Christian Evangelicals debating their stands on what to tell teenagers about homosexuality

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@ApPersonaNonGrata

8 hours ago (edited)

I stopped about 60% of the way through this. I stopped at that point because the minutia of those divergent voices just isn't important. The most qualified voices in the academic community are saying this:

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@ApPersonaNonGrata

8 hours ago

Pre-Ce and early CE "biblical" cultures didn't even have a concept like our modern concept of homosexuality. They didn't think in those terms. Religious-cultural rules referred to in bibles were prohibitions against "bottoming". It was fine for the man who did the penetrating. In their view, it was a sin for a man to be the catcher, because doing so violated the natural order of men as the dominators. Also relevant to this:

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@ApPersonaNonGrata

7 hours ago (edited)

Yahweh was a sort of Frankenstein's Monster "God". He was made by savaging from parts of dead (defunct) gods (conceptualized gods local people had gradually migrated away from). "El" was one of the gods they borrowed pieces from. Although, if we go back far enough, "El" was originally the name of the entire pantheon of gods of the Canaanites. The connection there is that the "biblical" Hebrews were a nomadic tribe of Canaanites that broke off and then continued to evolve their own separate and polemic (anti-Canaanite) identity.

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@ApPersonaNonGrata

7 hours ago

Moreover, there is no "monotheism" in bibles. I too was taught by Christian churches (n my youth) to read bibles through a monotheistic lens. I eventually learned that they were on a slow trek towards monotheism. They had not yet managed to 'get there' until centuries after both the Hebrew and Christian "canons" were formally and finally declared and finalized. At best, early Common Era, the Hebrews and Christians were henotheists. Other gods existed. But they had chosen to reduce their cultural narrative down to worshipping only one. THEIR "God" was just that one. But rival gods still existed in their minds.

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@ApPersonaNonGrata

7 hours ago

It's also important to note that bibles are not "univocal". What any one writer said about anything at all ... had no authority about what any other writer said. They were not creating a cohesive and harmonious story about any god/God nor about reality. It was just random dudes taking advantage of religious opportunities to structure power towards their own personal interests; sometimes very selfishly, and sometimes for a subjectively perceived greater good.

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@ApPersonaNonGrata

7 hours ago

Saul/Paul was the same. He was just some random (and impressively awful) dude taking advantage of an opportunity; to gain the power of sociopolitical influence over others.

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@marshall_zhukov

2 hours ago

Everything you have written is wrong

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@NathanLaValleyMinistry

1 hour ago

Those voices are the most qualified voices in the academic community of biblical scholarship. All of your comments show me that you aren't really interacting with good voices within biblical scholarship and in addition quite a few of your claims are bluntly false. You need to reevaluate the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th comment for deep factual errors. On the 4th, this may be true if the Holy Spirit is sterilized from the transmission process. I probably can't convince you of this now but I believe (Christian believe) that God was involved in the transmission process of the christian scriptures. Also your liberation lens of power, abuse, victimization doesn't fit the Bible well at all. But even aside from that point, If you want to say that because a modern conception didn't exist when the Bible was written it shouldn't be brought to the Bible then you need to be fair and leave the liberation lens of power, abuse, victimization out when going to the Bible. This is a modern conception.

@NathanLaValleyMinistry 

Some of the scholars who I'm getting all of this from include: Christine Hayes, Dan McLellan, Bart Ehrman, James Tabor, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Joshua Bowen, Megan Lewis, Jennifer Bird, Richard C Miller, Paula Fredriksen (Longer list available upon request). I trust you recognize at least some of these names. Now, I'm qualified to talk about the rational and ethical failings of the various Abrahamic-religious concepts, attitudes, and behaviors. Literacy, Logic, and ethics are all entirely within my wheelhouse. However, I am not qualified to speak about archeology, formal academic textual criticism, or even religious histories. "To an extent" (a fairly large extent; but not entirely), ... I "take their word for it" when deferred to qualified scholars, because: In order to do otherwise, I'd need a few more lifetimes of dedicated formal education in their respective specialties. This is the unfortunate and inescapable reality for all laymen. We simply don't know everything the most qualified scholars know. Nor do we have access to all the same tools and materials. Nor are we privy to all the academic discourse and peer-reviews they use to refine and evolve their understandings. As one of the scholars I read from has said: "Scholarship is always pushing beyond today's status quo; probing, challenging, applying new data and new theory. What I have been trying to show ... is that fundamentalist is incompatible with scholarship. Fundamentalism has already determined its conclusions. It is not seeking, because it already knows the answer. If it has good evidence on its side which supports the bible, it uses it. If it has little data, it twists and interprets what it has, to support the bible. If it has no evidence, it hypothesizes that such will eventually be found (or they'll imagine it already exists). And, of course, no amount of contrary evidence is sufficient. Fundamentalism can never conclude that the bible is wrong.". Meanwhile, I don't always find any given scholar's arguments convincing. But I am humble enough to admit I always could be wrong about any textual meaning. However, no matter what specific things I may be wrong about, ... I am fully justified in my wrongness. Because I'm never wrong on purpose. I'm never wrong out of rebellion. I'm not wrong because of being irresponsibly lazy. In fact, I'm guilty of actually spending far too much time on such matters. Whenever I'm wrong, I'm just wrong. There's no "freely chosen failing" to blame. There's no "moral failing" to blame. It's inevitable. I'm going to be wrong sometimes. Everyone is. But I do have certain valuable cognitive tools to work with. For example, I'm mature enough to recognize that it should all be approached as a fluid assessment of probabilities. Just as importantly, I recognize that the only people who should have zero (not any) seat at the table are: religious fundamentalists. By "fundamentalists", I mean anyone who speaks from a conviction that: 1. Some literal, sentient, authoritarian, Super-Being(s) authored their preferred body of religious texts and 2. have thus placed all humans under moral obligation to * assume any such BEING(s) exists, * seek out their true identity and will, * find exactly that, * understand it all adequately enough, and * dedicate themselves/ourselves with a personal oath of loyalty ... to thinking and living in accordance with the central tenets of their texts; - "or else" suffer that Being's wrath. --- --- It doesn't matter if it's a Catholic, Protestant, Islamic, or some other type of religious fundamentalist. As a mental state, and as a set of ideological commitments, ... Religious fundamentalism is completely incompatible with scholarship. You can keep reading, talking, debating, praying, etc.. and it won't get you even one inch closer to truth; until you free yourself from the blatant conflict of interests that "faith" requires. We can either be loyal to the pursuit of truth (no matter where the clues lead) or we can take a personal oath of loyalty to a narrative or conclusion and then shop around for confirmation of that bias. As for "the holy spirit", IF we assume it exists, we should at least recognize this: invoking "the holy spirit" is useless grandstanding. Every rival Mutually exclusive) Christian faction and independent ... claims to be led by it (or "Him"). They all pray, they are "humble" and equally "earnest". They all use the same language and names. They all assume to know when a thought or feeling is from "The holy spirit" and when it isn't. But it's all a mess of contradictions; which does nothing (in the arena of competing claims) but add chaos, confusion, and division. It prevents people from taking full responsibility and accountability. It does that by creating a special partition in the mind where everything presumed to be "from the Holy Spirit" or "from God" is sheltered from the full weight of scrutiny, because "it would be wrong to question, doubt, or criticize God". So then it stops people from recognizing, owning, and cleaning a special box of their own intuitions, thoughts and feelings. [ See recent "Mindshift" video called "God's Voice, You, Or The Devil? Rebutting Vlad Savchuk's 8 Horrendous Tips!"] It prevents people from giving themselves permission to "question everything", - except to say "feel free to question. Just makes sure the only answers you accept are the answers that satisfy our righteous religious tribes existing narrative of ideas and values". So then you can gaslight yourself and pretend to be objectively pursuing the truth of these matters. But you can't really do that. Because you are under threat of eternal damnation if you go past whatever line in the sand your church-culture drew for you.