I would object to both your logic and your facts — not to mention the feigning of ignorance to further a falsehood. No sale!

My read of history says the Naturalists resisted the Big Bang because of its Creationist implications, not Christians — that is, until the Inflationary Theory came along to explain away the apparent specialness of Earth.

Thanks!!
Wtb

Thanks Terrence!!

The existence of human hermaphrodites is not a problem for my “Position Statement on Alternative Sexualities.” Let’s consider them point by point.

1. On reification, we know what causes hermaphrodites and it is NOT a thing called “sexual orientation.” Sexual orientation remains a concept without a cause-effect existence in the real world.

2. On ontology, hermaphroditism is arguably an existentially inferior state of being in comparison to being either male or female. The coupling of two hermaphrodites produces offspring only to the extent they can approximate the functionality of being male or female, hence the superiority of the latter categories over the former.

3. On axiology, what is the virtue of being a hermaphrodite. How do we know a good one when we see one? Who knows? And no one will ever know because society offers no moral system particular to hermaphrodites. And there is no chance of such a system ever being created because intersexuality is marginal to society’s main concerns. At best, intersexed individuals can choose a sex assignment and then live it out in accordance with its moral norms. At worst, they can caricature a male or female existence as best they can in terms of their specific physiology. In either case though, they DO NOT undermine the moral universe of male-female gender norms. This is NOT true of gay ideologies which do exactly that.

All of the above are just quick thoughts.

Thanks for the question!

Regards,

wtb

The teenage social role developed in the U.S. after WWII. Prior to that, people were either children or adults.

The teenage social role imposes an artificial immaturity on young people. But we’ve become so used to that infantilization we find it hard to believe people in their early teens can (and should) behave like adults.

David Farragut, for example, led a party to take command of a captured warship when he was 12! Thomas Edison was a publisher. Ben Franklin was an apprenticed printer. And on and on . . .

So yes, Mary, the mother of Jesus, was numerically a “teen.” But she was not a “teenager” in the present sense of the word. The difference is well-documented.

See Psychologically Relevant.

Also, see “The Teenage Mystique.”

On the need for Joseph to “put Mary away,” I think you may be using “de facto” incorrectly. “De facto” normally contrasts with “de jure.” The latter “concerns law.” The former “concerns fact.” If the relationship between Joseph and Mary were “de facto marriage,” then they would be living as husband and wife as a matter of fact, but not as a matter of law. That would be exactly the opposite of what actually occurred. Instead, their relationship was a “matter of law” that specifically did NOT include living together as a “matter of fact.”

Thanks for your comment!

Bill Brewer

Lot’s of problems with either “what” you’re saying or “how” you’re saying it — maybe both.

For now, suffice to say I’m having trouble even getting past your first sentence, “Man’s Adaptive Evolution (AE) process has been lauded as the greatest advancement known to science….”

Assuming the subsequent sentence explains what you mean, the “advancement” in view appears to be that of “explaining” how modern humans came to be the way they are.

If so, then I understand why “lauded” would be used passively to avoid identifying the source of praise. Who would say such a thing!

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of scientific advancements that rank higher than scientific theories on how humans evolved.

Claims to the contrary remind me of the med school professor who wouldn’t provide recommendations for any of his students unless they accepted the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution but who would not explain how belief in that theory would actually affect the practice of medicine.

It seems to me the present world would proceed without difficulty if all naturalistic theories of human origins were zeroed out of collective and individual memory.

Once we get past the first sentence, then we have the problem of reification; i.e., treating the AE process (a concept) as if it exists in a cause/effect relationship in the real world — a common fallacy. Same story with “Mankind … has sentenced humanity ….”

After that, we need to talk about certainty; i.e., psychological, epistemic, and metaphysical. Science can achieve epistemic certainty, but not metaphysical certainty. You seem to be treating scientific knowledge as if it can be metaphysically certain. Such a thing is not possible. Science can only achieve epistemic certainty. It does that by defining and then complying with its domain-specific criteria for knowledge.

From there, we get into a host of other issues. For example, treating humans perceptions as particularly biased while accepting the perceptions of scientific instruments as particularly unbiased. X-ray detectors are biased toward detecting x-rays. Human eyes are built for light rays. How are perceptions from the former more real than the latter?

Lots of value judgments implicit in negative evaluations, conflation of “fact” with meaning . . . and on and on.

Overall I would say you’re adopting a scientific posture to advance non-scientific opinions.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

billb

Man’s Adaptive Evolution (AE) process has been lauded as the greatest advancement known to science, and hitherto rightfully so. From the dawn of civilization……… evolved him into an aggressive, highly intelligent, humanoid animal with a fabricated illusion of his own intuitively-derived, experience-based, instinct-driven subjective ’sense of reality’; simultaneously incapable of accepting the counter-intuitive objective reality of an external world .

A theory that explains the inexplicable: mankind’s blatant disregard for his environment, his gluttonous misuse of natural resources, his failure to properly identify universal survival threats, and most cataclysmic, his globally-wide failure to embrace the two great, prophetic, revolutionary theories of the twentieth century; relativity and quantum mechanics. The implications of this are staggering; Mankind, barring an unfunded intervention from the scientific community, has sentenced humanity to an eminent and untimely ‘Extinction Event’.

This synthesized illusion of reality (a hologram in effect) has been well documented in the scientific community. Research in neuroscience has irrefutably proven that the mind actually augments the crude two-dimensional, blurred afferent images, sounds, smells, and context clues, stimulating our sensory receptors into the sharp, clear, crisp ‘fabricated’ images our minds intuitively project as reality.

Like an artist, the human mind, cleverly uses form, dimensionality, animation, colorization, and shadowing to virtually ‘paint’ a picture’ that satisfies it’s intuitive whims, while simultaneously refusing to accept the weird, bizarre, alien, counter-intuitive external reality endorsed by modern physics.

Paradoxically, the human mind protects it’s ‘illusion’ of reality by deploying an armory; the human psyche’s insurmountably powerful defense mechanisms; first, and most formidable, denial and then, as necessary, rationalization, repression, regression, and dissociation, affectively closing off Man’s mind to the external input of alternate counter-intuitive realities, concepts, or change.

The implications of this, as touched upon above, are staggering; encompassing every aspect of decision making. Furthermore, the instinctive visceral animalistic behaviors of territorialism, aggressiveness, hatred, violence, anger, rage, and lack of conscience go unabated.

Cognizant of our specie’s bias early on,, the scientific community was, non-the less blindsided by the shear tenacity of the human psyche.

In the bizarre world of quantum mechanics, the ‘conserved parity’ of these perceptions between humans of like universes, as well as the astounding revelation that a weird, alien counter-intuitive physical reality exists,( ‘outside the mind’s eye’) is conveniently delegated to the abstract, obscure realm of Theoretical Physics, with its pathetic ‘It’s only a theory’ mentality.

Robert Castleton Wormus, Theoretical Physicist

2275 W 25th St, lot 114
San Pedro, California, 90732, U.S.A. (310) 953-5939
IMNUBGENTL@AOL.COM

“The country has lost the service of a great American”— spoken, not in observation, but in objection.

Where have we heard that complaint before? … seems to me it was gays in the military.

Petraeus thus serves to clarify the broad ethical revolution that first brought “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) to the military and then led to its repeal.

My point here is traditional sexual norms cannot coexist with the “ethics” of sexual orientation.

The latter exist only in negation or caricature of the former. If we have one, in the long-run, we can’t have the other.

The irony of the present path is that it leads to a situation where those who are committed to traditional Western sexual norms represent the security risks (as with Petraeus)— not GLBTIQs.

Disputes over the need for Petraeus to resign and the necessity of Obama’s acceptance should make the ongoing inversion of “gay versus straight” ethical burdens fully apparent. (“Gay versus straight” is in parenthesis because the rubric symbolizes the broader contest between traditional and non-traditional sexual norms of all kinds.)

If Petraeus’ “peccadillo” had involved homosexuality, major players within the mainstream culture would have jumped to his defense. Since it did not, they can only regret the sad consequences of outdated, puritanical ways of thinking.

Since several people have asked similar questions, I am replacing my original response of November 2011 as follows:

The relevant passage from Origen is not in the main manuscripts attributed to Origen. It comes from Fragment 36 on page 249-250 of Volume 2 of A.E. Brooke’s Greek text.

You can download both volumes at the following links:
Vol 1
Vol 2

Since most people don’t read Greek, I’ve revised the main body of my post to include Everett Ferguson’s translation of relevant paragraphs.

You can find Ferguson’s quote at Google Books at Baptism in the Early Church.

I’m also including Beasley-Murray’s thoughts as in my original response below:

Hope this helps!

Best regards,

Bill Brewer

—————————————
In the face of the incredulous expostulation of Nicodemus in v 4 the expression “to be begotten from above” is expounded as being begotten of water and Spirit. What is the relation of “water” and “Spirit”? Origen suggested that here “water” differs from “Spirit” only in ἐπίνοια, i.e., in “notion,” not in ὑπόστασις, “substance” (Commentary, 2:249 f., ff. in A. E. Brooke’s edition). Calvin in like fashion interpreted water and Spirit as meaning the same thing, comparable to “Spirit and fire” in the preaching of John the Baptist (John, 1:64–65).

Beasley-Murray, G. R. (2002). Vol. 36: Word Biblical Commentary : John. Word Biblical Commentary (48). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

The indwelling Spirit manifested in miraculous phenomena (as described in the New Testament) is a figure exclusive to the kairotic creation of the apostolic church and is not normative for the post-apostolic church.

Here again, common sense would understand the Spirit in this way, but most commentators assume otherwise– and that’s why the Holy Spirit is such a contentious subject among present-day Christians.

See “Spirit” for posts on the Holy Spirit.

In the meantime, inability to identify sexual orientation with any real-world entity rules it out on the principle of parsimony (Ockham’s razor).

Gays push the notion of sexual orientation though because the real causes of homosexuality are mundane and uncompelling grounds for mainstreaming homosexuality into society.

So for many gays, “sexual orientation” is just a pose to gain acceptance. In private they consider their sexual behavior a matter of choice.

But I suppose the “true believers” in sexual orientation would consider such honesty as evidence of inauthenticity — no comment on the huge irony . . .

A related point here is alternative genders are not all equal. Bisexuals are less welcome among gay devotees because their behavior blurs the very distinction gays want to emphasize.

Thanks for the conversation!

billb

BTW, for more exercise on reification, see the illustration below on the “average apple.”

The answer is “neither.”

Apple “B” happens to have the same weight as the average apple, but it IS NOT the average apple.

Prove this by eliminating Apple B. Has the average apple changed in Basket 1?

No, because the average apple is entirely abstract.

The point here is that all of the real-world factors that lead to homosexual behavior can be gathered up and labeled “sexual orientation” as an easy way of conceptualizing those factors as a whole. The danger of doing that though would be to mistakenly treat sexual orientation as if it existed in the real world of cause and effect.

Gay activists, however, intend that very thing because their ideology cannot survive apart from that mistake.

The average apple can’t be eaten and the reality of “sexual orientation” as a thing in itself ought not be swallowed.

Thanks for your interest in the article.

Reification errors (fallacies) are so beguiling (and so common) because most people do not understand/appreciate the abstract (indirect) relationship between concepts and reality.

The unavoidable remedy is more practice in deconstructing the mental shorthand that so easily attributes causes and effects to concepts rather than to things that actually exist in the real world.

This is difficult because reifications are indistinguishable from figures of speech unless the reifications become the grounds for actions/arguments.

For example, “my wife is a jewel” would ordinarily be understood simply as a metaphor. It would, however, be exposed as a reification if I were to argue “since my wife is a jewel, she should be taken to the jeweler if she becomes ill.”

It’s also difficult because concepts (e.g., “average”) offer so much in the way of explanatory power that they naturally invite misuse in illegitimate or misleading argumentation (e.g., reification fallacies). When that happens, people can be led astray (e.g., “Switzerland is flat”).

A major point of my article is that “sexual orientation” is a concept whose explanatory power resides entirely in the ease with which it is reified and then used as a means of justifying homosexuality.

In the real world though, homosexuality is entirely explained, not by individual embodiments of particular sexual orientations, but by a variety of cultural, educational, familial, physiological, experiential, volitional, etc. influences that lead to same-sex sexual activity. Needless to say, there is nothing in these predisposing influences (individual or aggregated) that could be used to privilege homosexual behavior.

That’s the reason gay activists are so keen on the reification and embodiment of sexual orientation as the explanation/cause of homosexuality.

On your specific question, I used the illustration of “on average, Switzerland is flat” to illustrate how the misuse of a concept in an argument can produce conclusions that give a false impression of reality. Truth is the concept of average has NO explanatory power in terms of topography.

The connection is “sexual orientation” is also a concept that can be misused in argumentation to give a false impression of reality. “Sexual orientation” has NO explanatory power in terms of explaining/justifing why people engage in same-sex activity. The real-world causes of same-sex activity are a variety of influences as described above.

You can also look at the connection in terms of granularity. The concept of average is inherently non-granular in taking a myriad of actual altitudes and returning only one abstract result— a result BTW that has no necessary connection to the real world.

Likewise, the concept of sexual orientation passes over all the real-world factors predisposing to homosexuality and returns only one abstract explanation, again with no necessary connection to the real world.

The reification of the former would lead us to believe Switzerland is flat. The reification of the latter would have us believe homosexuality is actually caused by a thing called “sexual orientation.” Both conclusion would be wrong.

At this point, I may be guilty of over-analysis. My original intent with the “Switzerland is flat” illustration was to create a willingness to re-think the reality of sexual orientation and its utility in explaining homosexuality.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

billb