How Much Faith to Be an Atheist? Geisler and Turek’s Moral Argument (3 of 4).

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This is a continuation of my response to the popular Christian apologetics book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Begin with part 1 here. For part 1 of the critique of the moral argument, go here.

We move on to dabble in history.

Founding U.S. documents

About the U. S. Declaration of Independence, Geisler and Turek (GT) say:

Notice the phrase, “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” In other words, the Founding Fathers believed that human rights are God-given. (page 175)

Nope. “Creator” to the Founding Fathers wasn’t the Yahweh of the Old Testament, it was a hands-off, deist god. The Declaration is of no help to the Christian cause because it makes clear who’s in charge: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Unlike Harry Truman, God doesn’t have a sign on his desk that reads, “The buck stops here.” God is irrelevant to the American experiment.

And an appeal to the Declaration is always a sign that the apologists couldn’t find what they wanted in the Constitution. The Constitution remains the supreme law of the land, while the Declaration is just an important historical document with no role in government today.

Objective morality in the Nuremburg trials

If there were no such international morality that transcended the laws of the secular German government, then the Allies would have had no grounds to condemn the Nazis. (175)

The Allies won, and they imposed their laws—is that surprising? Isn’t that how wars work? Whose laws do you think they should’ve used?

In other words, we couldn’t have said that the Nazis were absolutely wrong unless we knew what was absolutely right. But we do know they were absolutely wrong, so the Moral Law must exist. (175)

Who said the Nazis were absolutely wrong? The Allies said they were regular wrong, we had a trial of 24 German leaders, and we imposed justice from our perspective. This wasn’t a sham trial with summary death sentences for all—half were sentenced to death, three were acquitted, and most of the rest were given prison terms. Centuries from now, future historians might criticize those sentences from their perspective.

The Problem of Evil

GT move on to address what Christians often admit is their toughest intellectual challenge: why does a good god allow so much bad in the world? They answer with an analogy from C. S. Lewis: “A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.” God’s actions may appear wrong, but that can only be because we’re comparing them against an absolute good.

The only straight lines we can make are imperfectly straight lines; similarly, the only moral standards come from our own not-objective rules. GT have again only allowed themselves the option of imagining one kind of morality, an absolute or objective morality.

Notice also that to make this argument, GT must admit that there is a Problem of Evil, which puts God in a very bad light.

Lewis, like you and me, can only detect injustice because there’s an unchanging standard of justice written on our hearts. (176)

That’s another redefinition—now the Moral Law has become unchanging. But I don’t know what’s unchanging about it. Is slavery wrong? It sure wasn’t back in the Old Testament. Same for genocide. Same for polygamy. I certainly think that slavery is wrong for all time, but the Bible won’t support that.

The Holocaust

GT want to know, how do Jewish atheists argue against the Holocaust? Are a critique about a meal and a critique about the Holocaust both mere opinions?

That works for me. Perhaps there’s a word difference that will capture the universally held or deeply felt nature of judgments about the Holocaust. Regardless, this still doesn’t get GT their desired objective morality. The natural explanation of morality works fine: we have a shared idea of morality, and killing millions of people is almost universally accepted as wrong.

GT can’t let go of the idea of a moral law that’s not objective. They imagine that a claim like “racism is wrong” has no objective meaning without the god-given Moral Law. This chapter is 25 pages long, but they could distill it to a page if they cut out the repeated groundless assertions. For example:

Unless there’s an unchanging standard of good, there is no such thing as objective evil. But since we all know that evil exists, then so does the Moral Law. (177)

If the Moral Law doesn’t exist, then there’s no moral difference between the behavior of Mother Teresa and that of Hitler. (178)

[C. S. Lewis said,] “If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something—some Real Morality—for them to be true about.” (178)

Suppose I think it’s okay to kill mice in my house, and you say that one must capture them humanely and set them free outside. There’s a moral difference; is that impossible without a Real Morality?

Ordinary, natural morality is quite capable of distinguishing between Mother Teresa and Hitler (let’s assume that Mother Teresa is the shining example of goodness, as they falsely imagine). GT refuse to consider that the natural explanation even exists, let alone explains morality better than any claim to objective morality. This is the Assumed Objectivity fallacy—either assuming without evidence that objective morals exist or assuming that everyone knows and accepts objective morality.

The word “moral” is just another adjective. Can a puppy be cute or a sunset beautiful or a resolution fair without objective definitions of “cute,” “beautiful,” and “fair”? Of course—look them up in the dictionary. The same is true for “moral.” These concepts come from within, not outside, human culture, and they’re not unchanging. Morality is important, like other aspects of culture, but here GT confuse important with supernatural, probably deliberately.

Moral relativists? Hoist by their own petard!

GT imagine a chaotic world where abortion, birth control, and sex were outlawed. What could atheists say about this?

So by rebelling against the Moral Law, atheists have, ironically, undermined their grounds for rebelling against anything. In fact, without the Moral Law, no one has any objective grounds for being for or against anything! (181)

Again, this is the Assumed Objectivity fallacy. We don’t need objective grounds for morality because the regular kind works (and is the only one we have evidence for).

They continue by arguing that excuses for breaking moral rules are evidence for the Moral Law. Excuses like “It was just a white lie” or “I had to steal the bread because I was starving” or even “I had to shoot him because he had a gun himself” point to the Moral Law.

Nope—these excuses point to a shared natural morality. There is no need to imagine an objective morality.

I don’t remember ever seeing so much blather that could be shut down so quickly, in Gordian Knot fashion. Just drop the demand for objective morality, and this empty argumentation blows away like irrational smoke.

Concluded in part 4.

I assert that if you are depressed
after being exposed to the cosmic perspective,
you started your day with an unjustifiably large ego.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/23/15.)

Image from Wikimedia, CC license

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How Much Faith to Be an Atheist? Geisler and Turek’s Moral Argument (2 of 4).

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This is a continuation of my response to the popular Christian apologetics book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Begin the critique of the book here. For part 1 of this critique of the moral argument, go here.

Fundamental problems with the Moral Law argument

Geisler and Turek (GT) formulate their moral argument as follows:

1. Every law has a law giver

2. There is a Moral Law

3. Therefore, there is a Moral Law Giver

What they don’t mention is that every law giver referred to in point 1 is a material being, but then they switch to an immaterial law giver in point 3. They do nothing to address or even acknowledge the fact that their argument can’t explain the change (thanks to commenter MNb for this insight). The problem with the argument becomes obvious when this is made explicit:

1. Every law has a material law giver

2. There is a Moral Law

3. Therefore, there is an immaterial Moral Law giver

Here’s another variant (from commenter primenumbers) that also skewers GT’s flabby argument:

1. Moral values come from a mind.

2. Objectivity means independence from any mind.

3. Therefore, objective moral values don’t exist.

And are we even using the same definition of “law”? Yes, morality is related to human laws, which are to some extent codified morality, but while laws are arbitrary (that is, not objective), some aspects of morality are innate and (from the standpoint of humans) unchangeable. Examples might be the Golden Rule or a prohibition against unjustified killing. Human laws have law givers, but morality is, in part, programmed into humans by evolution and unchangeable.

The analogy and therefore the foundation of the argument fails, but let’s set that aside and see what else GT have up their sleeves.

More redefinitions

One of the problems so far has been to nail down what this Moral Law actually is. They imagine objective moral laws, but what does that mean? Starting with objective morality as a morality grounded outside humanity—rules valid regardless of whether anyone believes in them—the definition changed to the morality that we feel. Then, they back away from the idea that we can reliably access this morality, so it becomes morality that we only dimly feel. Expect more reversals as their moral theory continues to chafe against reality.

Let’s return to GT’s moral argument.

We can’t not know, for example, that it is wrong to kill innocent human beings for no reason. Some people may deny it and commit murder anyway, but deep in their hearts they know murder is wrong. (page 172)

Uh, yeah—murder is wrong by definition. And the natural hypothesis (see part 1 for the natural morality hypothesis that I defend) is sufficient to explain our revulsion at killing innocent people. The supernatural hypothesis is unnecessary.

Relativists make two primary truth claims: 1) there is no absolute truth; and 2) there are no absolute moral values. (172)

I make neither claim.

“1 + 1 = 2” may be an absolute truth. As for absolute moral values, I’ve simply seen no evidence to overturn the natural explanation of morality. I insist on evidence for objective morality, and I suspect I have a long wait.

GT uses “relative morality” in opposition to objective morality, but because the term has been so clumsily defined by apologists, I prefer to state my position as “not objective morality.” To minimize confusion in this post, though, I’ll stick with GT’s terms, “relativists” and “relative morality.”

Relativists are absolutely sure that there are no absolutes. (173)

Nope. I’m just pretty sure there are no moral absolutes. I keep doggedly asking for evidence, though I get nothing in response.

Relative morality fails?

GT relate the anecdote of a paper written by an atheist student. The student argued, “All morals are relative; there is no absolute standard of justice or rightness,” and the professor gave it an F because of the color of the folder it was delivered in. When the student protested that the reason wasn’t fair, the professor asked, “But didn’t you argue in your paper that there is no such thing?” At that point, the student “realized he really did believe in moral absolutes.”

I don’t, and I doubt any student in that situation would. There are absolute morals, and then there are the ordinary kind as defined in the dictionary. The student appealed to the natural non-objective morality he shared with the professor.

This is the Assumed Objectivity Fallacy. GT assumes that everyone knows and accepts objective morality. We’ll be seeing more of this.

The moral of the story [about the paper graded F] is that there are absolute morals. And if you really want to get relativists to admit it, all you need to do is treat them unfairly. (173)

Treat relativists unfairly, and they’ll appeal to shared, natural morality just like the student.

People may claim they are relativists, but they don’t want their spouses, for example, to live like sexual relativists. (173)

So you think relative morality is no morality? Your “moral relativists” have morals; they just don’t pretend that the morals are grounded outside humanity since there is no evidence for that.

Actually, I’m happy for my spouse to use relative morality for all aspects of her life, both because I know of nothing else and because the natural morality that we all use works pretty well.

This reminds me of an observation from Penn Jillette: “The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero.” Natural morality—it’s not perfect, but it serves us pretty well.

GT moves on to the visceral horror we felt from 9/11.

Our reaction reinforced the truth that the act was absolutely wrong. (175)

Another redefinition! We’ve switched to emotional gut feelings, and objective morality is now strongly felt morality.

GT go on to admit that we often betray our moral sense with our actions (the bad things we do), but they claim that the Moral Law is “revealed in our reactions.” Our sense of the Moral Law isn’t good enough to keep us firmly on the right track, but the truth comes out when we react. So now—redefinition!—objective morality is instinctive morality.

GT’s sloppy thinking may work with the flock, but it has consequences. One Amazon reviewer of this book titled his comment, “I don’t have enough intellectual dishonesty to be a Christian.”

Continued in part 3.

Bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on;
by a simple and natural process
this will make you believe, and will dull you—
will quiet your proudly critical intellect.
— Blaise Pascal

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/21/15.)

Image from Megan Studdenfadden, CC license
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How Much Faith to Be an Atheist? Geisler and Turek’s Moral Argument.

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This is a continuation of my response to I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Though fifteen years old, this book continues to be a bestseller in the category of Christian apologetics. Part 1 of the critique is here.

Morality (Mother Teresa isn’t a good example)

Geisler and Turek (GT) spend 25 pages giving their argument for a divine source for morality. I’ve written a lot about the weak Christian justification for morality before (some of those posts are listed below), but this is the most thorough version of the Christian argument to which I’ve responded.

That doesn’t mean that it’s well thought out. The chapter is titled, “Mother Teresa vs. Hitler,” and we’re already off to a bad start. Mother Teresa isn’t the saint that GT imagine (well, okay, literally, she is). She has received much criticism. She was little concerned about healing her patients or even preventing their pain. She saw her patients’ suffering as a moral crucible and said, “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering.” The goal of modern medicine is precisely the opposite—not to celebrate suffering and disease but to fight it.

GT’s moral arguments are shallow, and the same few mistakes are made repeatedly. I’ll give a fair amount of the argument rather than simplifying it, in the hope that this prepares you for similar arguments. Their argument is aimed at the choir. The thinking is confused and sloppy and at best is a pat on the head to assure Christians that they’ve backed the right horse.

The Moral Argument

At this point in the book, GT have given us their Cosmological and Teleological arguments. Their third is the Moral Law argument:

1. Every law has a law giver

2. There is a Moral Law

3. Therefore, there is a Moral Law Giver (page 171)

Newton’s Second Law of Motion (f = ma) is also a law. Must there be a physics law giver? GT will say yes, but we need evidence. With GT, we rarely go beyond an intuitive, kinda-feels-right type of argument, but I suppose that works well with their target audience.

One definition of objective morality . . .

The theme running through this argument is a Moral Law that mimics the Greek god Proteus, changing shape whenever we grab it. The Moral Law is a claim of objective morality, but “objective morality” is never clearly defined. Let’s start with William Lane Craig’s definition of objective morality: “moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not.”

And let me define my opposing hypothesis, the natural morality position. Morality comes from two places. Our programming (from evolution) explains the traits that are largely common across all societies such as the Golden Rule. We’re all the same species, so it’s not surprising that we respond in similar ways to moral challenges. Our customs (from society) explain society-specific attitudes to issues like capital punishment, sex, blasphemy, honor, and so on. I will argue here that natural morality explains what we see better than GT’s Moral Law hypothesis.

More from GT:

Without an objective standard of meaning and morality, then life is meaningless and there’s nothing absolutely right or wrong. Everything is merely a matter of opinion. (171)

Bullshit. Look up “meaning” and “morality” in the dictionary, and you will find no mention of an objective standard. Our colloquial uses of meaning and morality work just fine in supporting a meaningful life. GT denigrate our human evaluation of morality as “merely” opinion, but I await evidence that Christians do things differently. It’s easy to appeal to an objective standard; the hard part is showing that that standard actually exists.

. . . but wait! There are more!

GT don’t feel obliged to stick with just one definition of objective morality.

When we say the Moral Law exists, we mean that all people are impressed with a fundamental sense of right and wrong. (171)

Redefinition! Now the Moral Law is that which we all feel. I suppose this is an appeal to our moral conscience? The focus is now on people, while William Lane Craig’s definition was on a morality grounded outside people.

Everyone knows there are absolute moral obligations. An absolute moral obligation is something that is binding on all people, at all times, in all places. And an absolute Moral Law implies an absolute Moral Law Giver. (171)

How about “slavery is wrong”? Is that binding on all people, at all times, in all places? I wonder why we didn’t get that from God and, indeed, got the opposite. Apparently in God’s youth, coveting needed prohibiting but not slavery.

Let me invent a term that will get some use as we go through this chapter: the Assumed Objectivity Fallacy. GT declares, “Everyone knows there are absolute moral obligations”? Wrong—the Assumed Objectivity Fallacy is either assuming without evidence that objective morals exist or assuming that everyone knows and accepts objective morality.

Back to GT:

This does not mean that every moral issue has easily recognizable answers. (171)

Redefinition! Now the Moral Law is something that we only dimly feel. The Moral Law is binding on all people . . . but we don’t really know for sure what the Moral Law is saying at every moral fork in the road. That seems unfair—to be bound by a law that we don’t understand—but I suppose GT’s god works in mysterious ways.

The challenge I like to give any believer in objective morality is to take some moral issue of the day—abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, capital punishment—and give us a resolution of the issue that is (1) objectively correct and that (2) everyone can see is correct. Like GT, they justify neither the claim that it exists nor that this Moral Law is reliably accessible. I wonder then, what good is it?

GT’s childlike idea that our morality is objective isn’t supported by the dictionary or everyday experience. Being a grownup is apparently easier for some of us than others.

Continue with part 2.

Other posts responding to Christian views of morality:

If they can get you asking the wrong questions,
they don’t have to worry about the answers.
— Thomas Pynchon

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/17/15.)

Image from thierry ehrmann, CC license

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What Is Anti-Gay Speech? And How Protected Should it Be? (3 of 3)

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Seyi Omooba is a British actress whose Christian criticism of homosexuality came back to bite her. (Part 1 here.)

Who hurt whom?

Let’s review to see who hurt whom and if injury could’ve been prevented. This is my evaluation (and the more I write, the more subtleties appear), so feel free to add comments with corrections or different approaches.

Seyi Omooba put up a Christian anti-gay Facebook post five years ago. This year, someone uncovered it and showed it to the world. Though she said that she regretted making her thoughts public, she wouldn’t retract them, and she lost her job. Worse, this incident may rain on future work opportunities in the theater.

Omooba’s actions. There may have been something that she could’ve said by way of apology after her comments were outed. Maybe she could’ve acknowledged that Christianity is a big tent and that her interpretation wasn’t the only one. Or she could’ve promised to broaden her perspective by visiting gay-affirming congregations. Or she could’ve added a caveat saying, “This is just one interpretation” or “I’m not claiming to be the last word on the subject” or even (h/t commenter NS Alito) “[It would be] the ultimate hubris for me to act as either a communicator or an enforcer for my omnipotent God.”

With a conservative pastor as a father, this might have been difficult, but she is 25 years old and should now be able to take responsibility for her own worldview.

The theater’s actions. The theater hurt Omooba by firing her, but they would say in turn that she injured them by forcing them to find a replacement. I see no free-speech violation. From their standpoint, Omooba could say whatever she wanted up to and including discrediting the show. And they had a contract with her so they could terminate her if she became a liability.

The whistleblower’s actions. He indirectly caused Omooba’s firing with his tweet, but I think his actions were justifiable. (Some commenters have disagreed.) Whether you call them Omooba’s ideas or Christianity’s, neither source deserves a pass for hateful ideas. “But this comes from the Bible!” counts for nothing. If it’s stupid and indefensible, that’s true no matter where it comes from.

The public’s actions. The theater-going public didn’t get a chance to vote with their ticket purchases, but there was enough blowback in response to the tweet to make clear to the theater that there was negative publicity. The public is entitled to reward or punish productions if they feel it necessary. If you are outraged at where Omooba landed after this incident, you can probably think of a different politically charged arrangement where you, as a potential ticket buyer, would want to reward or punish a production with your purchase.

As Ricky Gervais put it, “You have the right to be offended, and I have the right to offend you.” That goes both ways. Seyi Omooba has offended with her Facebook post. That’s fine; that’s her right. But then she can’t get annoyed when she gets some free speech back.

This result doesn’t please me. I don’t look at Omooba and think that she got just what she deserved. She said some stupid, hateful nonsense based on her indoctrination into a religion that worships a Bronze Age god, but she didn’t materially hurt anyone. To paraphrase Jefferson, she neither picked anyone’s pocket nor broke anyone’s leg. She could’ve said Ricky Gervais’s line: “You have the right to be offended, and I have the right to offend you.”

This seems a little like the Tragedy of the Commons, where each rancher puts all their sheep into the town’s common land to graze, and the land becomes overgrazed and barren. Each party does what, to them, is the smart thing to do, but add that all up, and something’s wrong in the end.

More problems with Omooba’s position

I’ll get three more problems off my chest. First, there is no crime without a punishment. And—wouldn’t you know it?—the Bible gives us its stock punishment. In the case of homosexual sex, “[Both men] are to be put to death” (Leviticus 20:13). Is that what Omooba wants? Just to follow God’s word, both in defining the crime and specifying the punishment? If she has a hard time accepting that punishment, it should call into question the validity of the “crime.”

Second, why focus on the anti-gay verses? Old Testament law has loads of fun rules—you must stone to death “a stubborn and rebellious son” (Deuteronomy 21:18), brides discovered to not be virgins are also stoned (Deut. 22:20–21), sex slaves are war booty (Numbers 31:17–18), and more. If modern times has dimmed our appreciation for these old classics, why not bring them all back? The answer, of course, is that Christians like Omooba have an agenda.

If you want to dismiss these as being unnecessary or outdated, (1) show where the Old Testament said that dismissal was an option and (2) show why the anti-gay verses are in a different category.

Finally, and this returns to the point of the whistleblower, her taking the part is hypocritical. She feels that God unambiguously declares that homosexuality is wrong, and yet she will play a protagonist who has a lesbian relationship? She should see her loss of the part as God’s hand in action and be grateful.

Final thoughts

Let’s return to the original issue, free speech vs. Christian anti-gay ideas. The real issue may be that Omooba didn’t think, five years ago, that she would soon be a minor celebrity and that public critique of celebrities is often greater than that for ordinary citizens. It’s naive to imagine that an online discussion will never have consequences in the real world. On one hand, that’s a big burden on a young adult that most people will never have to deal with. On the other, Christian anti-gay ideas are hurtful and offensive. A celebrity will have a larger platform than most of us, so their statements are magnified, and they shouldn’t make a statement they can’t accept the consequences of.

It’s an easy mistake to make, but I put the blame on her. A provocative anti-gay statement, whether or not it is couched as biblical, is hurtful. If this is a surprise to her—either that social media can be dangerous or that conservative ideas about homosexuality can be hateful—she has only herself to blame. Especially as someone in the theater, with lots of gay coworkers, she should’ve known the impact.

She sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to the many thoughtful comments to the previous posts. This is a subject with (as I see it) no win-win resolution. Share your comments below.

[A minister once posted,]
“ ‘Thy will be done’—the prayer that never fails.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself,
yet she had no idea of the implications of such a statement.
— commenter Lerk!

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(h/t commenters Milo C and NS Alito)

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Image from Jordan McDonald, CC license

What Is Anti-Gay Speech? And How Protected Should it Be? (2 of 3)

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Seyi Omooba is a British actress who shouted “Gay!” in a crowded theater.

Actually, it was more “Gay is wrong!” She made a social media comment saying that the Bible is clear that being gay is wrong and you can’t be born gay. (Let’s leave aside the question of whether those claims can even co-exist.) As a result, she lost a part in a play. She’s now suing the theater and her agent.

The first part of this series (1) summarized the incident; (2) argued that it’s Christians who say things about homosexuality, not the Bible; and (3) explored the free speech issue. Let’s continue with a thought experiment to see the case from another angle.

Justification

The Christian Legal Centre tried to minimize Omooba’s insult with this example:

The presence of a homosexuality theme in the play is a very poor excuse for discriminating against a Christian actress. If we were talking about a lesbian actress playing a Christian character, nobody would dare to suggest that her sexual lifestyle would make her unsuitable, and that you could fire her without breaking the law.

Are you kidding? Imagine a play with an out lesbian as Mary Magdalene or Mary the mother of Jesus. I can imagine the same thing happening in reverse: with the target audience largely Christian, a single tweet could ignite Christian outrage, and that actress would get replaced to avoid a theatrical flop.

But notice the difference: a lesbian playing Mary Magdalene wouldn’t be criticizing Christians, straight people, or the memory of Mary Magdalene. By contrast, Omooba stated in her post that homosexuals should deny who they are (or else!) while putting no equivalent constraint on herself or her fellow straight Christians. She also said that no one is “born gay.” (Does she think that all people who identify as homosexual are taking on a new persona as if living in some sort of perpetual Halloween?)

I’m sure that she felt that her post was a generous and constructive statement—that we’re all in the same imperfect boat and God loves you and has provided a route to salvation—but I think I share the offense felt by the actor who outed that five-year-old post. “Hate the sin; love the sinner” may be as distasteful for the homosexual as “I love you, but you’re going to hell” aimed at the atheist. In either situation, being told that you deserve an eternity of torture in hell for living your life in a way that is honest to who you are and that hurts no one else is simply offensive.

In one of the news articles I read on this incident, one commenter asked, would it be acceptable for someone with public antisemitic views to have a leading role in Fiddler on the Roof, a play with a Jewish theme? If the response is that this comparison is unfair because antisemitic views are fringe while Christian views that gays deserve to be in hell are not, why should “it’s a religious belief” cover for a hateful view? Does Christianity deserve a fig leaf just because it’s a venerable tradition?

What the Bible says about homosexuality

There are six Bible passages that are typically used to make God’s anti-gay case. Understand them, and you’ll see that they don’t make an anti-gay case, at least not one that is relevant today.

I’ll list them below and give a brief response. Links are given to posts that discuss them in more detail.

  • Genesis 19:4–25 is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The lesson of the Sodom and Gomorrah story isn’t that homosexuality is bad, it’s that rape is bad. More here and here.
  • Leviticus 18:22 labels homosexual sex as an abomination. The problem is, this part of Leviticus lists lots of things as abominations—eating ham or shrimp, men wearing women’s clothes, sowing two kinds of seeds, tattooing, wearing cotton/polyester blends, and so on. These are ritual abominations, not actions that are objectively harmful to someone else. If Christians can dismiss the prohibition against pork because that’s an outdated custom, they can do the same for the rule against homosexuality. More here.
  • The same treatment applies to Leviticus 20:13. We need to see Old Testament prohibitions against homosexuality in the context of the time. One of the understood categories of male-male homosexual sex in that uncertain time was as a fertility rite—a fertility rite that was traditional within the other tribes. The Hebrew religion described in Leviticus defined rules that set their tribe apart—no ham, no tattooing, and no fertility rites to another god. These are “abominations” because they’re religious offenses. More here.
  • Romans 1:26–27 says, in part, “The men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts.” This passage imagines straight men who “abandon the natural function of the woman” and have sex with other men. Yes, that’s kinky, but it has nothing to do with homosexuals in loving relationships. More here.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 lists categories of bad people, including those who engage in homosexual sex, who won’t “inherit the kingdom of God.” But the same book says, “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says” (1 Cor. 14:34–5). If the latter is an outdated Old Testament custom, the same could be said for the former. More here.
  • 1 Timothy 1:9–10 gives a similar list. It mixes ritual abominations like homosexuality and idolatry with actual crimes like theft and murder. And it has its own misogyny: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet” (2:11–14). Like the 1 Corinthians 6 passage, this references back to Old Testament laws that we’ve seen are irrelevant. More here.

Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan? The Pharisee and the Levite walked past an injured man because they didn’t want to become ritually unclean. The Torah didn’t forbid touching blood or a dead person, it simply said that you would need to ritually cleanse yourself afterwards. The moral of the story isn’t just that you must help people in need. In addition, it’s that if there is a rule or tradition that gets in the way of your helping people, violate that rule. Outdated Old Testament laws belong in the same bin as Bible rules supporting slavery, and Christians have no problem seeing that slavery has no place in modern society.

Jesus himself showed how the priority works when he said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

Concluded in part 3.

To make their faith right,
Christians first must make reality wrong.
— seen on the internet

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Image from christian buehner, CC license
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What Is Anti-Gay Speech? And How Protected Should it Be?

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An actress was fired from a British theater production after she expressed her Christian views about homosexuality. She is now suing her agent and the theater.

This story pits Christian anti-gay viewpoints (which I hate) against free speech rights (which I like). Where is the right balance?

Background of the case

In September 2014, actress Seyi Omooba wrote a Facebook post that expressed her conservative Christian views about homosexuality. Her father is a pastor who advocates gay conversion therapy (so you can see where she gets it from). She said, in part:

It is clearly evident in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 what the Bible says on this matter. I do not believe you can be born gay and i do not believe homosexuality is right, though the law of this land has made it legal doesn’t mean its right.

Fast forward to March, 2019, and she’s offered the role of Celie in “The Color Purple,” a character who has sex with another woman.

Another UK actor noticed the conflict between her conservative beliefs and those of her new role and tweeted:

Do you still stand by this post? Or are you happy to remain a hypocrite? Seeing as you’ve now been announced to be playing an LGBTQ character, I think you owe your LGBTQ peers an explanation. Immediately.

The tweet promptly generated a negative response, and Omooba’s agent asked her to retract her comments. She refused and was fired by the theater and dropped by her agent. She recently decided to sue them both.

The Christian Legal Centre, which is supporting Omooba in the case, said,

This is another in a string of cases involving Christians being hounded out of their careers because they love Jesus. . . .

This story sends a chilling message that if you express mainstream biblical views, you will be punished and lose your career if you do not immediately renounce your beliefs. This cannot go unchallenged and we are determined to fight for justice in this case.

Is this a “mainstream biblical view”?

She’s just sharing what the Bible says. What’s wrong with that?

What’s wrong is that her views aren’t what the Bible says but one interpretation of what the Bible says. It’s like Westboro Baptist Church, the tiny band of troublemakers with the “God hates fags” signs. Westboro has Bible quotes to back up everything they say. The reason millions of mainstream Christians aren’t rallying to their banner is that, here again, this is just one viewpoint. The Bible says lots of contradictory stuff and can be interpreted to say just about anything you’d like.

The interpretation a Christian picks is a choice. Omooba can’t say that her hands are tied and the Bible says what it says, so don’t shoot the messenger. She’s picking a conservative interpretation over an interpretation that would be more palatable in the West in the twenty-first century.

I do acknowledge that she may not be as free to change views that have been indoctrinated in her by a Christian upbringing as if she were, say, picking from a menu. My point is that she can see that her views are in the minority and that other Christians have chosen different views but worship the same god. She has no grounds for thinking that her view of homosexuality is the only one.

Free speech

(Note that this case was filed in the UK, so “free speech” is defined by UK laws.)

Omooba filed her lawsuit because “I want to make sure no other Christian has to go through something like this.” She says she’s fighting for the right to express her religious views.

But where’s the problem? She had and continues to have the right to express her religious views. What she’s unhappy about is that free speech can have consequences. She’s free to state her opinion, but then everyone else is free to object.

Omooba’s guarantee of free speech came from the government. The theater company presumably still had a contract with Omooba that allowed them to fire her for cause. Any theater company would be wary of a production that is controversial or might even be boycotted, and an anti-gay cloud is not what a theater would want for a show with a gay theme.

Part 2: the justification from her legal defense team + what the Bible actually says about homosexuality.

You want people to show your religion respect?
Then your religion is going to have to do
what every other organization on earth
that wants respect has to do:
stop being such a monumental, obnoxious
pain in the ass and earn it.
— seen on the internet

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Image from Vlah Dumitru, CC license
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