Factually false according to the most definitive authority in Christianity.

John 8:4 - 8:11
They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act

Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.

Then he stooped down again and continued writing on the ground.

And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?

She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

The problem we have af_newbie is not a decline in the quality of my response but a deeper fundamental divergence. We have adopted different fundamental positions regarding the nature of reality.

We both embrace the scientific method and are able to talk to each other coherently on topics related to fact and experiment. However, the conversation has now entered into the realm of the philosophical (free will vs determinism) and base principles (objective vs subjective morality) where out differences become stark and irreconcilable.

I have answered your argument about free will. You said that “If the world is deterministic, you have no control over what you are going to do next.  Your thoughts are driven by all the cause and effects.”

I replied yes that is true but also irrelevant because you are using the wrong frame of reference to analyze the situation. You are attempting to describe how the universe looks from an all knowing top-down perspective of God. We don’t live in that frame of reference.

It is possible for agents to be free, relative to the fiction that they live in, whilst wholly determined from a God’s eye view. This was demonstrated by Izbicer well over a century ago.

The Izbicer Rebbe and Freewill
http://www.theapj.com/the-izbicer-rebbe-and-freewill-2/

We are free relative to our own limited frame of reference. This makes our freedom as real as anything else in this wondrous creation we find ourselves in.

As for apologetics. I agree that the Bible and any holy text should be understood in the original language and context they were written in. As far as Leviticus 20-13 it is clear that the Ancient Israelites were commanded to assign the death penalty to homosexual acts. However, why isolate that particular passage. There were a whole host of atypical or aberrant sexual behaviors that were similarly assigned the death penalty. Homosexuality was not singled out as special or unique. The death penalty was commanded for a variaty of sexual infractions these included:

Having homosexual intercourse between men (Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13).

Committing adultery between a man and a woman (Leviticus 20:10-12, Deuteronomy 22:22).

Being the daughter of a priest and practicing prostitution (Leviticus 21:9).

Raping an engaged female virgin (Deuteronomy 22:25).

Being male and practicing bestiality (Leviticus 20:15).

Being female and practicing bestiality (Leviticus 20:16).

Having sex with your father’s wife (Leviticus 20:20).

Having sex with your daughter-in-law (Leviticus 20:30).

Having incestual sex (Leviticus 20:17).

Marrying a woman and her daughter (Leviticus 20:14).

What’s the common theme here? It is that the human sexual acts must be confined only to traditional marriage between a man and women. Anything that detached the sex act from the bedrock foundation of the family and marriage was deemed so serious that it warranted death.

We’re all these rules necessary? There is a good argument to be made that they were. A strong society is ultimately composed of strong stable family units. The survival of higher civilization in the long run ultimately depends on strong stable family units. This is especially true when that society is under existential outside threat like the ancient Israelites were.

Dennis Prager does a good job of highlighting this here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B0-epfgG7lI

So no I do not agree that “the scriptures are seriously fucked up”.  Picking and choosing the isolated prohibitions you personally disagree with is pointless. You take issue with Leviticus 18:22. Someone else may think incest should be ok and dislike Leviticus 20:17. A third person may believe animals are on this earth for human consumption and enjoyment and hate Leviticus 20:15.

The reality is there is not a single group of Christians in the world going around and enforcing of the death penalty for Leviticus 18:22. Why not? After all the Bible is the word of God.

The reason at least for Christians is because Christians were also instructed that that we have reached the point in our development when we need to include mercy in the evaluation of sin for we are all grievous sinners to some degree or another. That mercy should extend when possible even to violations of Biblical law.

John 8:7 , “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.”

You will have a hard time following the importance of this logic because you don’t believe in sin.

You ultimately can judge any religion including your moral relativism by its fruits.

Show me the current Christian or Jewish community anywhere in the world where homosexuals are routinely killed and murdered.

After you are done futilely trying to find one I will show you the multiple areas of the planet where your moral relativism is currently in vogue. In those communities the unborn are routinely murdererd in their millions and the elderly are increasingly being put down by their doctors. Death by doctor now account for up to 25% of adult mortality in some countries.

Where are your morals?  You don't think murdering people is wrong?  

What the fuck is wrong with you?  Are you mentally sick?

Only someone embracing a truly deranged religion would utterly focus on the ridiculous theoretical risk of Christians rising up in mass to kill all the gays while nonchalantly ignoring the machinery of mass death all around them.

Edit:
In fairness to af_newbie I just realized that he was responding not to BADecker but to someone of the following religion.


If he wants to make the case that moral relativism is superior to Mohammedism I will stay out of that fight as I hold an unfavorable opinion about both.

I am sorry af_newbie but if you want to understand this topic you are going to have to put in a little more effort.

However emotional satisfying you find it calling people sadistic and brain damaged it just makes you look silly. You are simply not understanding what in my opinion is the most elegant of the solutions to the free will problem.

Izbicer demonstrates is that it is possible for agents to be free, relative to the fiction that they live in, whilst wholly determined from a God’s eye view. If you want to really understand how this works you will have to do some reading and approach the topic with an open mind.

The Izbicer Rebbe and Freewill
http://www.theapj.com/the-izbicer-rebbe-and-freewill-2/



No I said that the proper instantiation of the objective moral code can vary across changing circumstances.

The command love your neighbor as yourself for example can cause you to act in one way in a particular scenario and in an entirely different way in another time and situation. The truth is fixed it’s implementation infinity variable.

Societies adherence to objective morality is always flawed.  The closeness of the approximation varies hopefully with gradual improvement over time.

As BadDecker mentioned human nature does not change much over time on a fundamental level. This is true and it’s the reason why the 10 commandments are as relevant today as there were centuries ago.

Society, however, is vastly more complex and powerful then it was 4,000 years ago.  Some things that were important in times past are not as relevant or practical in our modern world (animal offerings are an example). When those situations arise one can understand the message of the Bible by attempting to understand why the rule was ideal and necessary 4,000 years ago. Deriving that truth if we can sometimes allows us to extrapolate how that principle would map to the modern world. It’s not an easy process which is perhaps why we have been granted a role model to follow. The ideal if you will.

Actually there is a third option. The universe including all time and space could be an imagined deterministic creation in which the creations are imagined to be free.

Here is the solution to the problem I agree with. Trigger warning you are going to absolutely hate it.
The Izbicer Rebbe and Freewill
http://www.theapj.com/the-izbicer-rebbe-and-freewill-2/

The more powerful the consciousness the more spectacular the illusion



The best way to understand the Old Testament of the Bible is as a set of ideal rules for the primitive society it was given to a barbaric primitive corrupt illiterate tribe living in unimaginable squalor surrounded and vastly outnumbered by more powerful pagan cultures.

It should be viewed as the necessary rules for that society to survive and thrive in their utterly hostile environment.  When viewed from this frame of reference even the seemingly bizarre passages often fall into logical order as I discussed with Astargath immediately up thread.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1054513.msg50785483#msg50785483

When trying to reconcile rules from those primitive times with today's much more complex and developed society the answer is fairly straightforward yet at the same time quite difficult. You shared it with us yourself.
 

Once you promise your depositors that can withdraw their money at any time while simultaneously lending that money out in the “hope” most of your depositors won’t ask all ask for their money at once you have committed fraud. You have made a series of promises you cannot honor if unfavorable circumstances arise. If you are smart you will bribe the politicians to make the scheme legal. If you are smarter you will get the government to backstop the fraud when inevitable bank failures occur putting the taxpayer on the hook.

I wrote a series of essays on the topic a while back if you are interested.

Finance: Part 1, 2, 3

Yes Christians are protected by current law.

No individuals with gender dysphoria are not.

I am opposed to big government in general and that includes the creation of an ever expanding list of special legally protected classes over time. We need to be reducing government’s size and role in our lives not growing it.

Ok now you are flat out being ridiculous. Of course I have empathy for gays and transgender people.

I also don’t think people with homosexual tendencies are mentally ill. I have known several highly intelligent and highly functional people who are gay. Gender dysphoria is different story. The 50% attempted suicide rate gives that away if nothing else does.

By and large I do not support forced anything and that includes forced psychiatric care or forced incarceration unless there is no other choice.

I also oppose forced association against ones genuine religious beliefs. For example your humanist moral relativism religion has left you with a distain for Christianity. I have no problem with you deciding to never to hire Christians in your business.

Is that discrimination against Christians you bet it is. I also think such discrimination is very much the wrong thing to do. Nevertheless, not discriminating is not the highest ideal. In this case it should give way to the higher principal of freedom.

In regards to Hitler yes his party failed to get a majority of the popular vote but much of the votes he did not get went to other parties that ended up supporting him. The enabling act which officially granted him dictatorial powers letting him pass laws without parliament passed the with 441 votes in favor. Only 94 representatives opposed.

https://m.dw.com/en/the-law-that-enabled-hitlers-dictatorship/a-16689839

It is to your credit that you would stand up in opposition to evil in that scenario af_newbie. That fact that enough people did is why that particular evil failed.

However, you dodged the question. I did not ask you what you would do or if you would be among the living I asked you if following victory the Nazi's would suddenly become good men. If evil becomes good by popular consensus simply by killing the opposition.

The problem with your moral standard is the answer is yes they would be good men. In your own words "You are a good person if you follow the moral code that your society accepts." That is moral relativism in a nutshell.

August Landmesser was certainly an exceptional German he was exceptional because he did not follow the moral code his society accepted. He opposed Nazism and paid dearly for it. He was forced to fight in a penal battalion and was killed. His wife was killed. His children were placed in orphanages and fortunately survived. Hitler was elected into office via a democratic vote. He was given emergency dictatorial powers by a democratic vote in the legislature. Opposition existed but was not widespread there was no civil war in Germany or anything like it. His rise to power was legal.

You disagree with the term nihilism I will stop using it to describe you. It was not meant as a pejorative. You value life and that is good. It means you have kept at least a part of yourself free of relativism. There is no scientific reason to value life. There are billions of other humans very similar to you and probably many other planets with other life out there somewhere. Valuing life is probably necessary to reproduce and propagate but there is no scientific reason to do that either. The real reason to value life is not because it is rare or common or practical. The reason to value life is that each individual is an end in and of themselves.

You can certainly build a coherent worldview on moral relativism. It turns into a philosophy of power and the necessity to seek power over yourself and others at all costs. The following theoretical discussion between Kant and Nietzsche is a little deep but it highlights this last point.

Kant and Nietzsche talk it out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHJFWJgXuXg  


I understand deluded but sadistic?

I take no pleasure in inflicting suffering, humiliation, or pain on others. If I have done any of those things to you in the course of our discussion I apologize for it was unintentional.

Not those exact words but similar ones perhaps?




Here is a thought experiment for you af_newbie. Say the Nazi's had won WWII and gone on to kill anyone who disagreed with their ideology.
Standing triumphant over the hundreds of million dead with the whole world in submission how would you judge the Nazi executioners who led the innocent to their doom in the name of racial superiority and suppression of dissent. Would they suddenly become good men according to you? After all they are only following the code that society now accepts. Those who opposed them no longer live. Or would they be evil men who triumphed and in process dragged the world into darkness and evil.

The answer to the question matters a great deal. I judge them evil men despite their victory and despite the fact that they follow the new "moral code" of society would you?

 

Only when they are. We should always call things for what they are. Calling someone a nihilist is not an insult just a descriptions of belief. I have never said you were a nihilist for example. I don't really know what your beliefs are other then not Christian.

Af_newbie, on the other hand has more or less stated his agreement with the nihilist worldview. In the course of our multiple discussions we have gone over all of the various postulates of nihilism and as far as I can tell he agrees with all of them. Thus I think it's fair to call him a nihilist just as it is fair to call me a theist.

If I have misjudged him he is welcome to tell me so and outline which principle of nihilism he believes to be false and why. Readers can look at our contrasting worldviews Nihilism vs Theism and decide for themselves.
 
You dislike my argument because you don't like the way it used Godel's theorem. I have no problem with that. I disagree and think the way I used it is sound but at least we have isolated the point of divergence. Others can look at that branch and decide for themselves.

No not every materialist just you.

We disagree so strongly on every single issue because of of your delusion.  Let’s call it your grandiose nihilistic delusion (GND).

In your world life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value, morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are arbitrarily contrived. Human or even the entire human species is essentially insignificant, without purpose and of no importance in the totality of existence.

http://www.arasite.org/WL3/nietnihil.html#_ftn1

By rejecting intrinsic value as you do, your are not abandoning the quest for value but certifying the absence of value. What is the antithesis of nihilism? It is faith.

Faith holds that life has inherent meaning. It proclaims that there is an objective status for ethical ideals grounded in the very bedrock of creation. It teaches that man is created "in the image of God," and therefore has inherent dignity and immense value. It offers mankind a purpose in this universe.

Faith demands we not accept the world as it is. Faith provides an ideal and asks us for ethical perfection. It is a goal we fall far short of a world to strive for. Your nihilism provides none of these things for at its heart it is a philosophy of emptiness.

Free will may be an illusion so might time and indeed the entire universe as we perceive it. These possibilities, however, are irrelevant. We have the freedom to express who and what we are by living life. Who and what we are is ultimately determined by what we ‘choose’ to be. Maybe there is some higher order perspective that is capable of knowing the entire structure of our neuronal wiring or is not limited by time as we are and capable of knowing with certainty what our future choices will be. Even in that scenario we are still ‘free’ in the sense that we shout out to the universe what we fundamentally are via our lived lives.

In your world the murderer had no choice on his actions he was compelled to kill by his neuronal wiring the killer is a victim compelled by cause and effect. In my world the murderer made a conscious choice to commit a horrific evil and informed us of who and what he is.

We will not agree because our world views are fundamentally incompatible. We will have to leave it to the readers to ‘choose’ which of our two world views they believe true.

My assertion is most definitely not baseless. We cannot know higher order perspectives of reality for they are outside of our frame of reference.

From a sufficiently high Godlike perspective time itself may not even exist and everything may appear as a four dimensional structure consisting of the present past and future simultaneously.

See: TIME is an ILLUSION
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VYZQxMowBsw

If that were the case then from that Godly perch not only do we not have free will we don’t even have a future. We would be more akin to God’s finished painting a fixed image or work of art.

Say for a moment that is the nature of reality. Would the simultaneous existence of our fixed future change anything? No because it is totally outside of our perceived reality. From our perspective that future is yet to come and will be brought into existence by our actions. For us it may as well not yet exist.

Free will is the same problem. Free will may indeed be an illusion but if it is the illusion is perfect for the determinism is undetectable to those of us living under it. Thus from our limited perspective of we either have free will or we have a perfect illusion of free will. The difference between the two are undetectable for us and thus moot.

We either have free will or we have such a perfect illusion of free will that the difference from our frame of reference is moot.

C.S. Lewis addressed the issues of free will the choice of evil and how it relates to the self in this excellent little essay/video.

The Shocking Alternative by C.S. Lewis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxzuh5Xx5G4

Yes he could have but then we would be slaves.

Why Does God Allow Evil?

I can see why rules must be in place to limit infidelity and preserve the stability of the family unit and ultimately society at large. I can see why the options for such rules in primitive tribal time would be very limited.

I can also see the logic in establishing the precedent that drawing closer to God entails increasing perfection. Perfection in thought, perfection in action, and ultimately perfection in form.

So yes I think those passages were a logical means of stabilizing early societies and leading towards long term prosperity. Do I think we should execute people via stoning or forbid the very sick and deformed from entering churches today of course not. 

I don't agree with any of their tenets they are flawed. I agree with what I wrote immediately above which might sound superficially similar to their tenants to a non discerning reader but if you look closely you will see they are different each and every one.

Symbolism is important. It's carries meaning both purpose and principle. That is why the rituals of Christianity matter they are important. It is also why the rituals of the Satanist matter.

I believe evil exists as objective reality. How you want to envision that evil and reduce it to a form the human mind can grasp is up to you.

The Devil as they say is in the details. The most dangerous lies mix truth and falsehood. I lack the time or desire to go into a point by point refutation of these but perhaps the following will enable a quick understanding of my thoughts.

Satanic Temple tenets fixed by CoinCube
1. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures.
2. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit.
3. One's body is inviolable from the moment of conception.
4. The freedoms of others should be respected unless they unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another.
5. We should take care to ensure that our beliefs conform to reality. Scientific observation and theory is a powerful formalized tool that helps us achieve this.
6. People are fallible. If we make a mistake, we have an obligation to rectify it and resolve any harm that may have been caused.
7. Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought.

There is no logical way to go from the above tenants to:

“And despite the fact that they claim that they “don’t worship Satan”, the group does celebrate the black mass, it does conduct Pentagram rituals, and it does seek to put statues of Baphomet up in prominent public locations.”