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RSS YosefLevi

Reward Points:15
Efficiency: Efficiency is a measure of the effectiveness of your arguments. It is the number of up votes divided by the total number of votes you have (percentage of votes that are positive).

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10 most recent arguments.
1 point

@Jose: Why start the whole argument from the beginning and ignore the arguments of both those who agree AND disagree with your point of view? It's totally undoing the work everyone has done and re-doing it all over again. This is a comment that doesn't build upon, challenge, or reframe what anyone has said here.

1 point

There is no natural purpose of government; a scientist in their observation of nature would not discover the principles of physics by which that scientist may determine a noble purpose for government. Government is not "corrupt" or "good", and I do not think it meaningful to evaluate it on moral terms; government is what it is--structured power over a group and region of people.

Early scholars of government, including some of our founding fathers who were aware of the academic literature of the time, did not trust that there is a natural purpose to government, which is why they created rational safeguards--legal obstacles--to the abuse of power. They envisioned a purpose of government and created real devices to push their understanding of government (a government for the people). Another people and another government may decide that the purpose of a governing authority is to safeguard their religious principles: is that so wrong? Two distinct governments.

Which is why I say that government has no inherent meaning or purpose--but WE have our own interests and things we find meaningful, and if we want those protected, we need to structure government to satisfy our interests. Government is a force of power in a community, like a sword, and can adopt the views of its wielder.

As for people criticizing each other as irresponsible... I doubt anyone here for their forum posting has failed in actual assigned responsibility or work or duty and let peoples or persons down. Your words are just like ornaments... they decorate and make things shiny and do little else. We do not hold government credentials such that we speak with the authority of the state and would mislead others accidentally into anarchy by talking about the harms of government.

2 points

@HGrey87: You know, HGrey, I participated in a few other topics on this site, and on the whole I find that there are a lot of carelessly written questions which damage the sophistication of the debate, and I also find enough people that provide new knowledge or critique I had never thought of before. All in all, though, I also find that most debates are difficult to learn from because how how people tear others down without repairing their opponent's argument or providing a good alternative.

It's too bad that most people think of a debate in adversarial terms, like in a courtroom, rather than a community/collaborative effort.

Complex models or theories require people to work together, and modelling capitalism surely is difficult work. People who just tear down others' theories without helping them build it back up or provide new, enriching examples just weigh the debate down and make it difficult to achieve steps in logic that go beyond the simple sound-bite arguments we hear in our daily lives.

1 point

@Kinda: It's cool that you aren't a Christian, although to a non-Christian these talks of homosexuality may seem a little on the culturally biased side.

At one time there were arguments whether God was a singular substance or a dual-natured substance (this "substance" type analysis was in the Greek and Roman intellectual/philosophical fashion of the time and it still echoes in western thought), and certainly Christian blood was shed over this topic. Some Christians accused others of worshiping two Gods. Today most Christians would scoff at the debate and perhaps even naively claim, contrary to blood splattered over the topic, that the bible has always meant to say that God is a trinity-type substance, which most people (including myself) would probably hesitate to flesh out or explain just what this trinity is exactly. It seems that the nature or "substance" of God is as mysterious as when Chrsitians first contemplated this issue.

Anyways, given this piece of history, how many Christian theologians with a passion for Christian history would say that biblical meaning has stood still across time? Perhaps one would argue that there is some stable reality which biblical text attempts to access but that humans cannot grasp. If that is indeed the case, then humans, much like in the search of science, must continually improve upon their understanding of the bible.

If anyone says that the bible has not changed in meaning, at least to the Christian people, I'd like to see them wrestle with these historical examples without condemning the Christian people of the past as foolish or ignorant or that they are perverters of biblical meaning.

1 point

@August: You are right that the bible does mention female-female relations. I was talking about the view of the Hebrews, not the view of Paul. However, that the bible mentions female-female relations does not sufficiently disrupt my main argument, which is about interpreting what the bible considers homosexual. Using Leviticus, and 1 Cor 6:9, I interpret homosexuality to be a behavioral term, not one related to an internal state of sexuality. I also restate my claim that even our current concept of sexuality might not necessarily be the most scientifically accurate or descriptive.

The western world refers to homosexuality as an internal state of attraction which is not immediately or necessarily connected to behavior; thus straight men can have gay sex and gay men might have strictly heterosexual relations and even children in this view. This ties back into what I mentioned about Catholics having a different interpretation of the biblical text relating to homosexuality: the Catholics interpret homosexuality as a behavior, and not an internal state of being, whereas many western Protestants will consider homosexuality to be an internal state.

On the matter of interpreting the bible in ways that could be interpreted as convenient, I'm really not sure about when Christians ought follow the bible "as-is". Paul, in no ambiguous or symbolic language, condemns a symmetrical place for women (relative to men) in the church by saying that he would not suffer a woman to teach or be positioned in authority over a man, and that women and children ought stay in the back of churches and that if a woman wishes to speak in a church, she should do so through a male spokesman. Few churches nowadays will say all those things about women; instead they interpret it symbolically rather than literally, and they draw upon examples in which God has used women for holy purposes to lax the Pauline restrictions on women. However, many churches do not allow women to have the same powers or authorities as men, and they do so in a de facto way rather than explicitly saying that they rejected a woman on doctrinal grounds. I'm not saying that their interpretation is true, but I guess that I am saying that it is difficult to say when we ought directly follow the bible.

And if you think that I meant to say that it is unmeaningful to interpret the bible for our time, then I must have miswritten my ideas. I absolutely believe that the bible must be interpreted for our time, and that that activity is meaningful. What I reject are those who believe that biblical meaning has stayed still and is still staying still, and that biblical meaning has no room to change.

1 point

@Kinda: Well, the previous debaters here and I did mention that the bible does not necessarily outright condemn our Western concept of homosexuality. It condemns specific narrow behaviors between two males (but as mentioned before, there is no talk about female-female activity). That is how some Protestant theologians interpret Christianity to NOT condemn homosexuality (as we understand it). The Vatican, on the other hand, does not condemn homosexuality per se, but does condemn homosexual actions.

If you want to talk about what the bible says "outright", that is what it says. If you want to delve more deeply about why the Hebrews (or if you believe Moses specifically authored the Torah) didn't seem to mention female homosexuality, then you need to read between the lines in the bible. Some Christians "interpret" it to suggest an ideal model of sexuality that extends even to female homosexuals, and some don't. Some Catholics believe that the internal state is not sinful and that the outward expression is sinful.

I believe that trying to apply our concepts of sexuality to that time is only somewhat meaningful, as I am not sure we will always keep our concepts of sexuality. Perhaps scientists will one day find a better way to describe and prescribe analytic terms to human sexual behavior? Perhaps we will have a superior theory to explain sexuality and do away with the old discrete (but not really) categories of homosexuality and heterosexuality as bipolar realms; perhaps we will adopt the Kinsey concept of a sexual continuum, or perhaps, instead of defining sexuality on an internal psychological state, we may simply define sexuality based off of actual behavior?

Scientists discard constructs as more useful and predictive/explanatory theories come up. I'm just saying to keep an open mind as we presume our understanding of sexuality to be true and apply it to the Hebrews, assuming they had the same concept, and that our concepts will stand the test of time.

1 point

On a somewhat tangential path, it's also an interesting to consider what the etiology or factors are behind the formation of heterosexuality, and what things can change the features of that heterosexuality.

Also interesting is a point that Kinsey brings up is whether the somewhat-discrete categories of homosexuality/bisexuality/heterosexuality might not be the most sophisticated or complex theory capable of describing human sexual behavior; Kinsey proposed instead a continuum concept of sexuality.

And perhaps Kinsey's ideas on sexuality is incomplete too; thus far we have been focusing on a psychological concept of an internal, enduring/stable sense of sexual attraction fixed upon a particular category of gender and sex identity. Perhaps a more objective way of looking at it is to focus on the behaviors of the individual, and create classifications of human sexuality based on what is actually done? The behavioral theory can support, side by side, the psychological theory about the stable internal sense of attraction to a specific category of sex.

1 point

On a somewhat tangential path, it's also an interesting to consider what the etiology or factors are behind the formation of heterosexuality, and what things can change the features of that heterosexuality.

Also interesting is a point that Kinsey brings up is whether the somewhat-discrete categories of homosexuality/bisexuality/heterosexuality might not be the most sophisticated or complex theory capable of describing human sexual behavior; Kinsey proposed instead a continuum concept of sexuality.

And perhaps Kinsey's ideas on sexuality is incomplete too; thus far we have been focusing on a psychological concept of an internal, enduring/stable sense of sexual attraction fixed upon a particular category of gender and sex identity. Perhaps a more objective way of looking at it is to focus on the behaviors of the individual, and create classifications of human sexuality based on what is actually done? The behavioral theory can support, side by side, the psychological theory about the stable internal sense of attraction to a specific category of sex.

1 point

Christians that I hear nowadays still attempting to formulate biblical foundation for their arguments to classify homosexuality as sinful no longer go the route of Leviticus (18:22; 20:13) or Pauline doctrine (1 Cor 6:9; 1 Timothy 9:10), because, as some of the earlier posters clearly enunciated, many Christian theologians believe that the Mosaic law in Leviticus only pertained to male homosexuality (people in this forum noted that females were entirely omitted in the discussing of homosexual relations).

There's also stuff about the translation of 1 Cor 6:9 and the concept of "homosexual" as we understand v. how sexuality was understood in the relevant time period, and how the bible seems to specifically condemn the receiver of anal sex in a male homosexual relationship.

However, there is a new wave of arguments coming from a more difficult-to-dismantle theory about the "natural" model of sexuality as originally modeled by God's choice to create Adam and Eve (Christians make it a frequent point that, alas, God did not create a Steve to accompany Adam). Some/Many Christians also now realize the difficulty of their approach in using Leviticus in a technical way to classify homosexuality as a sin. Instead they interpret it as a symbolic model for heterosexuality. I say this theory is more difficult to dismantle because it is an interpretation of text spanning multiple passages, much like the concept of trinity, and it's very difficult to say someone's literary interpretation is wrong when they are not making basic factual statements about the text.

In light of the somewhat recent Proposition 8 ballot measure in California concerning the state-wide inclusion of homosexual couples in marriage, it also seems that some Christians are arguing that the model couple (Adam + Eve) is also the ideal way to raise children, and that having two dads or two moms would be wrong to the children. But I suppose that argument is much more tamable since it can be confronted by empirical data.

1 point

I have also observed cases where behaviors of fellow people seem to suggest that apathy is one of their goals, or at least a means toward a goal.

The human emotions of empathy and sympathy are powerful feelings which can motivate behaviors to deviate from a person's normal range of activities, especially in the form of other-oriented action (need not be purely selfish or selfless). Why then do some people choose to donate and some not, and some choose to donate more or less than others? What factors contribute to people performing one way or the other?

Holmes, Miller, & Lerner (2002) addresses your question to an extent in an article titled "Committing Altruism Under the Cloak of Self-Interest: The Exchange Fiction", in which they discuss a peculiar, experimentally-demonstrable American tendency to, at the very least, disguise their altruistic intent with a feigned display of selfishness. Although Holmes et al. ultimately conclude by saying there is some underestimated altruism in people, they also note that by being empathic to the very needy and by being presented with a donation situation, people are ultimately threatened in their own material security.

If they accept that one person's conditions were unfair and unfortunate enough that they warrant a donation, what is to stop another person from claiming so? For the sake of psychological and material security, a line is drawn where a person strives toward apathy to some extent in order to protect their psyche from guilt (some social guilt is appropriate as it can motivate social or other-oriented action).

Thus, a cause for apathy is born. But not apathy alone, but apathy that exists alongside a tenuous relationship with empathy. Both are very real (though I'm sure sometimes apathy seems stronger than empathy) and seem important.

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