Zion said:
Well, I think it would be a pretty poor religious book if it said, “Eh, believe it, don’t believe it, what do I care?”
Close. We can say that, according to your book, true wisdom only comes from God.
David B sez:
I dunno…I think I’d kinda LIKE that for a change, Dave… 
Disclaimer: This is going to be a difficult thing for me to express in words, so bear with me. Esprix’s post is quoted as an example only.
When a theist makes a claim that he is privy to the Word of God, or the capital “T” truth, it comes off as self-righteous. When an atheist asserts the same thing it still comes off as self-righteous.
There is also another attitude, a “relativistic” attitude espoused. These people may hold a belief as to the nature of Truth, but a part of it is that they believe in allowing others to hold their own ideas on such. They may even believe that the Truth may be actually different from one person to another. They will defend the particulars of their versions, but not assert that their version of truth is inherently better than another’s.
When a “relativist” (a label I just plucked from the air because I have no other) asserts that we must allow each his own Truth, or we must allow that one’s truth may not necessarily be universal, how is that any less self-righteous? After all, it asserts a particular value (that of another’s view being as worthy of respect and consideration as one’s own) over the value others hold of their personal Truth being universal.
What I’m trying to get at is: What is the difference between saying “The ‘Truth’ I assert is that you are wrong because Truth is contained in the Bible,” and "The ‘Truth’ I assert is that you are wrong to assert your ‘Truth.’? Aren’t they both saying in some way that the other should adjust their attitude to match that of the person making the assertion?
Esprix, I am not trying to pick on you or anything, but your post makes an example I could point to. When Zion asserts that the word of God is the truth, and that it is universal, you perceive it as self-righteous. But when you assert that it is unacceptable for him to assert his belief (in universal truth), you are yourself asserting that your belief (the relative aspect of truth) is indeed the correct one that he should espouse. Maybe it’s not “holier-than-thou”, but perhaps “more reasonable-than-thou”.
Esprix:
Something is either true or it’s false. The idea that something can be true for one person and not another distorts the fundamental meaning of the word.
A fact must be true for everyone: It must be observable as true by everyone who looks. One can dispute the truth of a scientific theory, such as evolution, but it can’t be true for me but false for you: In science, things are true because they either are directly observable, or they are solid deductions or consistent explanations of observable facts. A mathematical theorem is true according to its axioms. Axioms are not “true”, they are self-consistent, arbitrary assumptions, chosen on the basis of convenience, usefulness and “intellectual beauty”.
To make a claim of truth you must provide some method for people to consistently divide propositions into true and false. All the empirical, scientific and mathematical definitions of truth provide such a method. But a religion cannot claim truth in any meaningful sense of the word because it defines no such method. The best that can be said of a religion is that it defines axiom set; One assumes it in making deductions about the world and oneself. But assumption, even in mathematics does not posit truth, it merely defines an environment under which particular propositions may be evaluated as true.
It is the unusual tendency of Christians to arbitarily define their religion as “truth” that makes so many of them appear as either dishonest or stupid. Most religions simply define their belief set as a method of organizing and interpreting experiece; they don’t arrogantly and self-righteously claim that they have arbitarily defined the truth.
SD, I’m actually going to have to disagree with you on that point. (Excuse me while I put my head between my knees.)
“Truth” or “true” has a lot of meanings, but the connotation I usually assign to it is one of philosophical or emotional value - which can indeed be different for one person than it is for another.
Facts are neither true or untrue. Facts are either accurate or inaccurate. Accuracy can be defined to a specific, verifiable degree. Religious beliefs can be true and untrue at the same time because the people evaluating them have completely different perspectives, and there is no exact defining of those perspectives.
Other than that, I’m completely with you.
Adam, out of a volume as immense as the Bible, you managed to pick a passage that insults people who do not hold the same beliefs as you do. Do you understand that this not only doesn’t win you any arguments, it also drives people away from you?
How are you going to get your message of Christ’s love out by using the Scriptures to call people fools? And, please, don’t pretend it was anything but that. I’m hardly a Biblical scholar, but I’m pretty sure there are a score of other verses you could have used that would have been less offensive and more true to how a Christian is supposed to spread the good news. You chose that particular verse because it was a reflection of how you feel, and in doing so, became the epitome of self-righteousness.
Hey! Stop mocking us Unitarian Universalists!
Esprix
phouka:
It’s really just a matter of semantics. It’s the underlying idea of invariance between people that makes something interesting to me, not the word itself.
FWIW, I usually use the following words with their indicated meaning:
belief: To hold a proposition through any means, including axiomatic assumption, faith, deductive proof, or temporary convenience.
truth, true, false: Those propositions that have a decision procedure to consistently separate “true” from “false”. True and false are absolute. A proposition is either true, false or its nature cannot be determined.
faith: The assumpution of a proposition with neither support nor contradiction from direct empirical evidence.
fact: A proposition that can be determined true by direct empirical evidence.
falsehood: A proposition that can be determined false by direct empirical evidence.
accurate: The degree to which a representation matches the underlying reality. “A little more than three” is a somewhat accurate representation of pi. 3.14159 is a more accurate representation. Accuracy is thus comparative.
inaccurate: A representation who’s low degree of accuracy will lead to substantially faulty conclusion.
Esprix said:
Don’t you have a question mark to go burn on somebody’s lawn?
I think it might be a good point to say that the Bible was first written in hebrew, then into greek and latin. From the greek verson comes the german bible printed by Gutenburg, then out of that came the english version that is read today. So it dose some have some inconsitancys.
I also recall hereing that calling someone a fool was a sin.
No slight inferred if no slight intended. 
I think you have me wrong right there in this last part. I am not saying Zion should believe what I believe - that would be self-righteous. He can believe what he wishes to believe. I am, however, telling him what not to tell me (i.e., that I am wrong for believing what I believe), and I am furthermore telling him that if he does tell me this, he sounds self-righteous. I understand that he himself does not believe that he is, I’m just telling him what it sounds like to the one being told it.
Now, if when he tells me that he is privy to The Truth, and I say I think he’s wrong, does that make me sound self-righteous? Yeah, probably. But he started it! 
Esprix
Well the problem is assinging a meaningful definition to the word Truth. For me to dispute a particular definition is not to impose my own definition.
I’m claiming that particular definitions are either self-contradictory or impossibly general.
Zion’s definition of Truth is self contradictory. He assigns Truth becuase it is internally representated in his own mind, but then refuses to apply the definition to the internal representation in my own mind. This is not imposing a representation of Truth, but evaluating a representation. I’m not judging his internal conception of a set of ideas, but I am describing his communication of those ideas as incompatible with reason.
Similarly, I am disputing phouka’s definition of Truth as impossibly general. phouka definition makes it impossible to divide up ideas into true and false; whatever I hold in my mind is the “truth” for me. By her definition, I cannot differentiate between truth and falsehood, knowlege and ignorance, wisdom and folly. Again, she is free to claim that lack of distinction, but she’s not communicating anything to me by asserting it.
I’m not demanding that either of them give up their ideas and definitions, I’m merely pointing out that to communicate an idea, the idea must allow me to make consistent distinctions. Without that feature, a communication is just a noise: I can’t extract any semantic meaning.
It seems to me that what started as a worthwhile enquiry got sidetracked into a conglomerate of semantic quibbles and courteous name-calling.
First, Adam is right that it is Scriptural that one who does not know God is a “fool.” But the word in question is raca, and on the subject of calling others this, Jesus had some pointed comments. So if a Jewish poster cares to call an atheist "fool’ with the inference that it is not personal but because he does not know God, his behavior is quite defensible. On the other hand, no Christian should be doing so, if he does indeed accept Jesus as Lord (and his instructions as therefore carrying weight).
On the same subject, SingleDad, ask your uncle the priest for a copy of the Forward Movement leaflet “Miserable Sinners” by C.S. Lewis. It deals with what Adam was attempting to get across in a much clearer way than any of us posters could present, myself included. Insofar as I can abstract the gist of it, the point would simply be that those who do not know God are suffering, even though (or maybe especially though) they do not realize it, in the same sense that someone with chronic pain can “filter it out” and live a normal, supposedly painfree life – but feels immensely better when the cause of the chronic pain is removed.
Now, bottom line. Whatever the truth is, it is absolute. The laws of thermodynamics, gas diffusion, etc., apply just as much to Gaudere, me, Esprix, Adam, SingleDad, Tracer, and the rest of us as they do to the physicist who has spent his life studying them.
The whole argument here has been avoiding, for the most part, the bottom-line questions, “Does God exist? If so, is he concerned with human behavior? If so, what specifically does he expect it to be?” At least a couple of posters have taken time to recognize that this concern does exist. And there are those who address the question of what degree human courtesy compels those who do believe to warn those who do not.
It has been my contention since I began arguing the point here that, yes, God does exist. He loves humanity. His interest is in our spiritual growth and happiness, not in adherence to a set of arbitrary laws. Such rules as he does prescribe are guidelines to healthy self-fulfilling and mutually supportive behavior, not things to be followed blindly without concern for one’s fellow man.
Adam, it is your contention that you are obliged to warn your fellow man where he is falling into what you and those who believe as you do see as sin. And (at least lately) you have been doing this without a tinge of self-righteousness. That is commendable.
However, may I suggest that you need to explore long and hard the implications of the fact that gayness is not chosen. Whether it is genetic or the result of early-childhood conditioning, or a combination of the two (the first being the contemporary received wisdom, the second the view of the sixties and seventies, and the last the probable real reason when all is said and done), it is not an option. You may choose whether or not to follow through on an attraction to a female, romantic or sexual, and to deal with your sexual impulses in a way commensurate with your religious beliefs. You do not have a right to insist that celibacy and self-loathing are the proper course for people who are gay through no choice of their own. Think it through. Then suggest what your beliefs say are appropriate behaviors for them. (Note the almost total failure of the “ex-gay” movement in sexual reorientation; Gaudere can provide statistics on this from an old thread if you doubt my unsupported assertion of it.)
Poly, I know some people will take exception to the following statements, but I have to chime in here with my view. I had a rampant case of SSA (Same-Sex Attraction) going there for most of my post-puberty life so far, and I thought of myself as (and WAS) gay. But something incredible has happened to me in the past six months or so, and that something is that heterosexual orientation (“switching teams,” to use a Seinfeldism) has reared its beautiful head in my life. I’m in love with a beautiful woman, have both sexual and romantic feelings toward her, and I get sexually excited at the idea of us…er…um…being intimate.
How do you account for this incredible change, if homosexuality is unchangeable and permanent? Sure, you can say, “Oh, you were just bisexual all along and didn’t know it,” but that’s kind of copping out, isn’t it? I wasn’t attracted to a single woman for years and years, yet suddenly Rose comes into my life and everything changes. It’s my belief now that homosexual orientation may be changeable after all, at least in some cases like mine.
Of course, I realize that my case isn’t the norm. Just giving one example that contradicts the idea that homosexuality is completely unchangeable.
Okay, Otto and Esprix, blast me now, I’ve got my asbestos undies back on! (Poly, I just have to say, though, I do see your point, even though I disagree with it partially.)
Sexuality is not nearly as nice and tidy as some people would like to believe. Some people have been straight all their lives, then fall in love with someone of the same sex later in life. Some people who consider themselves straight have homosexual relationships, and some who consider themselves gay have relationships with members of the opposite sex. Some people are so vehemently attracted to either men or women that they would never feel the slightest twinge of attraction towards any but a single sex, but a lot of people don’t fit into a rigid “gay” or “straight” category. I don’t think homosexuality can or should be “cured” any more than heterosexuality can or should be “cured”, but no one should be declaring “You’re gay/straight! You can now never find anyone of the ‘wrong’ sex attractive!” You don’t really choose who you’re attracted to, but that doesn’t mean you can only ever be attracted to one sex, and if you like men now you could never like women later. I’m not concerned with people who fall in love with a person of a sex they were previously unattracted to; I am concerned with people who try to be attracted to a sex they are not out of some sense that their true desire is wrong or sinful, because I suspect they’re dooming themselves to misery and failure by trying to ignore and deny their true desires. People are attracted to people, not just a certain genitalia, and it seems remarkably silly to me for anyone to object to one person’s love of another because of whether that person is an XX or an XY.
As I see it, Flinx, you were a man who was previously wholly attracted to men. Then you fell in love with a woman. I don’t label you as homosexual or heterosexual or bisexual; you’re a man who has previously only found men attractive but now finds a woman attractive. This is a far cry from a person who truly is only attracted to the same sex, but tries desperately to pretend they aren’t. That attitude is remarkably unlikely to work; this person could no more choose to be attracted to the sex they’re not than you could choose to be unattracted to Rose.
Wise words, Gaudere. Thank you for not labelling me. Some people seem to think that I’m being “immoral” by dating Rose, calling me essentially a traitor to my orientation, but I think that that’s totally untrue. It’s like you say, I can’t not be attracted to Rose. I realize that for others things are different than they are for me, so we’ll leave it at that.
What Gaudere said, with a caveat - Flinx, you’re the one who has in the past labelled yourself gay (and in doing so invited a lot of flack, i.e., your thread titled, “This queer’s switching teams”). Don’t praise others for not labelling you when you’re the one doing it to yourself. I put it to you that if you had said from the beginning you had been sexually confused and/or simply stated you find yourself attracted to men and now found yourself attracted to a woman, and not pushed your “I don’t want to be gay anymore!” agenda or seemed to celebrate wanting some desperate lunge at “normalcy,” then people might not have questioned your life choices or motives at this point.
Then again, perhaps it’s just that neither of us are as eloquent as Gaudere.
Esprix
I have a lot better things to do with my time than worry about other people’s sexual orientation. You want to have sex with men, that’s none of my business. You fall in love with a nice woman, well good for you. As long as you’re not doing anything dishonest, criminal or illegal, and you’re happy, well good for you.
It seems intuitive that the truth should be absolute, but I think that’s an illusion. We really can’t talk about the Truth itself, we can only talk about statements that attempt to express true propositions. When you get right down to the nitty-gritty, we can never be certain that a statement represents the truth, or is merely an relatively accurate fiction.
An objective theory should be invariant across different individuals. But that’s a characteristic of the statement itself, not proof of its underlying, absolute truth. Science does not deal in absolute truth, much as some naive scientists might assert so. But the whole approach to science belies that view. Science is conditional, changeable. That’s the price that science pays for objective accuracy.
For you or Adam to profess your own beliefs is legitmate. For you, or any other person to claim your beliefs are equivalent to agreed-upon standards of objective proof is nothing less than self-righteousness and arrogance.
I don’t mean to troll at all, but…
SingleDad, you are awesome. You have completely illuminated and coherently expressed every opinion I believe but have been less than lucid in explaining.
Will you marry me?
And if not, can I quote you once in a while?
Single Dad:
So you say.
Honestly, I feel like what you’re saying is, “You know, I don’t mind if someone believes in the teachings of Jesus, but you guys treat it like gospel!”
Of course Christians are going to claim that they have a hammerlock on Truth. That’s one of the main tenets of the religion (though individual Christians may have their own thoughts about it). No one gets to God except through Jesus. End of story. No allowances for good behavior. If you don’t believe that, it’s not because you have an equally valid set of beliefs which work as well for you as Chistianity does for others, it’s because you haven’t yet accepted the Good News.
You’re starting from a different set of basic premises than (for instance) Zion. For you (correct me if I’m wrong), scientific inquiry offers truth, and there ends our capacity to know. For Christians, beyond science lies God, who offers Truth (again, folks, CMIIW).
Obviously, all generalizations are bad, and the above doesn’t apply across the board. It seems like this discussion requires that common ground if it’s going to progress.
Esprix wrote:
Yes, Esprix, I did indeed label myself as “queer,” “gay,” and “homosexual” in the past. Note the bolded words. Self-concepts can change; attitudes also. This is what has happened to me. I no longer feel the need for a label describing my sexuality. Change does occur over time.
SingleDad wrote:
Assuming you’re talking to me, SD: Who has “agreed-upon” these standards of “objective proof” anyway? And who’s to say that just because they are agreed-upon, they are correct? A group of flat-earthers can agree that the earth is flat, and to them, the evidence IS objective proof, whereas to me, it’s nonsense. Surely you’re not saying that something agreed-upon is automatically something true? Even if it’s looked upon as “objective,” does that mean everyone must adhere to your standards of objectivity? Sounds a little self-righteous to me…