Most people have heard of Margaret Court; but Robyn Whitaker? If she is the one named by the Leftist ‘Conversation’ as a “top thinker” - the one connected to the equally Leftist Uniting Church, I will stick with Margaret Court, who has definitely been persecuted for her beliefs, even though the Whitaker woman says she hasn't. No matter what some people think of Margaret Court and her Christian beliefs, she has been treated abominably by the Left, the media, the homosexual-promoting Qantas (whose business it is definitely not) and the weak non-conformist religious bureaucrats who pander to poofters in a desperate attempt to seem relevant.

The Bible never resolves these issues anyway. You end up moving from ethical arguments to debates about interpretation of the Bible.

You can't have any room for leeway, if you are a believer in a literal interpretation of the Bible or other holy book, such a the Koran. Both of these books are definitely anti-homosexual and would not support same-sex marriage on any reasonable reading.

Many Christians (like the author referred to in the article) no longer believe in literal interpretations of the Bible. Scientific discoveries in the fields of astronomy and biological evolution have discredited the Bible as a source of scientific knowledge. If this is extended to issues of ethics (something less common), then there is a licence to draw as long a bow as you like, so that virtually anything goes.

As an agnostic, I don't place any moral weight on what the Bible allegedly says about homosexuality. I think that these issues need to be judged by their broader effects on society, including social costs and benefits, and individual freedoms.

I could not possibly add to your round of truthfulness ttbn.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, I side with Whitaker on this. However, I think that posing the argument in terms of literal readings of the bible is unhelpful. While there are many analogies, metaphors, etc in scripture that are not meant to be taken literally, the issue of interpretation is deeper than this distinction. The critical issue is reading the text theologically ie. in the light of systematic thinking that stands back from individual verses to gain a workable vision of the gospel. We find the most famous use of this method in the arguments of St Paul, a Jew and persecutor of the Church turned believer and theologian. He is able, in the Spirit of Christ, to abandon OT law in favour of grace in a way that makes fundamentalist readings untenable. It is not useful to cherry pick the bits of the bible that support your argument. A thorough fundamentalism would lead to very strange conclusions that none of us would be happy with. We cannot turn back the clock to OT or early NT times because there exists in the eternal Trinity the concept of the Spirit that is constantly moving and producing new insights.

My Bible doesn't have a hole in !

oops, should be in it !

Swiss cheese is very holey !

individual,

<<Swiss cheese is very holey!>>

So are holey arguments!

//So are holey arguments!//

And crap puns that weren't really funny the first time and certainly don't bear repetition.

Bren,

<<The Bible never resolves these issues anyway. You end up moving from ethical arguments to debates about interpretation of the Bible.>>

That is not true. You may not like its conclusion, but the Bible most definitely resolves the homosexual issue, placing it in the same category as those who do wrong, commit sexual sin, idolatry, adultery, prostitution, practise homosexuality, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, and those who are abusive or cheat people'. 'None of these will inherit the Kingdom of God' (1 Cor 6:9-10).

There are more consequences from homosexual behaviour: 'God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness ...

'So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved' (Rom 1:18, 24-27)

The good news, through Christian salvation, is 'Some of you were once like that' (1 Cor 6:11).

<<Many Christians (like the author referred to in the article) no longer believe in literal interpretations of the Bible.>>

You didn't read my article carefully. I demonstrated how literal interpretation contains figures of speech, symbols, etc. I'd be up the creek if I didn't read your post literally. Or do you want me to invent my reader-response interpretation to make your post mean whatever I want it to say, in spite of your intent?

(continued)

Bren (continued),

<<Scientific discoveries in the fields of astronomy and biological evolution have discredited the Bible as a source of scientific knowledge>>.

You gave not one illustration, thus committing the faulty generalisation fallacy: http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/100/Hasty-Generalization.

Remember that it is the THEORY of evolution! It has not yet been proven. I am waiting to see droves of transition forms uncovered of chimpanzees to human beings.

On 6 December 2017, the Huffington Post, hardly a Judeo-Christian supporter, published, '2,500 Year Old Jewish Tablets Discovered in Iraq'. It stated:

'2,500 year old Babylonian tablets have been discovered in Iraq which provide a glimpse of Jewish life in Babylonian exile. Put simply, the tablets corroborate the Biblical tale. They describe a town called Al-Yahudu i.e., “the village of the Jews”, by the river Chebar, mentioned in Ezekiel 1:1. They also attest to Judaic names such as “Gedalyahu”, “Hanan”, “Dana”, “Shaltiel” and a man with the same name as Israel’s current Prime Minister, “Netanyahu”. The “yahu” ending to these names is called “theophoric”, meaning, they attest to a belief in the God of the Torah, by including part of God’s name in people’s personal names. The tablets also record everyday business transactions and witness to the Jewish return to Jerusalem (Nehemiah 6:15-16), as commemorated in personal names such as “Yashuv Zadik”, meaning, “the righteous shall return [to Zion]”'.

What did this article conclude? 'This discovery is a remarkable confirmation of the historical reliability of the Biblical text'.See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simcha-jacobovici/2500-year-old-jewish-tabl_b_6579996.html.

<<If this is extended to issues of ethics (something less common), then there is a licence to draw as long a bow as you like, so that virtually anything goes.>>

Haven't you read the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), 9 of which were affirmed by Jesus (Matthew 5-7)?

<<I don't place any moral weight on what the Bible allegedly says about homosexuality.>>

However, God does!

<<I think that these issues need to be judged by their broader effects on society, including social costs and benefits, and individual freedoms>>.

Are they your absolutes or are you a moral relativist? Are these 'broader effects on society' in Australia or Saudi Arabia?

ttbn,

I don't find it helpful to use labelling of people as left or right. You may not know Dr Robyn Whitaker from Trinity College, Melbourne. Neither did I when I began writing this article.

Please deal with the issues raised by Whitaker against Court. While I had published 3 'holey Bible arguments' in this article, I found Fourteen Holey Bible arguments against Margaret Court. There may be more holes in Whitaker's arguments against Court. See: http://spencer.gear.dyndns.org/2018/10/26/holey-bible-arguments-against-margaret-court/

I agree with you that Dr Court has been treated abominably by the LGBTIQ+ community and the mass media. I showed examples of that.

The issues boil down to:

1) How do I read any literature literally, whether The Sydney Morning Herald, Captain Cook's journals, the lyrics of Slim Dusty songs, or the Bible?

(2) When the Bible is interpreted to get the meaning out of the text and not imposing meaning on the text, what does it say about sinful homosexual behaviour and God's consequences for such actions?

(3) How the Bible describes homosexual behaviour: 'Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error' (Rom 1:26-27).

If the Bible is going to be used as the some sort of moral guide then it explicitly states that homosexuality is an abomination punishable by death - no excuses.

So what's it going to be - instructions that are meant to be followed or a convenient excuse to justify prejudices?

Many seem to conveniently ignore other instructions about wearing mixed cloth, eating shellfish, killing witches, beating slaves, cutting the hair on the sides of their heads and so on, but zero in on specific topics - convenience permitting.

Morality changes over time and almost all those things are sensibly put aside but some seem to hang around.

An irony is that many quote from the King James Bible translation. King James was almost certainly bisexual if not homosexual.

My objections to the whole queer debacle is now well known to all on OLO.
I do not back away from a worthy and worthwhile debate/discussion, BUT, on evidence there is no pragmatic foundation for the promotion of queers.
They exist, therefore we must acknowledge that.
Their acceptance however is not a given.
This whole disgusting SSM was more a show of hands as to how many gutless people we have in Australia.
The SSM thing was ALL about virtue signalling and very little to do with the truth and our approval of queers.
It was more about submission and nothing at all to do with acceptance.
It was an emotional campaign by the queers, in that they threatened and frightened people in to voting YES, and not a true and conscious decision but more a tacit approval.
These books of faith such as the Bible the Koran, are merely interpretations from previous scriptures, re-written and have changed their original meaning from whence they were first written.
One cannot/must not take note of these holy books anymore, as there are too many things which are not believable in today's educated environment.
As for moral teachings these will stand the test of time.
The acceptance or rejection of morals is a human choice.
The messages of morality are not open to interpretation, they do not change, only the will of the people can change for unsavoury reasons.
Queers are born the way they are, we are told we must accept them.
Fine we accepted them, (reluctantly) but where does it say, anywhere, we must give sway to them, to the point of discriminating against the greater population, in their favour.
Take emotion and fear out of the equation and you will find that the NO vote would have prevailed, and we would not have to be continually defending the rights of good people, who's good reputation are brought into dis-repute by bad, selfish, churlish and petulant people with a mental age and attitude of spoilt entitled children.

//Remember that it is the THEORY of evolution!//

What, like relativity theory? And atomic theory? How about Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation?

Scientists and laypeople don't use the term theory in the same way. In science, a theory isn't just some random conjecture or guess, which has yet to be tested. A better term for that is hypothesis.

A theory is an explanation - or system of explanations - of natural phenomena that has been subjected to repeated testing (quite exhaustive testing, in the case of evolutionary theory) and not found wanting.

Laws are just theories with a fancy name.

And none of them have been proven, because...

//It has not yet been proven.//

If you accept Popper's reasoning on the scientific method - which I do for the most part - no scientific theory can ever be proven to be correct... and that's fine. The reason that they can't be proven is basically boils down to Hume's argument against induction, which I assume you're already familiar with.

They can, however, be falsified - in the sense of being proven to be false, not in the sense of falsifying data which is pretty much THE cardinal sin in science.

Nothing you accept as an irrefutable concrete scientific fact - and I'm sure there must be some - is certain knowledge. All scientific knowledge is tenuous... and that's fine.

But not having been proven (because that's impossible) is not the same as not having been tested. Darwin published 'On the Origin of Species' in 1859; obviously there have been developments since then, notably the discovery of DNA. But his central thesis - evolution by means of natural selection - hasn't been falsified over 150 years, which is why it gets the honour of being awarded the title of 'theory' alongside other such luminaries germ theory the widely-feared quantum theory.

Frankly I wish we could just hurry up and get around to declaring it a 'Law' so we can get past all this ridiculous 'but it's just a theory' nonsense. After all, thermodynamics has Laws and it's about the same age and just as well tested as the Laws of Evolution.

//I am waiting to see droves of transition forms uncovered of chimpanzees to human beings.//

You'll be waiting a mighty long time then, friend. Humans didn't evolve from chimpanzees. Humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor.

You don't even understand the theory you're disparaging... :(

yep the constant frauds used by evolutionist, the complete lack of transitional fossils, the disagreement among scientist does not stop the desparate from hanging on to the hopelessly failed theory of evolution. You would think they would come up with something a bit more rational in denying Creation, Design and laws. But no pigheaded they continue brainwashing the masses with such rot. Romans 1 could not be clearer that the deniers of Creation have been handed over to delusion hence the massive gaps in the faith based theories.

Here's a theory.
Imagine a tree like form, and like a tree, it has a trunk and branches.
Some branches are bigger, thicker, longer than others.
Let's take the biggest thickest one of all and call it the 'human' branch.
There are many smaller branches coming off this main large one.
The largest and strongest by far is that of man, the perfect physical, mental, rational and emotional example of mankind.
Let's call him the 'ideal', man.
All the branches coming from this branch are of entities who 'look' like the 'ideal' man, but suffer from variations which unfortunately do not qualify him to being an 'ideal' man, by his own faults and flaws.
And so it is, that over time, the 'ideal' man begins to associate with the 'ideal' woman, and so the species begins to grow.
The other entities fall into their own categories, such as albinos, midgets, those with 'visible' differences from the 'ideal' man and woman.
And so it is that these entities also begin to grow due to their pairing off with their own kind.
This tree also explains the rest of life on Earth.
The animal kingdom developed rules and laws which were called instinct.
What we call humans today, also developed instincts, which tell us: To give one such example, instinctively queers are clearly of a different branch than the greater and 'ideal' (now we can use the word,'typical')human form.
And so it was that such people were admonished and even killed for performing acts of disgust and repulsion contrary to human instinct.
Such people, even though they were of the origin of the 'ideal man or woman', were a vastly minuscule and insignificant minority, compared to the 'ideal' human, only shared their physical form and nothing else, so it was they were flawed or mentally and emotionally deficient and therefore cast out to be with their kind or be killed.

Unfortunately for some there are indeed several examples of transitional fossils but that doesn't seem to matter.

Unlike the Theory of Gravity (which most seem to accept without argument), unless you tick all the boxes for some people then it was all obviously down to an invisible Sky Wizard who instantly zapped everything into existence in all stages of life with birds already in flight and some things already dead and decaying.

Regardless of whether you accept Margaret Courts opinion or not, the treatment of her has been abominable. People have the right to a personal opinion or belief and unless they are forcing you to follow those beliefs, then they should have the right to state them.
I don’t see anyone ostracising a person because they do believe that homosexuality is normal and natural. Those people are allowed to have their beliefs accepted, yet anyone who disagrees with them is called a bigot. Funnily enough, it’s those who won’t accept the right to personal beliefs of others that are the bigots.

Political Correctness is stupid.

Toni,

<<A theory is an explanation - or system of explanations - of natural phenomena that has been subjected to repeated testing (quite exhaustive testing, in the case of evolutionary theory) and not found wanting. >>

Things that happened in the PAST cannot be tested repeatedly.

I'd like to know your understanding of the differences between theories and facts.

You say a theory has been subjected to repeated, exhaustive testing and 'not found wanting'. Dr Michael Denton, a molecular biologist and a non-creationist, wrote Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Burnett Books 1985) and he noted these statements:

1. Julian Huxley in 1959: 'The first point to make about Darwin's THEORY is that it is no longer a THEORY but a FACT.... Darwinianism has come of age so to speak. We are no longer having to bother about establishing the FACT of evolution....' (Denton1985:75, Denton's emphasis).
2. Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene: 'The theory is about as much in doubt as the earth goes around the sun' (Denton 1985:75).

Denton's comment about these 2 statements was: “Such claims are simply nonsense. For Darwin's model of evolution is still very much a theory and still much in doubt when it comes to macroevolutionary phenomena. Furthermore, being basically a theory of historical reconstruction, it is impossible to verify by experiment or direct observation as in normal science....

“Philosophers such as Sir Karl Popper have raised doubts as to whether evolutionary claims, by their very nature incapable of falsification, can properly be classed as truly scientific hypotheses. Moreover, the theory of evolution deals with unique events, the origin of life, and the origin of intelligence and so on. Unique events are unrepeatable and cannot be subjected to any sort of experimental investigation” (Denton 1985:75).

Now, 30 years later, Denton has written a follow-up book, Evolution: STILL a Theory in Crisis (Discovery Institute 2016) which provides more evidence that Darwinian evolution is unable to explain the history of life. Here Denton presents a new paradigm to support the data.

Toni,

<<You'll be waiting a mighty long time then, friend. Humans didn't evolve from chimpanzees. Humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor.>>

How do you know that? Is it based on fact or a theory?

rache,

<<Unlike the Theory of Gravity (which most seem to accept without argument), unless you tick all the boxes for some people then it was all obviously down to an invisible Sky Wizard who instantly zapped everything into existence in all stages of life with birds already in flight and some things already dead and decaying.>>

Can the Theory of Gravity be tested in the present time through empirical science with repeatable experiments? Yes!

Can the Theory of Macroevolution, including the unique event of the origin of life, through history be tested by repeatability in the present time? No!