Discussing non-monogamy with religious people..

[Cpl2share]

According to the Bible: Adam and Eve were the original parents. The Bible only names two sons as decendants. Who continued the race? The sons had to either reproduce with Eve or with an un-named sister. This means that God is okay with incest. This will usually cause the person to become completely flustered and re-evaluate the implications of questioning someone elses sexual "morals" based on the Bible.

[intuition897]

And I do respect your right to believe what ever you want as long as it does not infringe on me. And that is the rub.
You keep refering to my lack of religion as a belief, well it's no such thing.

Well then I guess we're arguing about being in agreement. No rub here...unless you want one.

Blade, another bit of scripture I like to point people to is Romans 14. It basically just tells people that everyone is different and worships in his or her own way...so everybody just mind their own business and don't make life more difficult for one another. It's confusing enough as it is. It refers to food, but food and sex have a great many parallels so it's applicable to either. Not sure if this helped or not.

EDIT>> BTW, I don't know if it helps or hinders your purposes that it was written by Paul. I like to think of the Bible as being divinely inspired, but translated by imperfect humans. Like pure light being filtered through a dirty lens. When you rely on a human being to project the message he's received to others, he can't help that his collected memories and life lessons colour the message. Paul was certainly a "colourful" character.

[Alura]

I'm no fan of Saul of Tarsus. It's my opinion that he changed and confused Jesus' teachings.

For instance, Jesus spoke little of sexuality and a lot about love. Paul began today's Christians' negative view of sexuality. Some historians believe he was small, perhaps a dwarf, deformed, perhaps a hunchback, and paranoid. In any case, it is not likely that he was a man most women would choose to flirt with. Perhaps that was the reason for his negativity. One thing, to me, is certain. He did not develop his attitude from Jesus' teachings.

Why Constintine chose to include Saul's writings when he ordered the Bible to be compiled is a mystery to me unless the reason was for better control of the masses. Saul's letters did not build upon the values Jesus tried to teach.

Mr. Alura

[dragonblade]

Alura,

Where did you find this info about saul though? Any references you can link me to? I've been looking. but thus far haven't found what I am looking for..

Thanks

~Blade~

[Alura]

What information do you mean, Blade? His attitude or his appearance?

For his attitude, just read his epistles in the Bible. There is no way his "hellfire and brimstone" attitude came from the Prince of Peace. Where Jesus was kind, understanding and caring, Saul was brutal and impatient. He seemed to not like women much. Women flocked around Jesus and he respected them.

A key, I think, to his writings is that Saul was convinced that God was furious (he failed to understand that fury was not a part of Jesus' personality) because God's only begotten son had been curcified. Therefore, God would surely destroy the world tomorrow, if not five minutes from now. Since the end of the world was at hand, surely mankind should think of nothing else, including sex.

His appearance is somewhat more difficult. In the early Sixties, Hugh Hefner wrote a series of articles in Playboy about Paul. I don't remember Hef's references, of course.

In the Seventies, I came to know an American college professor who taught at a German university. His German wife was an Egyptologist, well studied in Middle-Eastern history. She knew a lot about Saul.

More recently, we had a historian who posted on this board, Quin, who wrote about Saul in a thread similar to this one. She's since left the board. I have no idea how to reach her to learn her sources.

A university library might be a better place to conduct research on Saul of Tarsus than the internet.

I'm sorry I can't help more. The ugliness of Paul, both mental and physical, have been supressed in history for two thousand years. A researcher must be determined.

Mr. Alura

[richdon03]

I'm no fan of Saul of Tarsus. It's my opinion that he changed and confused Jesus' teachings.

For instance, Jesus spoke little of sexuality and a lot about love. Paul began today's Christians' negative view of sexuality....
Mr. Alura

Others believe his views on sexuality were as they were because he was a homosexual who hated that part of himself. In either case, I find his views in direct contrast to Christs teachings as well. Unfortunately, much of Christendom has taken to following Paul's teachings as though they came from Christ.

Most would be well-served to revisit Romans 14 as pointed out by Intuition897 (My forum heroine! ). That is little-known and too rarely emphasized in this day and time. In addition, it is balanced in that it should put this argument to rest. In essence: Believe what you believe. Believe it with all your heart, but keep it to yourself, lest you risk shaking someone else's belief.

Blade, you have nothing to prove to your friend, but you must be careful not to damage his belief-systems.


WOW! What a great discussion!

Happy Holidays to you all!
:christmas

[Alura]

Saul is definitely an enigma; an enigma, in my opinion, not worth trying to solve.

His teachings were diametrically opposed to Jesus'. That's all I need to know.

Mr. Alura

[oddcouple2841]

How many here have read Heinlein's JOB: A Comedy of Justice and Stranger in a Strange Land and did they affect your beliefs? Looking through the old posts I find some discussion and here seems like a good place to reopen it.

I will have to say the he really affected my thoughts and opened my eyes to things I felt but had not really thought about. This seems especially poignant on the eve of Saturnalia (AKA Christmas).

[nice_cpl_n_bama]

As far as discussing non-monogamy with religious people the short answer is DON'T.
The ones who are open minded enough to accept the idea, and personally strong enough to overcome the anti-sex religious culture will do the research necessary. They will find out that the Biblical definitions of the words fornication, adultery, and lust are FAR different than the way they are used today. They will find out on their own that the true teachings of Christianity are loving others, not hurting others, forgiveness, and the granting of second chances.
If you attempt to discuss it with religious people you will either offend the narrow minded or preach to the choir. There isn't much point to either one.
All I can say is if the church would abandon the position of the Pharisees and quit idolizing church law and their own opinions as the Law of God people like Spoo wouldn't be forced to adopt an agnostic position. (No offence meant, Spoo. You were just a handy example.)

[sereneiders]

My lack of religion is based on a knowledgeable and reasonable assesment of the historical and scientific facts, it has nothing to do with belief.

I agree with Spoo and with you about the "who cares?" approach, however, I have to disagree with you here.

You believe on those "knowledgeable and reasonable assesment of the historical and scientific facts", and you believe it has nothing to do with belief.

No scientist today would ever dare to say "science leads to the truth". The more likely is they would say something like "science produce models allowing us to explian the subject of study observable behavior", and even so, those models still doesn't cover the whole universe of knowledge. Physics are still looking for some unifying theory able to correct those models, at least where they still collide with each other.

However, we may trace back this claim about science as something going beyond beliefs to some more than a century ago, to the positivitic approach, "if we may find all the causes, then we'll find out all the consecuences", like domino tiles in a row, you tilt the first one and you know when and how the Nth one will fall, so if there exist a God, then He only arranged the tiled and tilted the first one. You shouldn't pray because there's nothing to do about it: there's a fate and the free will is an illussion coming from not knowing the tiles arrangement.

But the same science kiked this tile's board and that very confortable tought and belief you share, opening the door again for some God to be still around, throwing dices to decide our fate. So far, the models tells us there's a limit for what we can manage to know about the cause/effect chains, leading to very controversial philosophyc approaces. So far, we rely on indirect ways to observe what cannot be seen with our own eyes, and for those indirect ways to become reliable proxies for our eyes, we give for granted that certain models indeed resemble the world's behavior well enough, and once you observe something, this also reasure the model's validity. This is the very same science you rely on to claim there's no faith leading you: an intellectual construction proven to be very usefull so far, whose value is granted by pragmatism, but that's it.

Pragmatism (a phylosophycal approach) is required as to tell this construction "is better than" any other intellectual construction (as a religion could be seen). And yet, there is people around, who have the right to claim their intellectual constructions have as much value vor them, under their phylosophies, as science for pragmatics, and even when they're outcasted by the pragmatics.

Science knowledge validation relies on the negation instead of the affirmation, a theory remains valid until someone proves it wrong, meanwhile can be supposed to be right, and no one inside this paradigm can claim it IS right. We feel confortable enough as to believe in the knowledge's validity once gathered this way.

The problem here is when whe do the same many religion appologizers does, claiming our knowledge is "the truth", that we have more grounded means to grant it valid than the means other's have to question it. The positivism (and the asociated and undeniable technological advance it provided) became so hegemonic as to push religious people to find "scientific roots" for their beliefs, and even more, this hegemony is what deems the scientific beliefs as knowledge while everithing else nor relying on science remains there as a mere belief.

And back to the OP's problem, here they are, a religous guy asking the OP to "formalize" her take on the morality of polygamy, as if he were more "scientific" himself because of being able to find more statements in the Bible supporting his own take on this, and pushing her into being more "scientific" and do the same to revalidate her own statements.

Wheter we like it or not, we all rely on faith, on a set of beliefs able to make us feel confortable in our every day life, whether it is science, one religion or another, we're all in the same boat, struggling with the same old questions: where we came from, why are we here, where we'll go, and even the denial of those question's answers value is an attempt to answer them.

The problem arouses when someone else challenges ourt set of beliefs by exposing us to some other set of beliefs, telling us those other beliefs are "more solid" than ours.

Regarding those questions, no one have a "solid enough" belief, so I endorse Spoo's "who cares?" answer. It's much like discussing the sex of the angels.

My question for the OP is... WHY do you need to justify your beliefs in front of your coworker?

[dragonblade]

Thanks all for posting. Sorry that I haven't been around, but you know Christmas with the opening of presents and the further opening of the darn plastic that surrounds kids toys...I'm finally out of that fray

Firstly, to address Sereneiders, it's not that I need to justify my beliefs to him, to me, it's intellectually stimulating, and I like being challenged. I've noticed that he has started to dodge the topics covered though, because he hasn't been able to counter what I've said. He's the same age as myself, (25) and he just got married 4 months ago, and I find it interesting to discuss with him things that he never even contemplated before we started discussing (his words not mine).

He wasn't at work today, so no further discussion ensued, but I was talking with a couple other people who wanted to know what we were talking about in depth and I just skimmed the issue saying it was about differences of beliefs and learning from one another.

They went on to say that Jehovah's Witnesses are taught to lie to people to draw them in and try to convert them and I might as well not really discuss differences of belief. That their magazine "The Watchtower" told them how to approach people and dismantle their beliefs in attempt to draw them in and lie if necessary. No offense intended if there are any JWs here, but is that true? The other question is: Isn't their bible a lot different from the standard one (for instance KJV)? Note: most of the people in my work are "Christians" and even hold prayer meetings now and again during lunch hour. I don't know if I agree with their approaches, but they mostly leave me alone about that stuff. I never knew Louisiana was "Bible Belt" until I moved here. Anyway, is that stuff true? Or are they basically just saying it because JW's aren't "like them". Just a side note/question out of curiousity.

When he comes back to work I am going to point him to Romans 14 like Intuition suggested. (She's my forum heroine too Richdon03 ) I really think this has been a good thread, I've learned a lot about different view points and I value them all.

~Blade~