But I'm not just guessing-there are a host of other factors, like MattP says-I can look at very similar situations which ought to use similar standards but very clearly don't and see that something is missing and compare differences and draw conclusions, and then see what's different in terms of rhetoric and politics, that sort of thing.
To be clear, you're asserting that when someone says, "I believe it is God's will that homosexuals should be prevented from marrying," you can perform the logistical analysis you stated above, and then turn and say to them,
"No you don't. You don't believe that at all."
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No, that's not what I'm asserting. Not quite. I'm asserting, "God's will in governing human affairs isn't as important in governing human affairs as you're suggesting it is, has always been, etc."
I absolutely believe them, believe they mean it, when they say, "This is God's will..." I rarely believe someone when they go on to say, "And that's deeply important to me, and we ought to do something about it," except when we're talking about a cause celeb. Such as SSM.
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Not to cause trouble (well, OK, maybe I am ) but back when Mormons practiced polygamy, wasn't that a form of same-sex marriage? Sure, there was a husband involved--but if he has five or six wives, those wives were also married to each other. Just saying.
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So, Ron. Why is it that saving the lives of believers with cancer would make God vulnerable to the charge of bribery, but saving believers from meteor strikes doesn't open him to that same charge?
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:Destineer, while I am not qualified to set forth all the features and limits of Divine Justice, it seems likely that God will show favor as much as He can, without leaving Himself open to being accused of bribing people to be faithful to Him.
If he helps even a few people, isn't that a sort of bribery? You're saying that joining the community of the faithful reduces my chances of dying in a natural disaster. Isn't that (among other things) a way of giving me a worldly incentive to believe? What more would it take for this to count as a bribe?
quote:Will being faithful to God ensure that you never suffer calamity? No. Again, that would leave God open to the charge that He was bribing people to be faithful to Him.
Why is that? If you always protect your friends from harm, does that leave you open to the charge that you're bribing people to be your friends?
That's not what I'd call bribery, it's just being a good guy.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: If one had the power to save everyone and chose to only save some? Not such a good guy.
Yeah, well, I'm trying to keep things on point and work within a framework like Ron's, to show him that what he's saying doesn't make sense even granting his own assumptions.
Obviously he doesn't think that those without faith deserve God's protection, so that argument is a non-starter.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Not to cause trouble (well, OK, maybe I am ) but back when Mormons practiced polygamy, wasn't that a form of same-sex marriage? Sure, there was a husband involved--but if he has five or six wives, those wives were also married to each other. Just saying.
I'm not seeing it. Would you say Hagar and Sarah were married to each other?
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: If one had the power to save everyone and chose to only save some? Not such a good guy.
I'm curious-- Mormonism gets by this by saying 1) God is not omnipotent; 2) His purpose is not to spare us pain, but to make us like Jesus Christ-- suffering and joy are therefore necessary parts of our mortal experience.
How do you answer the problem of pain?
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quote:Sure, there was a husband involved--but if he has five or six wives, those wives were also married to each other.
No they were not. Each wife was married to the husband. The wives were never married to each other. It's the husband was a multi-outlet power strip and the wives were different appliances. Each appliance is plugged into the strip but no two appliances are plugged in to each other. (please do not try to extend this analogy any further, please).
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Rabbit: So Hagar was like a space heater, crowding out all the other appliances? Therefore Abraham shooed her away so as to avoid a fuse blowing?
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: If one had the power to save everyone and chose to only save some? Not such a good guy.
I'm curious-- Mormonism gets by this by saying 1) God is not omnipotent; 2) His purpose is not to spare us pain, but to make us like Jesus Christ-- suffering and joy are therefore necessary parts of our mortal experience.
How do you answer the problem of pain?
There's a really lovely book by C.S. Lewis called The Problem of Pain that helped sort that out to me. Basically, the crux of the argument is that although God is omnipotent, we're not made in a way to understand all of Him, so He has to work within the means that we can understand. In order to have free will, we have to have the ability to cause pain, and pain must exist in the universe.
Another argument I've heard (though not one I subscribe to) is that the Earth is supposed to be full of suffering because it has to test those to find those worthy to ascend to Heaven. This was told to me by a Catholic, but I'm not sure that's what all Catholics believe, it might be just that one person. But it's another perspective.
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I loved your analogy to the multi-outlet power strip, Rabbit. Not that I mean anything serious about bringing polygamy into this discussion, but if the wives were only married to their husband, what was their relationship to each other? Wife-in-law?
This reminds me of the lecture some experts on the Chinese pictograph language gave in college years ago. A stick figure of a man with a stick figure of a woman on a grid that represented a garden together collectively mean "marriage." The very same collection of figures but with a second stick figure for a woman added, represented the word "unhappiness."
Destineer, as usual, you failed to grasp my point, or else deliberately chose to misrepresent it. What I said was that if we in an official act directly defy the authority of the Creator to define what marriage--which He instituted--means, that is something that He cannot overlook, and He cannot in justice continue to give us His special favor and protect us from the cosmic shooting gallery the earth happens to frequent presently.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: If one had the power to save everyone and chose to only save some? Not such a good guy.
I'm curious-- Mormonism gets by this by saying 1) God is not omnipotent; 2) His purpose is not to spare us pain, but to make us like Jesus Christ-- suffering and joy are therefore necessary parts of our mortal experience.
How do you answer the problem of pain?
There's a really lovely book by C.S. Lewis called The Problem of Pain that helped sort that out to me. Basically, the crux of the argument is that although God is omnipotent, we're not made in a way to understand all of Him, so He has to work within the means that we can understand. In order to have free will, we have to have the ability to cause pain, and pain must exist in the universe.
Another argument I've heard (though not one I subscribe to) is that the Earth is supposed to be full of suffering because it has to test those to find those worthy to ascend to Heaven. This was told to me by a Catholic, but I'm not sure that's what all Catholics believe, it might be just that one person. But it's another perspective.
Hey, Anna. Welcome to Hatrack. You're wrong.
The problem I have with Lewis' argument as presented here is that if God is omnipotent, then he could have made us able to have free will and understand Him without needing to subject us to pain.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Destineer, as usual, you failed to grasp my point, or else deliberately chose to misrepresent it. What I said was that if we in an official act directly defy the authority of the Creator to define what marriage--which He instituted--means, that is something that He cannot overlook, and He cannot in justice continue to give us His special favor and protect us from the cosmic shooting gallery the earth happens to frequent presently.
You began by saying that. Then when I asked why, if he's going to do us the favor of protecting against meteors, he doesn't also do us the favor of protecting us against diseases, you said because protecting us against disease would leave him open to charges of bribery (because he heaps too many benefits on his believers).
Then I asked, why does protection from meteors not count as bribery, when protection from disease would count? That's the question you haven't yet answered.
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quote:This reminds me of the lecture some experts on the Chinese pictograph language gave in college years ago. A stick figure of a man with a stick figure of a woman on a grid that represented a garden together collectively mean "marriage." The very same collection of figures but with a second stick figure for a woman added, represented the word "unhappiness."
I'm unsure what character he said represented unhappiness but I have an idea of which one he was using for marriage.
While there are definitely characters that indicate their meaning by the picture they represent, those characters represent around 4% of the total language. There are far more characters where the radicals have no relation whatsoever to the meaning and they exist as an indicator of how to pronounce the character. I'm not saying your picto expert was wrong, but I could not find any character with two female radicals, a male radical, and a field, let alone one that indicates some sort of unhappiness.
I only suggest caution as there are a few gospel enthusiasts who look at Chinese characters and try to connect them to the scriptures. While one cannot prove there is absolutely no connection, many Christians believe God might have revealed the gospel to many groups of people around the world, there is *no* evidence that affirmatively links them. So again, caution.
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: ]Hey, Anna. Welcome to Hatrack. You're wrong.
The problem I have with Lewis' argument as presented here is that if God is omnipotent, then he could have made us able to have free will and understand Him without needing to subject us to pain. [/QB]
Thanks for the welcome
I think basically it comes down to the fact that if you trust that God loves us and is omnipotent, then this world, with all its problems, must be better than any alternative. Even if it doesn't make sense from the inside, it must make sense if you're God. It's like the metaphor of God as a parent: Children don't understand why they can't eat dessert all the time, but their parents do. In the same way, maybe we can't understand why this world is better than a utopia. Love isn't always the same thing as kindness, and I think that most Christian denominations would agree with your point about God wanting us to be like Jesus Christ, because Christ was a perfect human being.
I know it's a sucky answer... it seems like all religious arguments boil down to, "basically, based on my experience, I believe it is so." To be honest, it's one of those things that I take as a matter of faith, that God loves us and is omnipotent, but that we can't understand Him and the reason why the world is the way it is.
I was also wondering about your comment about God not being omnipotent. Does Mormonism believe that there are certain laws God has to follow? If God isn't omnipotent, then isn't He not a God?
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I don't think I've heard anyone claim that Zeus, Odin, Ra or Vishnu were omnipotent. It seems to me that's something you monotheistic types tacked onto religion. I could be wrong though, comparative religion isn't something I've ever paid much attention to.
I would also like to point out that atheism has an excellent answer to the problem of pain .
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quote:Originally posted by Anna2112: I think basically it comes down to the fact that if you trust that God loves us and is omnipotent, then this world, with all its problems, must be better than any alternative.
This brings up the question as to why alternatives where reconciliation with God are assured for all after death, and nobody is left to suffer for all eternity for remaining secular, are not used and this system, according to the bible, is.
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quote:Because the vibe that I often get (apologies if I'm totally off-base and addressing an opinion that doesn't really exist) is that people who describe homosexuality as a lifestyle are imagining something quite hedonistic, a whirl of parties and casual sex. There certainly are gays who live like this, but then there are also straights who live like this.
I'm delighted by this. I am, absolutely, part of the heterosexual lifestyle. If I keep pointing out that no-sex-before-marriage religious laws are outdated, dying, and good riddance, can I be part of the heterosexual agenda, too?
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by Xavier: I don't think I've heard anyone claim that Zeus, Odin, Ra or Vishnu were omnipotent. It seems to me that's something you monotheistic types tacked onto religion. I could be wrong though, comparative religion isn't something I've ever paid much attention to.
I would also like to point out that atheism has an excellent answer to the problem of pain .
Zues I'm fairly certain to legend was omnipotant short of one thing, he couldn't go against The Fates.
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I'm sure this question is less than original, but how did all these restrictions on God's godhood get set up in the first place?
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