David : Well, I'm not sure you read the whole schmeer, but if you didn't, that is for the good. There's some stuff toward the end that, in retrospect, you just might take exception to. But the motivation wasn't you, it was the Rightist intelligentsia generally and people like Chris Cristie, whom we have discussed recently. Still, there is some overlap and maybe you might have taken it the wrong way. Had you done so I had a few rehearsed rejoinders waiting to go. Fortunately maybe I won't need to make use of them. About Mohler, actually I agree with some of his major contentions, especially the view that the crusade against homosexuality has been a Big Flop. It has also been a needless flop, but in part because of Mohler's ( and friends ) less than brilliant strategy --to dignify their combination of tactics with a word that suggests brainpower that has not been in evidence. Still, at least Mohler expressed concern in a serious way. And the more I thought about what he said, and what I know or believe, the more upset I became. On this issue the Right has pretty much become the Left. Conservatives have bought into the new "consensus view" as if its premises were something other than examples of half-baked nonsense. Ergo, I lost my cool. Did hear from Judith Reisman, who seemed appreciative and who, in kind of a surprise, made it clear that her inspiration for the social science research she does is the Bible. I will guess she means the OT, the Hebrew Bible, but that is most of the book Christians know, anyway. I have her most recent text on this subject on order from Amazon, among my first purchases from Amazon. Like the Arlo Guthrie song said, at least I think it was Guthrie, "you can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant," viz Amazon.com. Billy ===================================================
message dated 8/11/2011 7:01:58 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: Mohler is sometimes even worse than most. Five Point Calvinism is right and everybody else is wrong. Interesting that he should come up with something like this. I would almost be willing to wager that he doesn't apply this to Calvinism, although I could be surprised. David _ "There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head."--P. J. O'Rourke On 8/10/2011 6:37 PM, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) wrote: Albert Mohler and the totally botched moral crusade of the Evangelical Right The other day the subject of the relationship of science and religion was discussed in this forum in passing. Here is where the use of science to reinforce religion-derived morality could be of crucial importance. But, needless to say, not once in the article presented below, by Albert Mohler, is any such idea even broached. For him the only way to deal with the issue is in terms of a Biblical worldview. This is not to deride such an outlook. But it is to say that modern men and women want support for their traditional moral views from the court of science. This is how people ( usually ) simply are. If there isn't scientific support then credibility suffers. Indeed, it may suffer sufficiently that people abandon moral particulars because of the perception that the weight of science is on the other side -- which is clearly the case, the perception, not the science-- when the issue is homosexuality. That is, the Left has pulled off a fast one and has convinced multitudes that it favors a "scientific" outlook, verified by all necessary methods, to the effect that homosexuality is psychologically normal and, therefore, that homosexuals deserve full legal rights as if they were simply different, not morally inferior or even morally criminal. But there is no valid science to any such effect. None. However, by conceding the field to the Left, that is, refusing to become informed and learning the actual science, the Right has set itself up to lose. And it continues to lose , again and again, to the extent that even some of its lime-lighters, like Ann Coulter, are now partly in the enemy camp. This is pathetic. Perhaps worse than the defection of Coulter, since this isn't really much of a loss, is the obvious and growing problem of erosion of support from the conservative intelligentsia. The first "big name" to become pro-homosexual was William F Buckley, but along the way it came to include a non-intellectual of stature who had a lot of influence among Right-intellectuals, namely, Ronald Reagan. Nowadays it is common enough for "brains" in the conservative cause to take a position on the issue of homosexuality that is virtually indistinguishable from that of the Left. Why ? Because ( 1 ) they don't believe all that much in the Bible anyway, except maybe as a source for private devotions, and ( 2 ) they are cowed into submission by the clamor of Left-wingers who use all sorts of scientific sounding arguments. But there also is ( 3 ) the factor of libertarian influence on the Right, which, leaving aside other questions, frames all issues of morality in terms of amorality. That is, morals are not a factor of consequence for most libertarians since libertarianism is ultimately a simplistic philosophy ( akin to Jeremy Bentham's version of utilitarianism ) which seeks to reduce all questions to some single principle, and nothing else really matters , viz : Self-interest is all you need to be concerned about. Even if this view is absolutely necessary for any kind of realism, it also is incredibly short-sighted, irreligious or even anti-religious, and fails to take into account maybe 80% of every other consideration which deserves at least some attention before making decisions that must be lived with for may years afterward. Libertarian philosophy denies the value of all other philosophies, moreover. Not much of a problem since few Americans actually know any other philosophies, but it can be pointed out that it is a strange world where Hayek, for all the good that may be said of him, still does not elevate his ideas into the philosophical stratosphere. Does Hayek really trump Kant, Plato, Aquinas, and you name it, a pantheon of the greatest minds in history, each of whom had powerful reasons to regard homosexuality as defective or wildly dysfunctional or otherwise completely unacceptable. ? I don't think Hayek does any such thing. Not even close. Hayek, on this issue, was flat out wrong. His argument was that simply because a majority favors something does not make it right. Therefore, it must be the case that homosexuals are bring discriminated against unjustly. Furthermore, homosexuals should have full rights the same as heterosexuals. This kind of reasoning is a joke. The majority also disdains pedophilia. Therefore legalize child molesting and give pedophiles full legal rights ? This is absurd, yet it is also the argument that has won the day, when the issue is homosexuality --since there was such a thing as libertarianism-- among libertarians and, in due course, among most conservatives who are influenced by Hayek. It is important to challenge Hayek head-on about such matters. And the simplest way to do so is to cut him down to size, as far less profound and far less meaningful and far less intelligent than Plato or Kant or Aquinas, to name a few. For that matter, far less intelligent than Thomas Jefferson, who wrote Virginia law which classified sodomy as a capital crime. Hayek as a politico-philosophical "god," is a pipsqueak god , and too often a false god. In other words, it is high time to pull the rug out from under Hayek. -------------------------- Then there is the "slight detail" that to side with homosexuals is no different than declaring war on the religions of the world. Not all religions, but most of them, including all forms of traditional Christianity for which the Bible is authoritative, on all forms of Orthodox Judaism, on normative Buddhism, normative Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, the Baha'i Faith, etc, including Islam Yes, on various issues we can take exception to any of these faiths, and about Islam in particular I , for one, take many exceptions. But here is an issue in which nearly all religions agree : Homosexuality is morally sick, repulsive, stupid, and damaging to society and ruinous to individual lives. Alas, "fundamentalists" in many religions are loathe to even see commonalities between themselves and people of other faiths and, therefore, make no attempts at all to forge alliances between themselves and others. Instead, the entire area of interfaith relations, if not 100 % surely in excess of 90 %, is ceded to the religious Left. This attitude is contemptible. It is especially contemptible because alliances are also thinkable on other issues of importance, like opposition to abortion, about which pretty much the exact same list of religions also agree. Instead we get, take your pick : Christianity is always right and all other religions are wrong Orthodox Judaism " " " " " " " " " "Pure" Hinduism " " " " " " " " " and so forth for most ( even if not all ) of the others. This is ridiculous and utterly dumb. Well, now we are in a situation where much of the Right is in full retreat on the issue of homosexuality precisely because of how ill-advised its strategy has been , how wrong-minded and unself-critical. I could not be more disgusted. ------------------------- There is a need for me to get my house in order, literally, to complete a massive reorganization of hard copy files and my library and other such things. And there is a pressing need to complete my book on Islam, currently in limbo, maybe 3/4ths finished. Then several much shorter projects that have also been in limbo far too long , also each well along toward completion. All of which means several more months to clear the decks. After that ? Well, lets put it this way : I probably have sufficient material to write a 500 page book on the subject of all the empirically-based reasons why it is inescapably true that homosexuality is a grievous mental illness. Not my intention to write anything like 500 pages on the subject, needless to say, but enough for a serious book of respectable length. For me this is crucially important. I intend, in so many words, to declare war on homosexuality and to use each and every weapon at my disposal to utterly destroy all arguments made on behalf of each and every public position taken by homosexuals and their flunkies. Yeah, I'm angry --really, really angry. My thanks to Albert Mohler for reminding me of how angry I am. Billy ============================================================ _The Christian Post_ (http://www.christianpost.com/) > _Opinion_ (http://www.christianpost.com/opinion/) |Wed, Aug. 10 2011 10:01 AM EDT Evangelicals and the Gay Moral Revolution By _R. Albert Mohler, Jr._ (http://www.christianpost.com/author/r-albert-mohler-jr/) The Christian church has faced no shortage of challenges in its 2,000-year history. But now it’s facing a challenge that is shaking its foundations: _homosexuality_ (http://www.christianpost.com/topics/homosexuality/) . To many onlookers, this seems strange or even tragic. Why can’t Christians just join the revolution? And make no mistake, it is a moral revolution. As philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University demonstrated in his recent book, “The Honor Code,” moral revolutions generally happen over a long period of time. But this is hardly the case with the shift we’ve witnessed on the question of homosexuality. In less than a single generation, homosexuality has gone from something almost universally understood to be sinful, to something now declared to be the moral equivalent of heterosexuality-and deserving of both legal protection and public encouragement. Theo Hobson, a British theologian, has argued that this is not just the waning of a taboo. Instead, it is a moral inversion that has left those holding the old morality now accused of nothing less than “moral deficiency.” The liberal churches and denominations have an easy way out of this predicament. They simply accommodate themselves to the new moral reality. By now the pattern is clear: These churches debate the issue, with conservatives arguing to retain the older morality and liberals arguing that the church must adapt to the new one. Eventually, the liberals win and the conservatives lose. Next, the _denomination_ (http://www.christianpost.com/topics/denomination/) ordains openly gay candidates or decides to bless same-sex unions. This is a route that evangelical Christians committed to the full authority of the Bible cannot take. Since we believe that the Bible is God’s revealed word, we cannot accommodate ourselves to this new morality. We cannot pretend as if we do not know that the Bible clearly teaches that all homosexual acts are sinful, as is all human sexual behavior outside the covenant of _marriage_ (http://www.christianpost.com/topics/marriage/) . We believe that God has revealed a pattern for human sexuality that not only points the way to holiness, but to true happiness. Thus we cannot accept the seductive arguments that the liberal churches so readily adopt. The fact that same-sex marriage is a now a legal reality in several states means that we must further stipulate that we are bound by scripture to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman-and nothing else. We do so knowing that most Americans once shared the same moral assumptions, but that a new world is coming fast. We do not have to read the polls and surveys; all we need to do is to talk to our neighbors or listen to the cultural chatter. In this most awkward cultural predicament, _evangelicals_ (http://www.christianpost.com/topics/evangelicals/) must be excruciatingly clear that we do not speak about the sinfulness of homosexuality as if we have no sin. As a matter of fact, it is precisely because we have come to know ourselves as sinners and of our need for a savior that we have come to faith in Jesus Christ. Our greatest fear is not that homosexuality will be normalized and accepted, but that homosexuals will not come to know of their own need for Christ and the forgiveness of their sins. This is not a concern that is easily expressed in sound bites. But it is what we truly believe. It is now abundantly clear that evangelicals have failed in so many ways to meet this challenge. We have often spoken about homosexuality in ways that are crude and simplistic. We have failed to take account of how tenaciously sexuality comes to define us as human beings. We have failed to see the challenge of homosexuality as a Gospel issue. We are the ones, after all, who are supposed to know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only remedy for sin, starting with our own. We have demonstrated our own form of homophobia-not in the way that activists have used that word, but in the sense that we have been afraid to face this issue where it is most difficult . . . face to face. My hope is that evangelicals are ready now to take on this challenge in a new and more faithful way. We really have no choice, for we are talking about our own brothers and sisters, our own friends and neighbors, or maybe the young person in the next pew. There is no escaping the fact that we are living in the midst of a moral revolution. And yet, it is not the world around us that is being tested, so much as the believing church. We are about to find out just how much we believe the Gospel we so eagerly preach. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
