Comments for fruitful faith

Comment on religion-free ethics? by Ken

Ken — Tue, 21 May 2013 02:45:23 +0000

Bit worried about your approach here, Dale. You seem to be starting with a model that non-religious morality (at least in the west) is really (at least strongly influenced by) christian morality. Also, you seem to have a desire to move the goal posts from “non-religious people being as-good-as religious people” to “the thesis that non-religion maketh man more moral than religion.”.

Such underlying agendas will effect yoru research.

Also, related to research emthodology you say:

“To really prove the thesis that non-religion maketh man more moral than religion (granting this problematic usage of the term ‘religion’), wouldn’t you have to find a specimen that was living in a religion-free context, so that the specimen was fully free of religious motivations, assumptions, habits and practices and that the pure, untainted non-religious ethic could shine in all it’s unadulterated glory? Rather than compare Christian to post-Christian, I think the thesis would find better data if it compared Christian to pre-Christian.”.

Haven’t you just reversed your problem – one can then argue that Chrsitian morality is very much influenced, or based on, pre-Chrsitian morality.

I suspect that later claim is closer to the truth.

However, in such studies one starts with reality, not a utopian starting point. It’s no good telling a tourist who stops you in Queen Street asking for directions to Manakau Mall thhat they shoudlnt start from there.

Surely sociology has the techniques, common to many science, of analysing data to pull out relevant influences.

Mind you, as a “soft science” soiologists have real problems getting away from their own agendas and biases.

Comment on notes on discourse by Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 06 May 2013 07:11:27 +0000

hahaha. who riled you up this time round?

Comment on jesus within the good samaritan parable? by Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 06 May 2013 07:03:16 +0000

I’ve found that Jesus is in everything.

I remember getting taught this Origen interp at youth group. It was profound to me at the time.

The most original “hidden Jesus” I’ve heard to date, is in the lifestyle of the mosquito. The mosquito represents humanity and the human host represents Jesus. Think on that one for a while haha.

Comment on The finality of death and Christian faith by Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:17:43 +0000

I’ve always said Ecclesiastes is my favorite book of the Bible… it’s a real wonder it made canon with some of those passages.. :D

Comment on The finality of death and Christian faith by tildeb

tildeb — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:09:54 +0000

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on why this interesting…

Comment on just do it – a lot by Dale Campbell

Dale Campbell — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 02:38:17 +0000

Thanks Ryan, good to hear you agree that the reactionary ‘religious scaremongering’ card-playing is wrongheaded. That’s all I’m saying with that point: simply that when person a) says, ‘well why shouldn’t we allow polygamy then?’ and person b) (i.e. Louisa Wall, and various others) says ‘what? like that’s going to happen… that’s scaremongering…’ person b) is being irrational, precisely because i) we don’t have to look to the future to see pro-polygamy groups – they’re active right now and use your arguments, and ii) we are possibly/probably biologically conditioned (or at least inclined) toward polygamy.

Comment on just do it – a lot by Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 22:24:13 +0000

Also +1 tildeb’s comment and… polygamy’s next?

So what?

I personally can’t find anything intrinsically wrong with polygamy or polyamory (hell, take Wise King Solomon for example). As long as we’re talking about love, how can it be evil/bad? Like gay lovers and straight lovers, white lovers and black lovers, you will have polygamous lovers that are healthy and functional and then you will have others that don’t work and maybe never should have never gotten married.

The main complication with polygamy as far as I’m aware is the legal issues surrounding shared ownership/custody, especially in the case of a dissolve.

Comment on just do it – a lot by Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 21:42:27 +0000

If indeed the natural tendency toward polygamy is there in the vast majority of humans, then the widespread monogamous habit of routinely dousing of the flames of desire for multiple sex-partners is infinitely more backwards and sexually repressive in scope and number than expecting a relatively small percentage of the population to do the same with (homosexual) desires which are arguably just as natural, though incredibly less common.

I hope you’re not saying “Dude, if I can repress my desire to have sex with lots of woman, you can easily repress your desire to have sex with with one man”.

I may be reading you wrong though.

Comment on just do it – a lot by Dale Campbell

Dale Campbell — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 21:04:11 +0000

That’s a fair point. Being married to one person (whatever gender, same or different to your own) could have a logical link to wanting to be married to more than one person. Using a ‘the more the merrier’ logic, etc. My point (which I obviously didn’t state as clearly as I should) was merely to observe that the quick, routine playing of the ‘scaremongering’ card any time anyone suggests that “polygamy is (or might be) next” ought to be seen as either an evasion or simply being ignorant of the facts of our biological dispositions and already-existing movements.

Comment on just do it – a lot by tildeb

tildeb — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 12:51:38 +0000

Legal same-sex marriage and legal multi-marriage are logically related.

Why add ‘same-sex’ to the term marriage when it has nothing whatsoever to do with the point you are making? Why not use the descriptor ‘opposite-sex’? Why single out ‘same-sex’?