The Birch Tree Challenge
I’ve issued a challenge at Plumb Bob Blog, my political/social blog, to progressives and atheists to see which of them can answer cogently. I’m giving away the secret up front: this is about the semantic contortion that leads them to call long-term cohabiting between gays “marriage,” and insist on marital rights and appurtenances that apply thereto. I will describe the challenge here, but for the sake of keeping the discussion in one place ask you to comment over there.
I want you to form an argument that (1) explains why you oppose what I’m about to propose, but (2) cannot immediately be offered back as an argument against gay “marriage” rights.
Any answer that contains an insult will be deleted out of hand, and I will not let the author know. I reserve the right to determine what constitutes an insult.
Here’s the challenge:
I want to marry the birch tree in my front yard. I love it dearly, it has faithfully provided me shade for decades. I want to marry it legally, and I want all the financial and social advantages that appertain to marriage. The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees equal protection under the laws; the law of my state does not permit me to marry the birch tree the way others marry their spouse of choice, so my Fourteenth Amendment rights have been violated.
Why should I not be granted the right under the law to marry my birch tree?
The challenge is on. I pre-empt two possible answers at the blog, and supply a helpful image of the beloved birch, so again, come on over and take your best shot.
April 6th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Phil,
What’s the reward if one answers this challenge.
Can there be something like a donation to Doctors Without Borders on the line?
Thanks,
Luke
April 6th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Phil “Moving The Goalposts” Weingart, eh? I’d rather not waste my time again, but you know how that goes….’ll post my case here in case you delete it on your page for some reason.
[my post]
Simple: marriage is a contract. At any point in history where marriage has been acknowledged, one way or the other, it is *always* a contract. A contract, from a legal standpoint, requires two or more parties who are able and willing to give their informed consent of the agreement. A gay person can do this; a tree/stump cannot.
Although it’s false to say that marriage has not changed since its inception; used to be, you could marry a women without necessarily procuring her consent, such as in the Biblical days, when women could be promised away by their fathers or owners as marriage partners without their own consent. So I guess if we go by the traditional Biblical definition of marriage, then the consent of both married parties is not necessary, and yes, we could work it out so that you could marry that tree/stump.
But I don’t support the Biblical definition of marriage, so it doesn’t apply to the case I’m making.
[/my post]
Me, I much prefer the current American legal definition of marriage, which requires the consent of both parties. I’m just sayin’.
April 6th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
“Phil “Moving The Goalposts” Weingart, eh?”
The one who said that you’d never get an atheist who was generous and charitable, like that good Christian Andrew Carnegie.
Then I pointed out that Andrew Carnegie was an atheist.
Cue any change of mind on Phil’s part? You must be joking.
My answer to his question? Well, for a start, trees can’t offer consent. The whole point of a contract is that two parties agree to it, or it isn’t a contract. So the analogy fails from the start.
If Phil doesn’t accept the importance of consent, then my challenge to HIM is to explain to ME why I can’t marry Ann Coulter, according to my Fourteenth Amendment rights.
Santorum’s slippery slope argument fails for the same reason.
April 6th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Tim and Nathan, you guys really should have held out for a charity donation.
I will post a similar challenge in the next few days.
Anyway, has anyone heard about the latest in the case of Constance McMillen? The girl who was banned from her school prom for wanting to bring her girlfriend.
Well, it turns out that she was, in the end, invited to a parent sponsored prom (the school declined to hold one). When she came, there were only a few other kids there, most of them kids with learning disabilities.
Across town a “real” prom was held, and it seems as though parents, if not school officials, were actively involved in planning it.
This seems absolutely shameful to me. I understand that teenagers are cruel, and some may have thought it was funny to punk this girl in such a way, but the fact that adults would participate and encourage such a thing seems, well, absolutely shameful.
What kind of character is being instilled in children when cruel hoaxes on unpopular kids are encouraged by the adults of the community?
The fact that disabled children were the others invited to the fake prom shows the character of the people involved, if it was not clear already.
If the facts reported today are true, it’s just shameful. It seems to ridiculous for me to believe.
Total depravity indeed.
(You can type Constance McMillen fake prom into google to read accounts of the story. It has been reported on blogs, but also in USA Today.)
April 6th, 2010 at 8:35 pm
The simplest answer is that a birch tree cannot enter into a contract of marriage because it doesn’t have hands to sign on the dotted line. I’m sure you could do what many polygamists do and simply put on some BS ritual that shows to your fellow BS polygamists that, “Hey, we’re married!” but they’re not legal marriages so there are no benefits. But sure enough you can run around and think and say that you’re married. So yeah, go ahead, “marry” your tree and produce many saplings. what kind of protection does one wear when shagging a tree? What out for dutch elm disease and the emerald ash borer.
April 6th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
“The challenge is on. I pre-empt two possible answers at the blog, and supply a helpful image of the beloved birch, so again, come on over and take your best shot.”
I think tim met and bested your challenge.
April 7th, 2010 at 6:40 am
“Tim and Nathan, you guys really should have held out for a charity donation.”
Do you really think he’d admit that his challenge had been met? If someone bases their position purely on emotion, then no evidence will shift their position.
When he told me that atheists couldn’t be charitable like Christians, this wasn’t a position based on observation. Therefore, when evidence was offered contrary to his position, it’s not surpising that his position didn’t change.
Luke, you said it was a shame that Frank doesn’t post here so much now. A question for you: given all the many strong arguments you have offered Frank on this board, have you ever known him shift his position of change his mind on even the smallest point? Or when cornered on a particular point, has he instead just moved onto another point?
As far as I can see the answer is ‘no’ to the first question and ‘yes’ to the second. So, do you think Frank will EVER concede a point to you in any argument? Either you’ve always been wrong on every single point (I don’t think so), or the discussion is a bit pointless.
April 7th, 2010 at 7:08 am
As far as I can see the answer is ‘no’ to the first question and ‘yes’ to the second. So, do you think Frank will EVER concede a point to you in any argument? Either you’ve always been wrong on every single point (I don’t think so), or the discussion is a bit pointless.
I can’t speak for Luke, but for myself, the point of conversation is less about convincing them (because I know they will not change their minds), but rather about just trying to figure out what it is they believe. Political Christians tend to use very vague, very misleading soundbytes, so it’s often very difficult to pin down exactly what it is they believe, if anything. So I consider the opportunity to ask specific questions to be somewhat valuable.
April 8th, 2010 at 1:22 am
Don’t you know what they believe? They have the TRUTH! Yes, the truth. It’s hard to believe they believe what they believe when the vast majority of them have never read the entire book they base their spiritual lives on, but simply let one person tell them what to think about it every Sunday, blindly following out of habit and tradition. If more people read the bible (or any other religious text) without the presuppositions that this is what I’m supposed to believe, it’s all true, and if I find things in it that I don’t agree with or think aren’t true, or are very inconsistent with other parts of the book, then I have to jump through hoop after hoop to reconcile it for myself and anyone else that might have the audacity to outright say, “Nah, that’s not true. This inconsistent pig latin makes no sense.”
April 8th, 2010 at 11:47 am
@Toby- you said “…the vast majority of them have never read the entire book they base their spiritual lives on, but simply let one person tell them what to think about it every Sunday, blindly following out of habit and tradition…”
Unfortunately that does often hold true. But what about those of us who have read the whole book, were not brought up with presuppositions, and don’t just take the word of anyone standing in the front of the room? I fall under those parameters, yet still believe every word in that book.
Your generalizations don’t cover everyone. If you want to know what a real Christian believes, then it’s in the Bible. All of it. If anyone calls himself a Christian, yet wants to pick and chose, then he is by definition not a follower of Jesus Christ.
Though I do not know Frank personally, I would venture to say that he believes exactly what the Bible says, and nothing more.
April 8th, 2010 at 11:54 am
“All of it.”
Even the bits that condone slavery? So anyone who’s against slavery, cannot by definition be a Christian? That’s scary stuff matt.
April 8th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
@Nathan-
Though the Bible mentions slavery on several accounts, nowhere does it say that a follower of Christ must own slaves.
Your statement also inherently poses the question of Old Law vs. New Law. In the New Testament, slave-traders are listed among those who are “ungodly and sinful” and are in the same category as those who kill their fathers or mothers, murderers, adulterers and perverts, and liars and perjurers
Obviously those that are followers of Christ would not condone slavery. (The slavery mentioned in the Bible-mostly Old Testament- is also a different concept than the modern day concept of slavery, but that is a less relevant piece of the puzzle).
Another crucial point is that the purpose of the Bible is to point the way to salvation, not to reform society. The Bible often approaches issues from the inside out. If a person experiences the love, mercy, and grace of God by receiving His salvation, God will reform his soul, changing the way he thinks and acts. A person who has experienced God’s gift of salvation and freedom from the slavery of sin, as God reforms his soul, will realize that enslaving another human being is wrong. A person who has truly experienced God’s grace will in turn be gracious towards others. That would be the Bible’s prescription for ending slavery.
April 8th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
“poses the question of Old Law vs. New Law. In the New Testament,”
Jesus specifically said he wasn’t here to change the laws, as quoted by all the slave owners in the 19th century.
The bible specifically condones slavery - goes as far as to say that you can beat your slave to death, as long as they take more than 3 days to dies. Do you stand by that? If not, are you no longer a Christian? Think on that…
April 8th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
I think we are talking about two different things here. A Christian literally means follower of Christ. Nowhere does Christ order us to have slaves. That is what I mean by New Law. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and He did in fact change many practices that were in place before him.
The bits of the Bible that you are pulling out to reference are from the Old Testament, and obviously not applicable now. Those were laws in place before Christ, hence not Christian. Does that make sense? Yes, those laws were in place at that time, (again, when slavery meant something different than it does today), but nowhere are we commanded to practice this as a Christian.
Do I believe that there were rules regarding slavery? Yes. Does the Bible command us to practice those today? No, quite the contrary.
April 8th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
“All of it.”
So the tradition held that the messiah was to be of the line of david. We see old joseph’s lineage in Matthew and lo and behold it doesn’t match the lineage in 1 chr 3. Never mind the fact that if joseph was of the line of david then jesus wasn’t because joseph wasn’t his father (unless we assume the whole virgin birth thing to be hokum). But never fear Luke says that mary is of the line of david. So that’s ok (if you don’t mind that the mother of jesus and his step dad are engaged in some sort of incest).
And all of those little inconsistencies about what was written above jesus’s head at the crucifixion. That alone is enough to tell that the bible isn’t the inerrant word of god. Either it said one thing or another. Both cannot be true. And one this site there has been much goings on about truth.
And then there’s jesus hanging up there . . . in one book he’s doubting and wondering why he’s been forsaken, in another he really doesn’t say all that much, and in another he’s chatty as hell with the guys hanging around him.
Then there’s Judas. either he hanged himself or his guts fell out in a field. Both cannot be true at the same time. So one is incorrect (or both) and hence there is no truth there.
See those hoops one has to jump through to believe this stuff . . . but it’s all the more easier when they never have and never will read these accounts for themselves.
April 8th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Toby- as mentioned, I have read the accounts for myself. I’m assuming you have read the entire Bible as well, otherwise you’d have no grounds for commenting. You have read the whole thing, correct? I’ll be glad to address all of your points, although those will take more time than the few minutes I get in between passing periods and for a quick lunch as a teacher.
But for now I’ll answer one piece for you-
Matthew 27:5-8 says, “So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. The chief priests picked up the coins and said, ‘It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money.’ So they decided to use the money to buy the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners. That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day.” Acts 1:18-19 says, “With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.” Which is correct? Did Judas hang himself or did he fall? Did Judas buy the field or did the priests buy the field?
Judas hung himself in the potters field (Matthew 27:5) and then after his body decayed and bloated, evidently the rope broke and he burst into pieces on the land of the potters field (Acts 1:18-19). This passage presumes Judas’ hanging, as a man falling down in a field does not result in his body bursting open. Only decomposition and a fall from a height could cause a body to burst open. When Judas threw the thirty pieces of silver down, the priests took the money and used it to buy the potter’s field (Matthew 27:7), not knowing that Judas was going to hang himself there. Judas may not have purchased the field himself, but it was the money Judas received for betraying Jesus that purchased the field.
April 8th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
I love all of the imagination that goes into interpreting these things.
April 8th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Just like I love the imagination that goes into a non-creationist view.
April 8th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
I realize this whole discussion is a sidebar, but…
Matt,
Do you think it’s possible for someone who was a slave owner, after the death and resurrection of the Savior, to have gone to heaven?
(This could be reworded as: “is it possible/has it ever been possible for a Christian to own slaves?” if we insert a scripture like Romans 10:13 into the syllogism, I think.)
Thanks,
Luke
April 8th, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Luke-
Yes, I do believe it is possible for someone who was a slave owner after the time of Jesus to have gone to Heaven.
Romans 10:9, “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Because of Jesus’ death on our behalf, all we have to do is believe in Him, trusting His death as the payment for our sins - and we will be saved! Romans 10:13 says it again, “for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins and rescue us from eternal death. Salvation, the forgiveness of sins, is available to anyone who will trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
April 8th, 2010 at 8:35 pm
Matt,
You’re right. It’s my fault in not asking the question specifically.
In relation to Rom 10:9, I am speaking of someone who died an unrepentant slave owner. Someone who simply did not believe it was immoral/wrong/a sin to own another human being, which is a point you, Nathan and I seem to agree on.
(In other words, I am not referring to a slave owner, who repented of that behavior and accepted Jesus as his savior.)
Thanks,
Luke
(ps Nice use of Rom 10:13, who was that smart, smart guy who used it right above your post. j/k)
April 8th, 2010 at 9:18 pm
Luke-
Sorry I misunderstood the question. I think that is a much tougher question to answer as it would have to be based upon assumptions.
If that slave owner had truly accepted Christ (i.e. believed in his forgiveness of sin through Jesus), however, he did not believe that slavery was in itself wrong, then I would be under the assumption that the owner would still be saved. Again, I would have to assume that as a true Christian, he would be treating the enslaved with love and respect. (Tough concept for us to wrap our minds around seeing as how we view “slavery”, but again, this is a hypothetical assumption). Regardless, I believe he would still be saved for having not committed the “unpardonable sin”.
The only unpardonable sin after Jesus is that of continued unbelief. There is no pardon for a person who dies in unbelief. John 3:16 tells us, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” The only condition in which someone would have no forgiveness is if he/she is not among the “whoever” that believes in Him. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). To reject the only means of salvation is to condemn oneself to an eternity in hell because to reject the only pardon is, obviously, unpardonable.
So hopefully that made sense, and I suppose that’s my take on it! What do you think?
April 8th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
Matt,
No, it was not that you misunderstood — I asked poorly.
The unforgivable sin is described in Matthew 12:31-32 (Matthew 3 as well).
Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.
And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. (KJV)
Anyway, before going back to the topic, I have one more question, if you don’t mind. You said: If you want to know what a real Christian believes, then it’s in the Bible. All of it.
When I read something like this, I just have to ask: are you Calvinist or Arminian?
Now as far as the topic. If we take what you say above, but change the sin, do you still agree with your statement:
If that lesbian woman had truly accepted Christ (i.e. believed in His forgiveness of sin through Jesus), however, she did not believe that gay/lesbian love was in itself wrong, then I would be under the assumption that she would still be saved.
What do you think?
(You asked me what I think about your answer, and in short, I think you must be right. We have a case in the Bible that Jesus directly tells a slave owner he is saved. One can say that the slave owner may have repented from owning human beings later in life, but I think this sort of contortion is a stretch from the text and unnecessary)
April 8th, 2010 at 10:14 pm
““that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.””
Wow, it’s good to know that even Ted Bundy, Genghis Khan, Hitler, uncaptured pedophile-rapist-murders, and Jim Jones could be up there in the clouds enjoying gravy soaked mashed ‘taters and pot roast with jesus right now. Really warms the soul.
April 8th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
Toby,
Let me ask a hypothetical question.
Allow me two assumptions, for the sake of argument.
1. There is an afterlife, and it involves what is commonly understood as heaven and hell. At the body’s death, the soul ends up in one or the other.
2. Being able to accept Jesus requires true sorrow and repentance. To quote Pink Floyd: “how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?” Expect this time, it’s how can you have Jesus if you don’t repent?
Now, I am sure that you have been truly remorseful about something in your life. Something that you really truly wish you had not done. Something which you can’t even believe you actually did.
So say that some murderer was really truly remorseful about what he had done. Not in the way people seem to show sorrow today — not “I am sorry if anyone was offended by my killings” — but true remorse. True sorrow. If he could do anything to undo those things, he would do it, whether it was to cut off his own foot, or something worse — he’d do anything to take it back.
Where does he belong?
In a place with G-d, where he understands the reasons for his sorrow, and sees, in the backdrop of such beauty, why he was so dreadfully wrong.
or
In eternal — Eternal — torment.
What do you think?
April 9th, 2010 at 12:06 am
Luke-
The Bible does not describe homosexuality as a “greater” sin than any other. All sin is offensive to God. Homosexuality is just one of the many things listed in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 that will keep a person from the kingdom of God. According to the Bible, God’s forgiveness is just as available to a homosexual as it is to an adulterer, idol worshipper, murderer, thief, etc. God also promises the strength for victory over sin, including homosexuality, to all those who will believe in Jesus Christ for their salvation (1 Corinthians 6:11; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Philippians 4:13).
I would be interested in a case like you mentioned because homosexuality is a topic that is much more clearly prohibited than that of slavery. It would be intriguing to understand how the homosexual woman who has accepted Christ ever came to the conclusion that homosexuality was is not a sin.
As for the Calvinism vs. Arminianism- Ultimately, my opinion is that both systems fail in that they attempt to explain the unexplainable. Humans are incapable of fully grasping a concept such as this. Yes, God is absolutely sovereign and knows all. Yes, human beings are called to make a genuine decision to place faith in Christ unto salvation. These two facts seem contradictory to us, but in the mind of God they make perfect sense.
@Toby-
I wouldn’t believe that any of those mentioned would have shown true remorse, nor have I ever heard or seen of any of them accepting Christ. I think you are probably smart enough to see the distinction.
April 9th, 2010 at 12:44 am
Matt,
I’ll give you a more proper response tomorrow. It’s certainly a complex topic — well both topics are, I’ll have a comment on the nature of G-d (the Calvinism debate) too.
As far as your comment to Toby. Surely you admit that people who have done unimaginably terrible things have repented and turned to G-d. While the specific names he has mentioned may not be good examples, there are painful examples out there, and they are difficult to explain… at least for me.
Thanks,
Luke
April 9th, 2010 at 4:50 am
Thought I’d post this here, as I’m guessing Phil will start deleting my posts when he realises that they completely defeat his argument:
Phil: “The point of my bringing up arranged marriages is to demonstrate that “consent” is not one of the species-wide characteristics that define marriage.”
But it is a characteristic that you deem to be an intergral part of it, no? Tell me now: do you think that consent should be an essential part of marriage, or do you think there’s no reason I can’t marry, say, some woman I just saw on TV that I like the look of? You specifically said you were referring to US law, the US constitution. Under that, consent is essential.
If you want to bring in laws from other countries, then you might as well bring in that same sex marriage is legal in many countries.
Therefore, using your own argument, you would admit that “gender” is not one of the species-wide characteristics that define marriage, and your argument becomes self-defeating.
“I’ll also point out that you can’t demonstrate the absence of consent any more than I can demonstrate its presence.”
This is an odd assertion: if true than all rape law would be meaningless. Do you really believe this?
Phil: “The law struck down by Loving was not an attempt to alter or limit the definition of marriage, it was an attempt to limit who could enter into a marriage.”
Now who’s using semantic contortion?
Dale: “Commonsense tells me that marriage is about procreation, and childrearing.”
Commonsense told us that the earth was flat. If marriage is just about procreation, we’d make the ability to have kids a pre-condition of marriage.
Mark: “What we call “homosexuality” is mostly a pathology”
Is that opinion, or are you using pathology in its scientific sense? I’ll answer that for you: it’s the former, because it’s completely unsupported by science.
April 9th, 2010 at 5:30 am
Another one that will probably get deleted:
Phil: “Nothing in my answer favors either arranged marriages or slavery”
Yes it does, because a tree cannot offer consent. Therefore the marriage would be an arranged one. And I see little difference between an arranged marriage and slavery – do you?
So your argument only works if one not only changes marriage law, but also changes the definition of ‘consent’.
By the way, can you explain also how the marriage laws regarding property ownership would apply to a vegetable? It seems then that for you to marry a birch, you would also have to change the laws to allow trees to own property. I’m sure if we looked at all the rights one gains from marriage, we’d see other difficulties too.
In other words, you are not arguing against changing the laws on marriage, you are in fact arguing against changing the laws on consent and the ability of flora to own property. For what it’s worth, I support your stand here, but what you are arguing AGAINST is not what anyone else is arguing FOR.
April 9th, 2010 at 5:55 am
I’ll illustrate in a simpler form the problem with the Birch Challenge.
Forget marriage for a second, just consider civil partnerships. Do you accept their validity? Do they ‘make sense’ to you as a concept, even if you find them unpalatable? If your answer is still no, then simply consider any legal contract between two people - perhaps a simple one regarding exchange of labour in return for property. I’m guessing you accept the basis for such contracts.
Now, would you accept the legal basis for such a contract between a man and a dog, or a carrot. Or a tree?
Again, if your answer is “I wouldn’t accept a civil partnership between a man and a tree, but I wouldn’t accept it between a man and another man either”, then that’s fine - consider if you would accept ANY legal contract between a human and a vegetable.
If you address no other point I’ve made, answer this simple yes/no question: would you consider ANY such contract to be enforceable in US law?
If you answer is no, then you’ve got the answer to why your challenge doesn’t work.
April 9th, 2010 at 7:32 am
My latest post, for record’s sake:
This is just silly, in two or three different ways. Nothing in my answer favors either arranged marriages or slavery — and the logical leap required to go from “they might find precedent in cases about” to “you obviously favor” is so wide that I could drown an army in it. And “I don’t like either” is certainly no reason not to do anything, unless you’ve somehow appointed yourself God of the Universe.
That is not true for a number of reasons:
1) For the purpose of this argument, you must admit that either a) a tree has no will of its own, or b) a tree has a will of its own. One or the other must apply….
2) ….since you are saying that you can marry the tree, that means that in the case of a) you’re saying that consent is irrelevant, and in the case of b) you’re saying that you have the tree’s consent. In the case of a) you’d have to show that consent truly is irrelevant (by finding precedent in US law wherein a person can be forcefully married to another without his/her consent); in the case of b) you’d have to show how the tree can give consent, which of course you cannot do.
So in the case of a), wherein the tree has free will, if you believe that you are free to marry the tree then you must support legally-binding marriages; because the tree cannot demonstrate its consent or lack thereof towards marrying you, then the only argument you have to fall back on is the case of b); that consent doesn’t matter, and that you are using your legal status as a human who “owns” the tree to force it into marriage — which means that you must support slavery (i.e. ownership of the tree in such a way that you can force it into marriage). Even a parent cannot legally force their child into marriage, so your legal authority over the tree has to be *absolute* in order for that to work.
The challenge is to find a reason why I should not be permitted to marry my birch tree. What you offered is a current legal technicality.
Yes. A legal technicality based on the definition of marriage, which, according to you, has not EVER been changed since the dawn of society until gays began to seek marriage. Since that definition has yet to be changed universally, that would seem to imply that this “legal technicality” has always been present in some form. Even in Biblical days consent was important for whichever party had absolute legal authority over the party being married off; not just anyone could promise away someone else into marriage. It had to be someone with legal authority over that person, like (at the time) their father or slaveowner.
The point of my bringing up arranged marriages is to demonstrate that “consent” is not one of the species-wide characteristics that define marriage. Therefore, one does not need to change the core definition of marriage in order to allow marriage without consent.
Rape cannot be considered a crime if that is true. Consent is a very important part of marriage and sexual law and always has been.
dying of AIDS due to homosexual sex at 25 is no better than dying at 60 from lung cancer
Not true, dying at 60 is way better than dying at 25 (especially from cancer as opposed to AIDS). Also, straight people can get AIDS as well, so the gay thing is kind of irrelevant there.
When all those laws go into affect, it will not only be legal for Phil to marry his beautiful, budding, birch bride but, me thinks it will be federally mandated.
….what?
April 9th, 2010 at 7:58 am
Tim, have you notice the corners the posters on Phil’s have forced themselves into?
Phil has to denigrate laws against rape as basically a ‘legal technicality’.
Dullhammer has to compare his parents’ marriage to a useless, blunt pair of scissors.
All who accept Phil’s argument tacitly claim they believe that contracts between humans and vegetables should be legally inforceable.
Do they actually believe this? I can only imagine they don’t, but they’re forced to pretend they do in order to make their arguments. The irony is that Phil accused US of engaging in ’semantic contortions’.
This from the man who said that allowing two men to marry is changing the definition so much you might as well allow a man to marry a carrot, whereas not allowing inter-racial marriage was :
“an attempt to limit who could enter into a marriage”.
Right, completely different things then…
By the way, this made me smile from Phil’s site:
“I’ve been writing this blog for free for more than 2 years. I have chosen to carry a part-time job rather than a full-time one, so I can write this and other culturally relevant materials.”
I hope it wasn’t a good job he gave up. We have a saying in Britain, which we say to anyone demonstrating a shaky technical grasp on their hobby (singing, painting, dancing etc). We say “Don’t give up the day job mate…”
April 9th, 2010 at 10:12 am
I just read the following:
“A 13-year-old Yemeni girl has died of injuries to her genitals four days after a family-arranged marriage, a human rights group said.
The practice of marrying young girls is widespread in Yemen and has drawn the attention of international rights groups seeking to pressure the government to outlaw child marriages. Legislation that would make it illegal for those under the age of 17 to marry is in serious peril after strong opposition from some of Yemen’s most influential Islamic leaders.”
What’s the guessing that those leaders are all shouting “they’re trying to change the definition of marriage!”.
April 9th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Tim, have you notice the corners the posters on Phil’s have forced themselves into?f of what I’ve posted by now ;D
All I care about at this point is how Phil responds to my most recent posting — I already feel like I understand the way everyone else is going to respond to this case, and although I could argue with them the same way I’ve argued with hundreds before them, I don’t think it’ll go anywhere. Phil’s the wild card I’m waiting on: will he delete it and pretend it never happened? Will he berate my intelligence again and move the goalposts like usual? Or will he actually try to argue? Or will it be some combination of those things?
(As you can see, I am very easily amused :))
This from the man who said that allowing two men to marry is changing the definition so much you might as well allow a man to marry a carrot, whereas not allowing inter-racial marriage was :
“an attempt to limit who could enter into a marriage”.
Right, completely different things then…
The way I see it, neither of those is technically “wrong.” They’re just different ways of looking at the same issue — as someone on PB’s blog said, I don’t think the concepts of sex and marriage are inextricably linked (imagine, for example, a sexless marriage; in what sense does the gender matter in such a marriage? The gender is irrelevant because the only thing gender is directly “used” for is sex; everything else falls under gender roles, which are largely determined by social climates and biology, which takes the subject into a completely different discussion).
So I think if he wants to pretend that genitals and marriage are indivorcible (to coin a phrase), then he can feel free to. It doesn’t matter anyway, not for the sake of his “challenge” — the most effective and rational responses to the Birch Tree Challenge have nothing to do with the gender/race difference, or with any aspect of sexuality, anyway.
By the way, this made me smile from Phil’s site:
“I’ve been writing this blog for free for more than 2 years. I have chosen to carry a part-time job rather than a full-time one, so I can write this and other culturally relevant materials.”
I noticed that, too, but for a different reason: I still blog mostly full-time (I write about 2-5 posts a week on average, except for very recently, when I’ve been working a lot more than usual), and I have a 40+ hour-a-week job, a musical project, a social life (on weekends, anyway), and various sites that I visit and frequently comment on, all on top of that. What takes so much time to write about that you have to quit your job? It’s like an hour a day, tops, and that’s counting the extra time for when you really grind for material. To me, the job should be the last thing you cut, barring a few rare instances.
I hope it wasn’t a good job he gave up. We have a saying in Britain, which we say to anyone demonstrating a shaky technical grasp on their hobby (singing, painting, dancing etc). We say “Don’t give up the day job mate…”
We have that saying over here as well
What’s the guessing that those leaders are all shouting “they’re trying to change the definition of marriage!”.
I’ve never really bought the “argument from tradition.” It’s a really weak argument — it foregoes any and all moral, social and logical principles of the matter, basically saying “it doesn’t matter if it’s wrong, it doesn’t work, it’s widely misused/abused or disliked, or it’s completely counter-intuitive,” solely because it’s tradition.
Recently, people have been disguising that argument more carefully by including it amongst other, more reasonable arguments…..but still, I wonder why they bring it up at all. The argument from tradition assumes that any other argument (for or against it) is worthless anyway. So why waste time making other arguments if you’re just going to cite AfT?
[/blather]
April 9th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
P.S. My point about the gender/race/marriage thing was that Phil is arguing from the subjective, man-made definition of a word (words being the inventions of intelligent humans) in order to define marriage. By definition, definitions can be challenged, or refused, or accepted. That argument is subjective and holds no weight whatsoever in this particular “challenge,” so I consider it irrelevant to that end.
April 9th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
//dying of AIDS due to homosexual sex at 25 is no better than dying at 60 from lung cancer
Not true, dying at 60 is way better than dying at 25 (especially from cancer as opposed to AIDS). Also, straight people can get AIDS as well, so the gay thing is kind of irrelevant there.//
There is sooo much wrong with your portion of the above, it would be an exerty in futilicise to try and illustrate. Perhaps you can re-read and correct it?
April 10th, 2010 at 6:05 am
“It’s like an hour a day, tops”
Five minutes for the nonsense he comes out with!
April 10th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
Tim, I’m done there - Phil’s resorted as usual to his mindless “You should learn how to think and how to read” ad hominems. Ironic given that he insisted WE remain polite.
Especially ironic given that he started his challenge saying:
“progressives love moral preening, and … tend toward unthinking glibness when challenged intellectually”
You can kind of tell from there that he’s not interested in an exchange of ideas.
Another problem with his challenge:
On the one hand he and others claim that giving gays marriage is an astonishing break with current laws, equivalent to allowing a man to marry a tree. But at the same time, they complain that gays can already get all the same rights through non-marriage means.
Do these two ideas seem in conflict to you? If all the same rights are already available to them, such that calling it marriage would just be an umbrella term for laws that ALREADY exist, how can granting marriage be the massive overhaul that they claim?
Did you notice that while trying to reconcile this conflict on Phil’s site, Dale claimed that legal contracts between man and vegetable are ALREADY enforceable in American law? Again, do you think they really believe that?
April 10th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
To put it simpler:
Marriage between two men or women involves virtually no rights that can’t already be set up by existing laws, whereas NONE of the rights that would follow from allowing a human to marry a vegetable currently exist.
I could say ‘too bad I’m not posting on Phil’s site any more, or I could point this out to him’, but I know it wouldn’t make any difference if I did anyway.
April 11th, 2010 at 6:25 am
No apologies for the multiple posts: the challenge is just the gift that keeps on giving in terms of picking up flaws.
Imagine you’re engaged, and you’re speaking to your local friendly vicar about the ceremony.
“A little warning,” you say, “my bride cannot speak.”
“That’s fine,” says the vicar, “deaf people get married all the time. They simply sign ‘I do’.”
“Well,” you reply, “She can’t move either.”
“Can she give some kind of signal that she consents?”
“No. In fact, she’s brain dead.”
“This is unorthadox to say the least. Did she give consent before she became brain dead?”
“No, she’s been brain dead since birth.”
How far do you reckon you’ll get with marrying your bride?
“Somewhat more than half of psychologists still say, when surveyed anonymously, that they regard homosexuality as a pathology”
And as scientists they would know that what they regard to be true is meaningless unless it is backed up by evidence, research, experiment, peer-reviewed papers, and reproducable data.
You might as well tell me that half of psychologists view voting democrat to be a pathology, and the other half think the same of voting GOP. Without evidence to back it up, it’s hearsay. By the way, googling the reasearch behind the survey just brings up lots of Islamic and Christian sites quoting the ‘data’, without any cites to check on how the survey was actually carried out.
Furthermore, when following the link Phil quoted we find this:
“Four empirical (or at least partially empirical) criteria are commonly used to define behavior patterns as abnormal: statistical infrequency; personal distress; maladaptiveness and; deviation from social norms.”
I’m pretty sure you could make an argument that being left-handed qualifies under these criteria.
April 11th, 2010 at 11:42 am
Personally, I’m a little put off by this recurring idea about the importance of adhering to “social norms.”
It’s not that I believe social norms are a bad thing, not at all — most social norms, such as not committing random acts of violence; or only having sex with people who consent with you; or offering goods or services in exchange for some kind of standardized currency; are all very good and productive things in my opinion. But the reason I’d say that these should be adhered to is not *because they are social norms.* It’s because they have their own obvious benefits that are very easy to see, and anyone could make a simple, effective case in favor of any of those things on their own, even in a time or place where they weren’t considered social norms.
Phil made this argument earlier on his own blog:
Who instituted marriage? The theistic argument is that God did. In which case its definition is immutable. If you don’t buy that, then social constructivism would lead back to what do most people think. And in this case, there is no possibility of a discrimination argument because we should align ourselves with the norm of society.
He says he believes that social constructivism would “lead back to what most people think,” which in this case (I think) refers to the definition of straights-only marriage that most Christians believe in. He says that the prominence of straight marriage as a social norm would automatically logically eliminate claims that straights-only marriage is discrimination, because it is a social norm and therefore must be accepted because it is *normal*.
The short version is, that is a version of the naturalistic fallacy — that something “should” be accepted because it is “normal,” “natural,” or “innate” or “intended” in nature, so to speak.
I wonder, if the person making such an argument were in my shoes at this point….do you think he would invoke Godwin’s law and mention the fact that a lot of the Germans living in Germany during the Nazi regime also felt the need to “align themselves with the norm of society?”
April 12th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Yeah, the only way they can counter the argument that it was once the social norm to have slavery is for them to say that THAT was countering another pre-existing social norm.
Hey, if you take Phil’s argument that homosexuality is a pathology because of he heard that 69% of psychologists anomously said it was, and apply that to evolution, do you think he’d be convinced by it? I mean, the numbers of biologists accepting evolution is far higher than 69% - more like 99.99%, and probably higher still.
I MYSELF wouldn’t argue that this makes it true - for that we go to the mountains of evidence supporting it - but by Phil’s logic that DOES make it true.
Another reason why he was talking nonsense.
By the way, where’s Luke with his own challenge? I’m waiting for that! And Tim, you’ll have to let me know on this site if Phil ever replies to you on his blog.
April 12th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Tim, you’ll have to let me know on this site if Phil ever replies to you on his blog.
So far, nothing. Normally I wouldn’t think that was odd, but he said he only worked part-time so he could contribute more fully to his blog. So you’d think he’d have gotten around to ‘dismantling’ my post by now.
I’m just sayin’.
April 12th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
That post was typed a little too quickly, I’ll try it again with fewer typos:
Yeah, the only way ’social norm’ arguers can counter the point that slavery was once a social norm, is for them to argue that slavery itself controvened another pre-existing social norm. And then it just becomes about what came first and for how long.
Regarding Phil’s argument that homosexuality is a pathology because he heard that 69% of psychologists anonymously said it was. Aside from the fact that it’s impossible to check that the survey was performed scientifically (i.e. wasn’t simply made up, or was taken in the Middle East), if you take the same ‘weight of numbers’ argument and apply that to biologists accepting evolution, do you think Phil would be convinced by it?
I mean, the numbers of biologists accepting evolution is far higher than 69% - perhaps 99.99%, and probably higher still.
I MYSELF wouldn’t argue that this makes it true - for that we go to the mountains of evidence supporting evolution - but by Phil’s logic that DOES make it true.
By the way, I’m interested to read the challenge Luke said he’d come back with to counter Phil’s. And Tim, you’ll have to let me know here if Phil ever replies to you on his blog. You met his challenge several times over, he just can’t admit it, which is why he sunk to ad hominem so quickly.
April 19th, 2010 at 11:05 am
He just deleted my last comment. No it wasn’t rude, it just summarised the answer to his challenge. I’m guessing he knows he lost.
April 20th, 2010 at 7:05 am
Here’s another post, in case it gets deleted:
“But I can cite numerous calls to violence from Dems”
So your evidence for a ‘call to violence’ is the following:
“They showed video clips of the confrontational town halls that have dominated the media coverage, and told senators to do more prep work than usual for their public meetings by making sure their own supporters turn out, senators and aides said.
And they screened TV ads and reviewed the various campaigns by critics of the Democratic plan.
“If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,” Messina said, according to an official who attended the meeting.”
You don’t think perhaps the chief of staff is talking metaphorically there? Do you GENUINELY think that Messina is literally calling for people to punch people?
I’ll have to agree to disagree with you on that one.
Also, I doubt that most people’s objection to a man marrying a tree would be that it would mean ‘changing the definition of marriage’. And they wouldn’t say ‘but trees can’t give birth’ either. If they took your question seriously at all, I suspect many people’s objection would be something along the lines that a human and a tree can’t form equal relationships, that trees can’t consent to marriage, that there are no current circumstance where a man or tree are inconvenienced by not being able to marry.
If you argue that a man can marry a tree, then one could also argue that you should be able to marry someone who’s been braindead since birth.
None of these objections would apply to SSM.
April 20th, 2010 at 8:40 am
Hey Nathan,
Just came on here to check on you. Heard that the winds were blowing a volcanic ash over the U.K.
Hope you’re ok man.
Take care.
April 20th, 2010 at 9:37 am
All over Europe Andrea. My brother and Mum will probably both have to cancel trips this weekend (to Thailand and Austria respectively).
April 20th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Wow Nathan… that’s tough. I hope things get better soon.
April 20th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
He just deleted my last comment. No it wasn’t rude, it just summarised the answer to his challenge. I’m guessing he knows he lost.
Which post was it that was deleted?
April 21st, 2010 at 3:50 am
Well you can’t see it, because it’s deleted. I didn’t post it here either.
April 21st, 2010 at 3:58 am
Dale: “and then because I was reluctant to criticize you I deleted it.”
I wondered just how rude an anti-gay marriage poster would have to get before the others actually started criticising him. Now we’ve found out.
Not also that the pro side have still managed to remain civil throughout.
Now I’d like to know how rude an anti-gay marriage poster would have to get before Phil puts the following threat into action:
“Any answer that contains an insult will be deleted out of hand, and I will not let the author know. I reserve the right to determine what constitutes an insult”
Considering the Mark posts that have gone un-deleted, I’m guessing that as long as you agree with Phil that ‘anything goes’. It’s only an insult if you disagree with him.
April 21st, 2010 at 7:09 am
Considering the Mark posts that have gone un-deleted, I’m guessing that as long as you agree with Phil that ‘anything goes’. It’s only an insult if you disagree with him.
I pretty much went in with that assumption, yeah.
April 21st, 2010 at 7:20 am
The post that got deleted was responding to Phil saying that the ‘consent’ issue was just a ‘minor issue’ to be over-come.
The part that probably got it deleted was saying this was kind of like the Pope referring to decades of child abuse as ‘petty gossip’.
By the way, isn’t it hilarious that even Dale etc are now telling Mark that he should cool it off. I think they’re realising he’s making their side look bad.
I don’t get the whole ‘changing definition’ argument anyway. If someone argued that children should be allowed to vote, I’d construct a reply explaining why children shouldn’t have that right. I wouldn’t object by saying that it would mean ‘changing the definition of voting’, or that it’s ‘against tradition’, and I’d be baffled at anyone who couldn’t think of more obvious and convincing objections.
April 22nd, 2010 at 11:26 am
Hey all,
I am beginning to think that Phil came over here and posted his Birch Tree Challenge in order to increase traffic to his blog. It has been flagging quite a bit lately, based on the comments, and Phil managed to get the most comments he has ever received for this one, mostly from people over here (if my review of his posts is right).
My strongest reason for this suspicion is his nearly complete absence on the issue, expecially when the very strongest answers to his challenge have been made.
April 22nd, 2010 at 11:29 am
Gordon,
I offered Phil the opportunity to post here but to deal with the comments on his site. Comments should be made on his site, as the article says, not here.
Blessings,
Frank
April 22nd, 2010 at 11:34 am
Oh, very sorry if I breached any ettiquette, Frank. You can hardly blame me, given the large number of comments about the post that appear here already : )
April 22nd, 2010 at 11:49 am
Given that Phil threatens to delete posts from his blog he deems ‘insulting’, Tim and I have been putting some of our posts here too.
April 22nd, 2010 at 11:52 am
Nothing wrong with wanting to increase your blog traffic of course - everyone should want their posts to be read. But it seems odd to invite people over to your site, tell them they have to be polite, and then insult them yourself right from the off.
His challenge was met pretty early on anyway, and concession he gave that about a ‘minor legal challenge’ that Tim offered is probably the closest Phil would ever get to admitting it. The ‘minor legal challenge’ in question being the idea that one cannot be forced to marry without your consent. Ask yourself if YOU think this is a ‘minor’ issue.
April 22nd, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Given that Phil threatens to delete posts from his blog he deems ‘insulting’, Tim and I have been putting some of our posts here too.
I usually just C+P them into a notepad file, just in case I need to refer to them later.
The ‘minor legal challenge’ in question being the idea that one cannot be forced to marry without your consent. Ask yourself if YOU think this is a ‘minor’ issue.
I won’t post any more about Mr. Phil’s argument here on this blog after this, since Mr. Turek said he didn’t want us to, but I wanted to point this out to Mr. Turek because he tends to exercise a similar line of reasoning as Mr. Phil on the subject (even though he’s never made the birch tree argument on this site) — he obviously thought it was good enough of an argument to recommend here on his own site.
As for whether or not consent is an issue….Mr. Phil’s argument goes something like this:
1) In traditional marriages, people have not frequently married men and men (or women and women);
2) The definition of “marriage” is defined by traditional incarnations thereof;
3) Therefore, “marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman.”
The way I see it, though….*if* we also play by that logic — “defining” marriage based not on principle but in traditional practice — then we would be required to consider consent a “definitive aspect” of marriage.
A good, simple test for this is to ask the following question: If I take a gun, go out and find a man and a woman who have never met (and over whom I have no legal authority), and force them to get married at gunpoint, is that a valid marriage? If you say, “no,” then your justification will likely be either “because they were forced into it by someone who had no authority to do so,” or, “because it wasn’t a marriage of love or intent.” In the case of the former, you prove my point here; in the case of the latter, you’re saying that love or intent is what determines whether two people are married, not their gender.
So going by Mr. Phil’s logic, it would seem that consent is not only important, it’s even more important than gender.
April 22nd, 2010 at 4:04 pm
P.S. Please note that “authority to do so” in this context can refer either to legal authority, or divine authority (in that you might believe that god doesn’t recognize marriages that are made at gunpoint).
April 22nd, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Tim, I don’t know if you’ll win that argument. Plenty of women throughout history have been made to marry against their will in arranged marriages.
April 22nd, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Tim, I don’t know if you’ll win that argument. Plenty of women throughout history have been made to marry against their will in arranged marriages.
That’s exactly what I’m arguing, though — the consent doesn’t have to be based on the person who’s actually marrying, but it does have to be based on someone who has some kind of authority over that person — for example, a father may promise his daughter’s hand to someone, or a slaveowner might promise a slave to someone. But there aren’t a lot of “traditional” examples of just anybody coming in and marrying whomever; it’s always someone who has been given some kind of specific authority over the person being married — be it the authority of the parent over the child, or the authority of the king over a subject. It’s never just Joe Blow going, “I’m gonna marry her,” and then just doing it without consequence, or Jimbo going, “I want those two to get married, I think I’ll make them.”
May 1st, 2010 at 4:26 pm
For Nathan and Tim D, my email address is GOPenmind@hotmail.com, since Phil deleted it over on his blog.
May 1st, 2010 at 11:42 pm
^Yeah, I saved it in notepad just because. I wonder why he deleted it?
May 2nd, 2010 at 9:35 am
I read through all of the exchanges over there and I can give you a reason he deleted it. Phil (and mark for that matter) is a french word for rain.
May 2nd, 2010 at 9:38 am
No, not pluie.
May 2nd, 2010 at 1:19 pm
I read through all of the exchanges over there and I can give you a reason he deleted it. Phil (and mark for that matter) is a french word for rain.
…pardon my lack of French, but….I don’t get it 0.0
May 2nd, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Tim,
Google translate shower. I think that’s what he meant.
May 2nd, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Observing all of the feces flying around here, it is getting more difficult to deny mans’ origin as that of an ape. Or is this merely an illustration of the gift He gave us called “free will”?
No, that can’t be it, either God made everything and it’s all His fault/achievement or we are but more “advanced” forms of protozoa wallowing in our version of the primordial filth.
Which to choose, which to choose? Oh for dilemmas!
May 2nd, 2010 at 2:29 pm
“either God made everything and it’s all His fault/achievement or…”
Finally someone admitting that god made evil?
Tim and Luke,
yes, shower. I didn’t know if using the word shower rather than rain would be a delete-worthy offense when considering translation. It’s a tangled attempt at ad hominem.
May 2nd, 2010 at 2:40 pm
The “flying feces” line above makes me wonder something silly. Would a god ever use the f-bomb or s-word or any others? (here I’d like to point out that i hate hearing someone say “f-bomb” or “s-word” or any “___-word”; if these things can’t be discussed aloud, using the actual word under discussion then the whole conversation degrades everyone involved because it makes intelligent adults sound like kids on a playground.)
what is the real difference in saying “feces” over saying “s—-”? It means and describes the same thing . . . though one is more fun to shout when you mash your finger with a hammer. something about that combination of “shhhh” and that hard “t” at the end.
May 2nd, 2010 at 3:17 pm
PHEW! I’m so relieved….Thought someone would rip me for my (mis)use of the word protozoa….DOH!
May 2nd, 2010 at 3:32 pm
And in response: God -to the best of our knowledge- has never hit Himself in the thumb w/ a hammer (something it is very doubtful you have done either) so, hence, and thusforthly He has never been tempted to utter profanities. It comes from being perfect, you know?
Which leads to another silly something to wonder about: were a liberal to achieve nirvana, or “absolute liberality”, what would said lib do differently than what they normally do? I mean, in the context of the “if it feels good - do it!” “morality” of liberalism, how can one tell when one has encountered an “exceptional” liberal? If they desire to have sex with mud, are they sure to cleanse thoroughly before and after the act so as to show consideration for others? But what if they like being “filthy little mud-humpers” ? Wouldn’t said cleansing be an imposition upon their “happiness”?
Oh for dilemmas within the anything goes community!
May 2nd, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Which to choose, which to choose? Oh for dilemmas!
That’s a “false dichotomy,” not a dilemma….~
Which leads to another silly something to wonder about: were a liberal to achieve nirvana, or “absolute liberality”, what would said lib do differently than what they normally do? I mean, in the context of the “if it feels good - do it!” “morality” of liberalism, how can one tell when one has encountered an “exceptional” liberal? If they desire to have sex with mud, are they sure to cleanse thoroughly before and after the act so as to show consideration for others? But what if they like being “filthy little mud-humpers” ? Wouldn’t said cleansing be an imposition upon their “happiness”?
…what?
XD
May 2nd, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Okay, for the brick in the face impaired: When a conservative-Christian (someone with objective standards of morality) transgresses, it is obvious. When a liberal does, all we hear is “Who are you to judge? We all know what Bill Clinton (perverted/corrupt lib of your choice) is - get over it.” So, chuck rangel can cheat on his taxes (and for that matter, rape orphans) all day long and you guys will never be so bold as to “judge” him but, the Christian who jaywalks is a hypocritical monster who must be stopped.
I realize I’m talking to myself as you, Tim, are one who likes to liken the T.E.A. Party set to an organization of Tim McVeighs while making sure to never so much as make a peep about the thousands murdered in the name of Allah every single year - other than to point up the “fact” that Christians are every bit as evil and destructive. Again, I’ve learned from the plumbbobblog that you rarely make it past the first 3 syllable word so I accept the fact that you’ve stopped reading this by now. This is merely my own little conservative echo-chamber. Between you and “da boyz” there is so little truth or even a modicum of coherence around here that I feel duty bound to insert sanity from time to time.
end
(Oh for the Sponge-Bob generation!)
May 2nd, 2010 at 8:18 pm
So . . . there’s something objectively wrong with the word “f—”?
“(something it is very doubtful you have done either)”
Oh, isn’t he cute? Trying bait us namby-pamby “libs” that wouldn’t possibly know their way around set of tools! Who’s being the elitist now?
“He has never been tempted to utter profanities.”
Really? I would imagine that the only “profanities” set forth in your religion are those connected with blasphemy. Stubbing your toe and saying, “Oh Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ”. I don’t see how s— (the brown word) is profane at all. It’s a word for describing the unpleasant remains of lunch or used as an adjective when describing Goldman Sachs investments.
May 2nd, 2010 at 9:59 pm
I realize I’m talking to myself as you, Tim, are one who likes to liken the T.E.A. Party set to an organization of Tim McVeighs while making sure to never so much as make a peep about the thousands murdered in the name of Allah every single year - other than to point up the “fact” that Christians are every bit as evil and destructive.
I’ll reiterate to you what I said on the other forum regarding my concerns about other groups besides Evangelical Christians:
Ah, the “Appeal To Bigger Problems” argument (AKA the “Children Are Starving In Africa” argument).
Your fallacy is as follows; it makes three false assumptions:
A) That it is not possible to care about big problems (i.e. your so-called “ACTUAL, KNOWN evil”) and small problems (the issues we are discussing here) simultaneously.
B) That complaining about a minor issue (i.e. the issues we are discussing here) is sufficient proof that the major issue is considered unimportant by the person raising the complaint.
C) That if the person irritated over the minor issue did help solve the major issues, then it would follow that he should not care about the minor issue at all.
On that note….what, Mr. Mark, could I say or do you you or Mr. Turek on this forum that would make any sort of difference with regard to what Muslims and other extremists are doing thousands of miles from either of us? I’d prefer to deal with what’s in front of me right now. So sorry if I don’t waste my time ranting about Muslims who are not present to argue in defense of themselves.
Really? I would imagine that the only “profanities” set forth in your religion are those connected with blasphemy. Stubbing your toe and saying, “Oh Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ”. I don’t see how s— (the brown word) is profane at all. It’s a word for describing the unpleasant remains of lunch or used as an adjective when describing Goldman Sachs investments.
I don’t think “s***” is really “profane” so much as “crude.” Profanity explicitly refers to defiling something that is “good” or “sacred,” or making a mockery of something (esp. something considered “holy”). I don’t see how feces fits any of those categories (except metaphorically, in the case of “holy s***!”).
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:27 pm
“I don’t think “s***” is really “profane” so much as “crude.”
Yeah, I don’t see s**** or f**** being profane either. I think it’s quite possible a deity would feel fine saying, “I’m gonna get some s**** done today.” But the idea of a word being crude mystifies me. What makes some words inherently crude? What makes a word offensive? The person hearing it does. George Carlin’s seven words only have the power to offend if the person hearing those words give them that power to offend. I could use completely clinical words to describe a sexual act and make it “crude”.
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:15 pm
What makes some words inherently crude? What makes a word offensive?
Well, “crudity” is really a social thing — like you said, it’s based on the customs of the time, and what other people think of when you say the word. People today are, for some reason, rather sensitive to terms involving bio-waste disposal and sexual functions, so even something as simple as describing the actions candidly can, in the “right” context, be construed as “crude.”
I imagine that it’s more the image that usage of such words has caused people to associate people who use them with — for example, people who use “the f-word” a lot tend to be rowdy and confrontational, and are usually just doing it to make a harsh impression or to direct attention at themselves or their means. So even though it’s by no means *necessary* to conform to those standards to use the word, that’s what people tend to think of when they hear someone using that word….and this perception is so widespread that it’s very unlikely the person using the word is unaware of it. Knowing this, it makes it that much easier for the person on the “receiving end” to associate that word with someone who is knowingly fishing for attention or a response.
Not saying that’s how it “should” be, just my two cents on why I think it *is.*
May 4th, 2010 at 4:32 am
‘See you next tuesday’ (so to speak) used to be the medical term for a woman’s parts, nothing crude about it. Whereas nowadays it’s the crudest word we have.
May 4th, 2010 at 4:03 pm
It’s funny how words evolve to be “bad.”
I was glad to see that a certain verboten word for african americans was being used so much in rap and black culture that some of the fire was being taken out of it. You’d hear it at least ten times during an episode of Dave Chapelle’s show. then Seinfeld’s Kramer had to ruin it all with his outburst at a comedy club. AA leaders wanted to put a moratorium on the word, but it seemed like that was all the older generation. It’d be great if that word was stripped of it’s power to offend.
I think I probably couldn’t keep a straight face if someone called me a cracker. Or a blue-eyed devil. It makes me giggle just to think of it.
So sorry for getting everything way off topic.
May 4th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
I think I probably couldn’t keep a straight face if someone called me a cracker. Or a blue-eyed devil. It makes me giggle just to think of it.
I know what you mean XD I don’t know how white people can take “slurs” against them seriously, just because half of them are so silly. I mean, I guess it’s the thought that counts, but still….
Speaking of Seinfeld, that reminds me of a sketch from awhile back….he says something like (note, I am paraphrasing):
“I wouldn’t be offended if someone flipped their middle finger at me. Why? That’s no effort at all. They don’t care enough to hate me. But you know what would offend me? If someone flipped me off with their middle toe. THAT would hurt my feelings just a little bit. Because I know that they went through the trouble to take off their shoes and socks, and bend their toes just right, and hold them up so I could see them. That’s a lot of effort to put into a casual gesture of hatred. And I’d feel a little bad that they hated me so much that they were willing to put all that effort in, just towards what would normally be construed as a petty insult against me. I’d think, ‘wow, what have I done to anger this person so badly?’”
So sorry for getting everything way off topic.
I should apologize as well, ’cause I helped. Don’t I always? XD
(No, it’s not intentional. I’m long-winded.)
May 4th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
P.S.
Google translate shower. I think that’s what he meant.
I still don’t get it….0.0
May 4th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Does it really matter that (in the middle of a conversation that amounts to basically saying, “Standards, shmandards, there’s no such thing as indecency! I know, because I’m a liberal.”) one of your oh so classy friends wanted everyone to know he thinks anyone who disagrees w/ him is a douche, Tim? Why bother w/ bothersome details - just get on w/ wallowing in your flesh. Just a little more effort and you will have driven every thinking person from the place.
Thank you so much for that.
May 4th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Does it really matter that (in the middle of a conversation that amounts to basically saying, “Standards, shmandards, there’s no such thing as indecency! I know, because I’m a liberal.”) one of your oh so classy friends wanted everyone to know he thinks anyone who disagrees w/ him is a douche, Tim?
…okay, I admit, you’ve *completely* lost me here. What are you talking about, now? First off, who called anyone a “douche?” Second, who said anything about “indecency,” or about there being no such thing?
May 4th, 2010 at 11:15 pm
Well . . . don’t people think more about nudity than anything else when the word indecent is used?
May 4th, 2010 at 11:25 pm
Yeah, the french word for “shower”. Only it’s indecent because its become associated with a feminine hygiene product. Really, when you think about it, why is it insulting to be called that. It really doesn’t make sense. Who first thought to call someone that? Is it as offensive as calling someone an enema?
May 5th, 2010 at 6:59 am
Ah, I get it now 0.0
May 5th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
We are suppose to marry humans. We should fall in love, and get married to that human. we are not suppose to marry objects that are not human. It’s just the way things are. God bless to all peace and love, Emily