Love and acceptance

One of the points that keeps getting raised by the LGBT… movement in response to Christians who oppose things like same sex marriage and sex changes is that Jesus was all about love and acceptance. They argue that Christians are inconsistent with Jesus' teachings when they oppose these things and are therefore not acting like real Christians.

But that strikes me as being an extremely unreflective argument. Do these people really think Jesus was loving and accepting of just any life style that any person might choose? Do they really think Jesus would approve of any lifestyle whatsoever just on the basis that he's "loving and accepting"? Well, I don't see how anybody who has read the new testament could get that impression. And even if they haven't read the new testament, I don't see how anybody could think that would be a good attitude to have anyway.

But if it was a good attitude to have, then why can't the LGBT… folks be more loving and accepting of the Christians that oppose them?

The idea that Jesus or anybody ought to be loving and accepting of anything is absurd on its face. Surely we shouldn't be loving and accepting of the criminal lifestyle, the rapist lifestyle, or the alcoholic lifestyle. What kind of person would Jesus be if he approved of these things and was accepting toward people who engaged in them?

If you think Jesus would be loving and accepting of anybody, regardless of how they choose to live their lives, you should check out Matthew 23. He certainly was not very loving and accepting to the Pharisees in that passage.

When Jesus was asked why he hung out with sinners and tax collectors, it wasn't because he was loving and accepting. Quite the contrary. He said, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick" (Matthew 9:12). In other words, Jesus didn't accept their lifestyle at all. He hung out with them because he wanted to fix them. He wanted to free them from their slavery to sin. That is love, to be sure, but it is not acceptance.

That's another confusion of LGBT… people who make this argument. It is not loving to accept somebody's sin and treat it as if it weren't sin. If same sex marriage is a sin, then it would not be loving for a Christian to celebrate it. That would be the exact opposite of love because then you'd be enabling somebody and encouraging them to sin.

Does libertarian freedom entail the ability to do good or evil?

Some folks attempt to hold on to libertarian freedom even in light of an inability to do good or an inability to do evil on the basis that when faced with a choice between good and evil, there are multiple options for doing good and multiple options for doing evil. So let's say Jesus has libertarian freedom, but he is incapable of doing evil. One would say that when faced with a choice between good and evil, there are multiple good options that Jesus could choose from, and his final choice is not determined. If he chooses one good option, he could've chosen the other.

I don't think this is an adequate escape for libertarians, though. I think it's a slight of hand. Let's say George is faced with a choice between drinking Sprite or Dr. Pepper. You might be tempted to think this is a choice between two options. But in reality, it's two distinct choices with two distinct sets of options. One choice is whether to drink Dr. Pepper or not. The other is whether to drink Sprite or not. That's two different choices, each with it's own set of options.

When Jesus is faced with some temptation, his choice is whether to give into that temptation or whether to resist that temptation. If resisting that temptation leaves him with multiple options, those multiple options are part of a distinct choice. If Jesus had libertarian freedom regarding the choice whether to give in to the temptation or resist the temptation, then he would be capable of doing either. So if he is incapable of taking one of those options, then he does not have libertarian freedom regarding that choice. If, having resisted the temptation, he is left with multiple morally praiseworthy options, his choice between those options can be free in the libertarian sense, but that doesn't make his choice on whether to give in to or resist the temptation free in the libertarian sense.

homosexuality and transgenderism

A thought just occurred to me. You know that post I made a while back on "gender and sex" where I talked about how some people consider sex to be a physical thing but gender to be a mental thing? That is, some people think gender has to do with your self-identification. A person can have a male body and a female mind, in which case their sex is male and their gender is female.

Well, I was just thinking about how that fits into the whole homosexuality thing. What does it mean to be homosexual in light of this notion about gender being mental rather than physical? Is a person homosexual because they are into the same sex or because they are into the same gender?

Suppose Tom is physically and mentally male, but his friend, George, is physically male but mentally female. And suppose Tom buys into the whole notion of "gender identity," so he refers to George as a "she." And suppose that Tom has a crush on George. Would Tom be gay or straight?

Or suppose Lisa is physically and mentally female, and she has a crush on George. Would she be gay or straight?

Or suppose Gwyneth is physically female but mentally male, and she has a crush on Brad who is both mentally and physically male. Would she be gay or straight?

Or suppose Andy is physically male but mentally female, and he has a crush on Gwyneth. Would he be gay or straight?

What is evidence?

Some people define evidence like this:

E is evidence of T just in case the probability of T is higher given E than it would be without E.

Or in other words. . .

P(T/E) > P(T/~E)

I once used that definition of "evidence" in a debate to show that contrary to my opponent's view that "faith is not evidence" for the existence of God, faith actually was evidence for the existence of God since the existence of God is more probable given that some people have faith than it would be if nobody had faith.

I'm not sure that's really a good definition of evidence, though. Consider the existence of the Elder wand in Harry Potter. The Elder wand is a magic wand made from the Elder tree that is so powerful, it renders the wizard who wields it invincible. That's assuming the wand chose the wizards since in Harry Potter, the wand chooses the wizard.

Now obviously if there were no such thing as an Elder tree, then the probability of the existence of the Elder wand would be zero. But the Elder wand would at least be possible if the elder tree existed, which it does. That possibility might be extremely remote, but the probability would still be greater than zero. Something whose existence is possible has a better chance of existing than something whose existence is impossible, so the probability of the existence of the Elder wand is greater given the existence of the elder tree than it would be given the non-existence of the elder tree. From that, it should follow that the existence of the elder tree is evidence for the existence of the elder wand.

But doesn't that strike you as wrong?

Enough with the snarkiness!

For a long time, it seemed to me that in interactions between Christians and non-Christians, all the vitriol, verbal abuse, sarcasm, snarkiness, and general unpleasantness was coming from atheists and other non-believers, but that Christians were, for the most part, trying to be civil.  J.P. Holding seemed to be the only Christian out there taking the low road, and even though some of us liked what he was saying, most of us didn't like the way he was saying it.  To a lesser degree, a lot of us were also uncomfortable with James White's abrasive attitude.

Atheists weren't just being abrasive because they were immature or because they let their emotions control them.  Even some of the very well-educated and well-respected atheists, like Richard Dawkins, were actually encouraging people to use ridicule.  What many of us previously thought was just the waste-water of the YouTube comment section was now being baptized by the intellectual leaders of the new atheist movement.  It was kind of shocking!

Apparently, even many in the atheist community were uncomfortable with it.  A rift formed between people like Jeff Lowder who thought atheists ought to be civil, and people like Richard Carrier who were all for being nasty.

But lately (for the last year or so), I've noticed that a lot of Christians are starting to give up on civility, too.  I've seen it in a lot of comment sections on blogs, and on discussion boards that I visit.  (I wonder if it is just exhaustion from having to put up with it for so long while trying to take the high road with little effect or reciprocation.)  The snarkiness I've seen from other Christians makes me even more uncomfortable than the snarkiness I've seen from atheists and other non-believers.  After all, I am a Christian myself.

So I just want to remind my fellow arm chair apologists of what Peter said in our signature verse about apologetics:

But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being read to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. (1 Peter 3:15)

Please, let's not forget the "gentleness and reverence" part.  It seems that a lot of us have.  As Solomon once said, "When a wise man has a controversy with a foolish man, the foolish man either rages or laughs, and there is no rest" (Proverbs 19:11).  Don't be the foolish man.  Take the high road. Any fool can vent his frustration, but it takes patience and humility to remain civil and amicable when reasoning with people over controversial issues.

Do we have a priori knowledge?

By the law excluded middle, an item of knowledge is either inferred from prior items of knowledge or it is not inferred from prior items of knowledge.  Items of knowledge that are inferred are called a posteriori, and items of knowledge that are not inferred are called a priori.  The only way to escape this dichotomy is to deny that there's any such thing as knowledge at all.

The denial of a priori knowledge leads to absurdity.  If you deny that it's possible to know something without inferring it from something else, then you would have to say that for everything you know, there is a prior item of knowledge from which you inferred it.

For example, let's say you know that Socrates is mortal.  Perhaps you inferred that item of knowledge from these two items of knowledge:

1.  All men are mortal.

2.  Socrates is a man.

But if each item of knowledge you possess must be inferred from something prior, then there must be further items of knowledge from which you infer 1 and 2.  Otherwise, you couldn't know that Socrates is mortal.  And then there must be further items of knowledge from which you infer those as well.

If you continue to think this through, you'll quickly see that it leads to an infinite regress.  If all of our items of knowledge must be inferred from prior items of knowledge, then the only way it's possible to know anything is if there is a beginningless line of reasoning from prior premises that leads up to your present state of knowledge.

But that is impossible for three reasons.  First, none of us know an infinite number of things.  Second, because nobody has been around long enough to make an infinite number of inferences.  Third, because if there were no beginning, there would be no way to even get started making inferences.  You couldn't very well start at the beginning because there's no beginning to get started from!

So it is impossible that all of our knowledge is a posteriori.  If we know anything at all, then at least some of our knowledge must be a priori.  That means that unless there are some things we know immediately without inferring them from anything else, then knowledge is impossible.

Some people may be willing to bite the bullet and say, "Well, okay, then nobody really knows anything at all, including me."  This view is called global skepticism.  It is a self-refuting point of view for a couple of reasons.

First, it's self-refuting because if nobody knows anything, then we wouldn't know it.  A person who claims not to know anything is stating something he doesn't know to be true.

Second, it's self-refuting because if nobody knows anything, then nobody knows that any of the premises that lead to the conclusion are true, nor that the conclusion follows from those premises.

Besides that, there are plenty of things we obviously know.  We each know that we exist.  We know that two contradictory statements can't both be true at the same time and in the same sense.  I know that I have a sister named Jennifer and a brother named James.  There are all kinds of things we know.  So there must be a priori knowledge.

Is it a sin to be gay?

A lot of Christians make a distinction between having same sex attractions and acting on them.  They will say that it is a sin to have a gay relationship, but it is not a sin to simply be gay.  Some of them say that a gay person who wants to be a Christian has two moral options--they can either stay celibate, or they can go through one of those sexual orientation change programs.  Either way, they can consistently be Christians.

I'm not so sure, though.  On the one hand, it does seem to me that God judges not only our actions, but the thoughts, intentions, and motives behind our actions as well.  In Genesis 6:5, it says that "every intent of the thoughts of [man's] heart was only evil continually."  In Jeremiah 4:14, it says, "Wash your heart from evil, O Jerusalem, that you may be saved.  How long will your wicked thoughts lodge within you?"  So apparently, there is such a thing as a moral thought crime.  Intentions and thoughts can be wicked and evil, not just actions.  Proverbs 24:9 says that even "the devising of folly is sin," not just the doing of folly.  It is a sin to covet (Exodus 20:17) and to lust (Matthew 5:28), both of which are thought crimes.  And there are many passages that say God looks not only at our actions, but at our hearts (e.g. 1 Samuel 16:17, Jeremiah 11:20, 1 Chronicles 28:9,  Proverbs 17:3, 21:2, Luke 16:15, etc.).  Jesus said that our good or evil deeds come from good or evil treasure stored in our hearts (Luke 6:43-45).  So it would seem if homosexual acts are sinful, then the thoughts, motives, and desires behind them are sinful as well.

But on the other hand, Hebrews 4:15 says that Jesus "has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin."  If one can be tempted to sin without committing any sin, that would seem to suggest that it is not a sin to have a desire you don't give into even if the desire is for something that would be sinful if you gave into it.  In that case, one could desire to have sex with one's neighbor's wife and not be guilty of any sin, and one could desire to have a relationship with somebody of the same sex and not be guilty of any sin as long as one didn't act on the desire.

On the third hand, there are two senses in which one might be tempted.  Maybe what Hebrews 4:15 means is that attempts were made to persuade Jesus to sin, not that Jesus actually felt any compulsion or inclination to sin.  Maybe Jesus didn't feel at all tempted by the opportunities given to him.

Of course some people might object that since they can't change their desires, they can't be held accountable for them.  But isn't the whole point of the gospel that we are dead in sins, unable to repent, and that it is only by the grace of God that we can be saved?  The New Testament seems to presuppose that we are all doomed because of the sinful state we are in that we cannot change.  It's only by the drawing of the Father that we can come to Christ (John 6:44).  It is only by God taking our our hearts of stones and giving us hearts of flesh that we are able to obey his commands (Ezekiel 36:26-27).  Otherwise, we are guilty of sin even though we can't do otherwise.  We are completely helpless and at the mercy of God.  That's why God gets all the glory in our salvation (Ephesians 1:5-6, 12, 14).  That's why there is no room for boasting on our parts (Romans 3:21-28, 1 Corinthians 1:29-30).

They have these programs that are supposed to help you change your sexual orientation, and apparently there are a lot of people who claim they are no longer gay.  I am skeptical of the claim that people can change their orientation through any kind of therapy, though.  I suspect these claims of changed orientation are due either to some people actually being bi-sexual and sometimes having a preference for one gender while at other times having a preference for the other gender, kind of like how sometimes you'd rather have pizza, and sometimes you'd rather have a hamburger, or the claims of changed orientation may be due to people kidding themselves and living in denial.  That wouldn't surprise me because of the tremendous pressure these people are under to be straight.  In Pentecostal churches where people believe that if you don't speak in tongues, then you don't have the Holy Spirit in you, it seems that almost everybody speaks in tongues, when the rest of us know it's all fake.  They're just behaving according to what they think is expected of them.  I've actually read testimonies from people who claimed to have changed their orientation, and even gotten married to an opposite sex person, and they will sometimes admit that the gay feelings are still there sometimes.  Well, if that's the case, then their orientation hasn't actually change!  After all, what is being gay except a desire for the same sex?  I suspect these people are just bi-sexual or in serious denial.

Even if we grant all the claimed success stories, they still describe the minority of gay people.  Most people seem incapable of changing their sexual orientation even though a lot of them would like to.  Wouldn't it be better for gay people to just admit that they are dead in sin just like everybody else and throw themselves at the mercy of God?  Not one of us can get rid of all of our sinful desires, so why kid ourselves?  We can try, but we can't stop having sinful desires.  Our only hope is the grace of God through faith in Christ.  We're all in the same boat.  It's just that our vices differ from person to person.

If we are going to have programs that are supposed to change people's sexual orientation, then why not also have equally rigorous programs that change people's other sinful desires?  Do you ever hear of people going through programs and saying, "I've been cured of lust!" or "I've been cured of greed!"?  No, our sinful desires never go away.  We overcome them because God gives us a greater desire to do what is right so that we no longer give in to them, even though we still fail from time to time.  Even if we could refrain from behaving sinfully all the time, we'd still be at the mercy of God for the sinful motives, thoughts, and desires we have.  And thank goodness for a perfect savior who bore our sins on the cross and saved us completely!

Gender and sex

This weekend, a person I know who will remain anonymous told me that there is a difference between gender and sex. Sex has to do with your physicality, specifically your reproductive organs and chromosomes. Gender has to do with your self identification. So, for example, if you have a Y chromosome and a penis, but you think of yourself as a woman, then your gender is female and your sex is male.

Now, I generally don't like to have arguments over the meaning of words. I'm totally utilitarian when it comes to words. I think their sole purpose is to facilitate communication. What matters is the substance behind your words, i.e. what you actually mean by them. As long as you are clear about what you mean, then you can communicate effectively, even if the other person doesn't prefer to use those same words the way you're using them.

Words would be meaningless sounds or scribblings if we did not invest them with meaning. What gives them their meaning is how we use them and what we mean by them. What makes them capable of facilitating communication is that we have a general consensus on how they are used. Communication would be very difficult if everybody poured a different meaning into their words.

I'm 40 years old, and for as long as I can remember, 'gender' and 'sex' have been used interchangeably. They refer to whether something is male or female, and whether something is male or female depends on its chromosomes and reproductive organs. Now, I understand that over time words can take on new meanings as they are used in new ways. That's why it's hard sometimes to read literature that's over a hundred years old. Some of the words don't mean the same thing then as they do today because people use those words differently today than the did back then. But I wasn't sure if said anonymous person's definition of 'gender' was what was meant by the word all along or if this was something entirely new. So I've been looking at dictionaries on the internet.

Now, I realize a dictionary doesn't determine what a word means. As I said already, words get their meaning from common use. But a good dictionary will try to capture the various ways that words are used. That's why there's usually more than one definition. Words have what's called a "semantic domain," i.e. a range of possible uses. A good dictionary will also order the various uses according to how common they are with the most common use being first and the least common use being last.

After looking at a lot of dictionaries on the internet, it seems like the word "gender" is commonly used in two different contexts--grammar and sex. In grammar, a gender refers to whether a noun, pronoun, or whatever is masculine, feminine, or neuter. For example, "she" is feminine, "he" is masculine, and "it" is neuter. But when gender refers to people, it's synonymous with sex. It just refers to whether a person is male or female. That's it.

So I suspect this idea of making a distinction between 'gender' and 'sex' is meant to accommodate transgendered people--people who identify themselves as being members of one sex but who physically are members of the opposite sex. That way if a man thinks of himself as a woman, he can honestly say his gender is female. Now think how many times you've filled out an application, and it asked you for your "gender." Do you see how this could be useful? I can't prove it, but I'm willing to bet that people who promote making a distinction between "gender" and "sex" do so because they think if we can get everybody to say that a man's gender is female, pretty soon we'll start treating him as if his sex were female as well. That way, he can use the girl's bathroom in public.

I just looked up "transgendered" on wikipedia while writing this, and according to that article, the first time somebody suggested that gender had to do with how one identifies themselves was in 1979. That's farther back than I expected. But I wonder if this new use of the term has really caught on. Considering the fact that I haven't heard it up until now, it can't be that common. And it certainly can't be the meaning of the word.

On the one hand, I can see how it might be useful to adopt this new meaning, though. It's certainly useful to transgendered people. Of course I think if we do adopt it, then we ought to stop using "gender" on applications and switch to "sex" instead just to avoid ambiguity. Most of those applications don't care what's going on in people's heads. They just want to know if the person is actually male or female.

I wonder, though, if more is going on than simply changing the meaning of a word. If transgendered people actually think of themselves as being the opposite sex of what they actually are, then surely there's something ontological at stake. In that case, we might be doing them a disservice to go along with their redefinition.

I have to confess here that I don't understand transgenderism very well. It's not something I've thought much about or read anything about. But it strikes me as incredibly odd because from what I understand, these people aren't so delusional that they actually think they are the opposite sex than what they are. A man with a penis knows he has a male body, so he's got to know he's male. It's not as if when he's taking a shower he looks down there and sees a vagina, and it's not as if he's ignorant about how reproduction works and what the difference is between males and females. But by their own description, they self-identify as the opposite sex. What on earth does that mean? I confess I don't have a clue. If you know you're male, then what does it mean to say you identify yourself or think of yourself as a female? I'm sure it's not as absurd as it sounds to me because these people aren't stupid, but just on the surface, it sounds like they're saying, "I know I'm a man, but I believe I'm a woman." It just sounds like a blatant contradiction to me. So I don't know what men mean when they say they identify as a woman or think of themselves as women.

Now if it really is as absurd in reality as it strikes me at first glance, then I don't think we should go along with this new meaning of 'gender.' If there are men who really think they are women, and vice versa, then these people are deluded, and by going along with their peculiar terminology will just enable them to continue living in their delusion. It would be like somebody who identifies himself as a duck, and we all went along with it and agreed to refer to him as a duck and to swim around in the pond pretending to be a duck. If there really were people who thought they were ducks, wouldn't we just think they were mentally ill? Why is transgenderism any different?

So my only reservation about going along with this new meaning of 'gender' is that I'm not entirely sure we're simply being asked to invest a word with a different definition. I think we're being asked for more than that. We're being asked to really think of these people as male or female wholly apart from their physicality, just as they identify themselves as male or female apart from their physicality. And I can't do that in all honesty. I would just be playing make believe. I'd feel just as silly as if I went along with a person who thought he was a duck. And I don't think we're doing anybody any favors by going along with their delusion. I don't even expect my atheist friends who think I'm delusional for believing in God to go on pretending as if they think God exists.

But I admit my objection may just have to do with the fact that I don't understand what transgenderism is or what's really going on in their heads. I don't understand what it means for a person who considers themselves male when they know good and well that they are female or vice versa. I do know, though, that something is awry when that happens. Whatever is going on, surely we can all agree that there is a mismatch between their mind and their body one way or another.

After googling around a little more just now, I've discovered that some transgendered people seek to have sex changes, and others don't want to have sex changes. I find that very interesting. Apparently, some people who think of themselves as women are perfectly okay with being physical men. I don't get that. I mean I would get it if they just don't want to have surgery because it's expensive and scary, but if you really think of yourself as being female, why would you not want to be, you know, female?