Forum Thread
Changing Sexual Orientation and Identity? The APA Report

Gah - I've posted on the wrong thread. Serves me right for having multiple tabs up at the same time.

Sorry all. I'll repost in the correct one.

The flaw in reliabilism is that it still requires belief, so we get nowhere on this one. Also, Alvin Platinga's views on evolution are not evolution, in order (he sees) to defend Christianity. Evolution is always something in a place, in a time, and particular, its (what they may be, if so) systematic interactive elements being consequent.

The question for you, Brightmorningstar (and others), is that if you see homosexual acts as a crime, and quote the Bible to support your view, why do you then go against the Biblical punishment for such a crime?

When you say "why should this sin be punished more severely than any other sin particulalry sexual immorailty such as adultery?", someone else could legitimately agree with you and use your words to support legislation that adultery ought to carry that penalty too.

Like most here, I can make the case for sex being best expressed inside a life-long monogamous relationship. But I am not alone in believing that ethic should be embraced by homosexual couples as well - what a shame us straights are making it so damn difficult for them.

Paul,

Alvin Platinga defines knowledge warranted true belief. The belief that the earth is round is true but your belief in this would not count as knowledge if the only reason given was that a sphere is perfect. In some circumstances "I saw a photograph taken from space" would be sufficient. An account of a world tour holiday would be further evidence. Of course no matter which relies on our senses or memory can be known with absolute certainty. It is possible that the universe and everything in it has only  existed for 5 minutes or all our experiences are illusions. Platingta's general account of warrant includes the proper procedures for gathering and assessing evidence. Platinga's theory of religious knowledge is addressed at a general theism. His point is that there is no basis for describing belief in God as irrational. He demolishes the standard objections to belief and  offers many proofs for the existence of God for you consideration. The empirical case for the existence of God has been made by Richard Swinburne.

Your personal knowledge is no more than an anecdote until it is compared to that of others in a systematic way. Thus scientific method as applied by biologists, psychologists and sociologists can give us descriptive knowledge of homosexuality. One result of this is the separated twins  surveys which show that sexual orientation is not genetically determined. I do not understand the point of your reference to a straight gene. It does not exist. 

Coming back to the subject of the thread, I was interested to read this article on the healing of homosexuality.

 http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/homosexuality/ho0011.html

David

DH,

I do not understand your simultaneous appeal: to Plantinga's reformed epistemology; and to a demand that people look at the evidence. Plantinga's position is deeply intuitive, isn't it - basic beliefs, including our understanding / apperception of God are to be regarded as natural / innate - and there is no real need in such an understanding for a reliance on "evidence" (which, where, according to whom, anyway?) 

However, it can also be argued that Plantinga's perspective collapses into either: a trust in revelation (as recorded in scripture, for many), since we at least need to hear about some matter to believe in/on it; or into a near-fideist worldview. It thus (at least potentially) contains a contradiction, because the "natural" truth is actually equated with an historical tradition that preserves scripture and its interpretations. Now, tradition is a wonderful accumulation of inherited wisdom and ways of being (see Gadamer, Shils, and perhaps - as a constraint - Heidegger (especially in parts of  "The Hermeneutics of Facticity")); but empirical evidence it is not.

Whilst I value tradition greatly, I do not value your abbreviated collection of category errors. I thank you for not advancing your propietary epistemology in several hundred pages, but I (and maybe others) would welcome some straightforward and deconvoluted response to the actual debate.

Paul.

Thank you, Paul -

some sanity at last.

I fear it will not be well recieved - because if these questions were properly engaged with then there is a chance that the whole house of cards might come a-tumbling down!

Jeremy

DH: thank you for a lesson in irony.

Some of your views suggest an ultra-pure sola scriptura view, which is a leap of faith (nothing outside of the biblical text gives it this status - one could treat any text with the same reverence on internal criteria) - so it is wholly subjective. Subjectivity does not mean, of course, that something is necessarily "wrong", but the first telling irony is: your perspective could only really be validated by experience (what you believe to be true from a leap-of-faith, you find to be true in lived experience: maybe, most of all, of the Holy Spirit...) - but that introduces experience, and so undermines your central principle.

Some of your other views in this thread use the language of science - which has no primacy for you - to rhetorical effect.  A second telling irony is, therefore, that you will appropriate disciplines to justify your position ("reproductive [insulting nonsense blah blah blah]"), when both: the weight of opinion within such disciplines would be quite at odds with your appropriations; and you obviously have no respect for the opinions of such disciplines in any case.

So I look forward to one of: your own translation and empirical validation of all the primary biblical texts - without the influence of your current cultural context or the insights of tradition; or to your peer-reviewed paper on the discovery of the straight gene (and no, obviously: you cannot equate gender with orientation,  which would presuppose the argument and obvious empirical data).

Paul.

PS - for general readership - the first point is not intended as an insult to biblical texts, but rather an appeal for the informed scholarship of fulcrum's other contributors to make their voices known...

David H, you posted

"My position is that God has given us objective information on all things necessary to salvation in scripture. Our interpretation is necessarily subjective but the error is minimized by the use of logic and good exegeses. The alternative is to accept the wisdom of the majority in a way which makes progress impossible"

I more or less agree with your first sentence, though I probably would not myself have phrased in in that way, since I don't really think that the possesion of objective information is a particularly significant factor in our coming to salvation, but that's another debate.

With regard to your second sentence, I really don't think that what you posit is objectively (to use the word of the moment), true. History is full of examples of shifting majority perceptions leading to very real progress. The abolition of slavery is one that springs readily to mind, and I could add to that the movement towards religious toleration, penal reform, the abandonment of the death penalty and probably lots of other social changes which I would think most Christians would regard as positive from a Gospel standpoint. What is also a fact is that sometimes the church has been in the forefront of shaping public opinion in favour of change (the evangelical opposition to slavery and pressure from all wings of the church for reform of working conditions amongst the Victorian poor), and sometimes it has been brought to change screaming and kicking. Falling into the second category is a great error, and a tragedy for the Gospel, even when some try to justify their opposition from scripture.

Hello all,

on this subjective / objective thing: I can't remember the reference, but there's some words of James Alison's that seem to me to be true. Can't quote it verbatim but it's to the effect that 'our subjectivity is an objective fact about us, and we can only be objective in such a way as works through our subjectivity'. It's close to what James was saying on this thread (today, 6:41am) I think.

I'd suggest that if it's true, a few things follow from this. Among them is that a sharp distinction between objective and subjective, where objective means good and solid and subjective means bad, woolly, prone to error, is not tenable. Also, that criticism of folk for bringing 'subjective experience' into the debate doesn't hold much water. But additionally, that objective knowledge is possible - from a subjective standpoint (!). Again I guess that only echoes James's comment below, that there is no purely objective stance. And if objective knowledge is possible, if true discoveries can be made, then if someone claims a discovery has been made (say, that being gay is not a pathology, to pick a random example) this must be testable... which could take us back to the article this thread springs from.

Hopefully nobody will be sending this in to Pseud's Corner... 

David H - despite what you say in some comments, you seem to me to be close to some of this when you say to Marginal that "God has given us objective information on all things necessary to salvation in scripture. Our interpretation is necessarily subjective...". So out of interest, do you believe that the "objective information" you refer to includes objective information about homosexuality?

in friendship, Blair