I stopped by to JREF forums when I had some free time today and saw this sticky. It is new since the last time I have been here, it was in late October last year. I have read through all 4 pages of posts. Interesting stuff. I have not followed any of the links mentioned or gone to Dr. A’s site, but I can see a lot of time, research and thought is going into all this.
I thought I would comment about two subjects discussed recently in this sticky. I chose recent topics to try to be relevant to the conversation.
About same sex marriage and physical relationships, and polygamy. Scripture is clear and condemns homosexuality for both sexes. Romans 1:26 – 27 shows this for both men and women. Homosexuality is clearly called sin in many verses and passages so homosexual marriage would be logically excluded in the Church as well.
Polygamy is never connected to homosexuality in the Bible. If any Christians try and make a connection, I believe they are in error. Polygamy is also not condemned outright in the Bible to my knowledge. Only in an indirect manner by the teachings of Jesus in the gospels when he talks about lust, divorce and adultery. Paul and Peter’s teachings on marriage also leave no room for a man to love more than one woman and meet the standards and commands given to them to be faithful loving husbands. Along with the details of all the Old Testament characters that did practice polygamy, they paid high and painful prices for their polygamy, it seems you can make a case that the Bible teaches polygamy is a bad idea.
Dr Adequate, I thought I would comment about what you see as a contradiction in the Bible quotes below.
“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” Psalm 14:1
On the other hand, there's a bit in St Paul the fundies like to interpret as meaning that atheists don't exist. Well, it wouldn't be the first contradiction in the Bible.
The bit in Paul I'm thinking of is Romans 1:18-20.
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
In other words, he combines petitio principii with the Argument from Design to prove a statement which is utterly false and psychologically impossible.
Ah, yes, religion.
NB: In subsequent verses he makes it clear that he's taking about idolators rather than atheists, but fundies are a little short of idolators nowadays and have to take what they can get.
I see the two as complimentary. The verse from the Old Testament “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” from Psalm 14 does not imply that an Atheist is actually being honest with them selves. They may choose to believe there is no God even when the knowledge of God’s existence is built into all that is around them as stated in Romans. The verse just says anyone who denies that God exists is being foolish, nothing more. The verse from Psalm 14 and the passage from Romans do not contradict each other. One says denying God is foolishness, and the other says deep down everyone knows there is a God because his eternal power and divine nature are able to be clearly seen in creation.
Although Paul is commenting about idolaters in Romans, that does not logically exclude atheists from also knowing that he exists but still choosing to deny the existence of an almighty creator God. Atheists can also be considered idolaters in a sense as well. Idolatry is placing anything above God; false gods, money, sex. From a Christian and Jewish perspective, even good things like philanthropy can become idols if they are above a relationship with the one true God in a person’s life. So an atheist could be considered an idolater by placing humanism, for example, first in their lives. In the Christian view of life, what ever is most important in a person’s life, if it is not Jesus, is an idol. So from a biblical perspective there is no contradiction in this area. From a secular perspective, I guess people could find things like these in contradiction to each other.
