Biblically illiterate

I understand that the world (and by world I mean the Western world in general and America in particular) is becoming more fractious, contentious and polarizing. One need not look much further than television news or social networks to get a view of the divide that separates many people today.

Gone, seemingly at least, are the days of civil discussion, earnest but respectful debate and the ability to critique and argument rather than the person presenting it. And it happens everywhere, politics, economics, religion, sports, television shows. People it seem just love to hate, to argue, to belittle, to put down others.

Too often though it has devolved into snarky one-liners or just as bad internet "meme" posters. Those quips that with the single click of a button can express to all and sundry just how much or how little you know about something but at least you will look (apparently) edgy or cool or ironic or witty or something while doing it.

Of course you are doing this the best if you can subvert the authorities upon which your opponent relies. This is of course a very strong tactic for debating. If you can take the authority that your opponent appeals to and demonstrate that it is either not an authority (for a further look at appeals to authorities look here) or that it means the opposite of what is being contended, then you've really done some damage.

For instance, if an atheist was discussing a matter with a theist (a Christian perhaps) and was able to use the Bible to refute the theists argument, well that would be very powerful.

How much more so if you combine this method of criticism with an internet meme?

Wow.

The text is rather blurry but reads:

Gay Rights?
"What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?" 1 Corinthians 5:12

I have to assume that it is meant to be an earth shattering critique of the Christian stance on homosexuality and the current gay marriage issue, presented in a way that is both powerful and edgy.

To be honest, on the surface it does seem to be a powerful argument. Using a verse from the Bible to oppose those who are said to represent the Bible. That, however, is on the surface.

Where things start to fall apart is when one begins to look at the verse in question and then to place it in its context.

9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 11 But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”

So if you look at verse 12 you can see that it does indeed say what the poster says it does, but when looked at in context it does nothing to silence the Christian voice concerning the notion of gay rights, as the poster would contend.

The Apostle Paul begins by saying that the people of this world, those who are apart from Christ, are immoral. They are all immoral. That the only way to truly escape immorality is to leave earth. He tells those in the Corinthian church to not associate with such people. That he is not concerned with those outside the body of Christ, those he will leave to God to judge. Paul is focused on the body of believers, on building them up in truth. He is writing to them for the express purpose of addressing their concerns and issues, not those of the wider world and as such what is going on in the wider world is of no consequence in this matter.

So he does not say that what happens outside of the Church is irrelevant or amoral or inconsequential, but rather that it is completely immoral. That it is so bad that to protect one's self from its taint, one should isolate themselves from it as much as possible. This is of course what some people have chosen to do, to isolate themselves from the world, by living in monasteries and the like.

Others though try to engage with the world, just as Paul did and as did Jesus Christ himself. The message of the Bible, of Christianity, and expressed here is that apart from Christ the world is lost, that we are in need of saving and that that salvation comes through Christ alone.

So this is one reason that Christians have traditionally engaged with their society and communities, to share the Gospel of Christ.

In today's age though, the reasons have shifted a bit.

I have to assume that the person who wrote that poster and those that help to spread it on the internet (at last count 23,126 people had shared it on Facebook alone) believe in and hold to the notion of the separation of Church and State as expressed in the American constitution and generally applied in modern liberal secular democracies across the west.

Okay. So the Church should be separate from the State, it should not be able to dictate policy to the State nor should it be force legislative changes upon the State. This being the case, the converse must be true as well. That the State should be separate from the Church, that it should not be able to dictate policy to the Church, nor should it be able to force doctrinal changes upon the Church.

But what about when the two "realms" intersect? Who has final say?

Many churches and religious organizations operate hospitals, schools, charity organizations and other institutions apart from the primary church function. Are these extensions of the church afforded the same protections as the Church itself? Should they?

For instance, the state should not be able to dictate to the church who should or shouldn't be a minister or elder or deacon in the church. Should the state be able to dictate who can and should work at church run hospitals, schools and the like? Should or shouldn't is moot, as the state does in fact dictate to such church run organizations through labor law and the like.

So an organization started by the church, organized and run by the church is not autonomous from the state as the Church is because it lies outside of what would be seen as the primary function of the Church. Even though it will try to hold to the same convictions, ideals and principles as the Church, church run organizations can have those curtailed by they state. As such people engage with the state in order to voice their opinions on how the state is affecting such church institutions.

An example is the debate on employer provided insurance plans covering prescription birth control. The Catholic Church, in particular, and other religious groups are opposed to this. They don't want to be paying for a person's birth control as they see it as a means of and a validation of sinful actions. In a liberal secular society such as the west, people are free to engage in sexual activity with consenting adults as they choose. So if a woman wants to have sex with a different guy every week, that is up to her. If a woman chooses to abstain, that is up to her. If she chooses to live in a monogamous relationship, that is up to her. Using birth control is also up to her, regardless of the frequency of her sexual activity. The Church though sees sex outside of marriage as sinful and does not want to condone or endorse it by providing birth control to any or everyone. The Catholic Church goes further and sees contraception methods themselves as sinful and outside the bounds of a Biblical sexual marriage relationship and opposes birth control coverage on those further grounds.

So, as employers the Church is being dictated to by the State and can have their religious principles violated by the state. As such the the Church has no alternative but to try and defend their principles by voicing their opinion in the public square of ideas because the State says they have to.

If there is no separation then there must be engagement, which brings us back to "Apostle Paul Says."

The author thinks that that singular verse, taken out of context, means that the Church should be silent concerning the gay rights issue. The State though has said that if the Church wants to try and maintain their principles and ideals they have to engage with society concerning the issue, because in the end the State will make a decision and the State will force Church organizations to follow the States rulings regardless of whether or not the Church sees it as a violation of its principles or not.

Gay rights advocates have the right to have their voices, their position heard. So too does the Church. Wanting to simply silence one or the other voice, to censor them, does not help society, but hurts it. Hasn't that been the message of the past century? That to silence and censor women is wrong? That to silence and censor the homosexual community is wrong? How then can silencing the religious community be right?

Viagra does not equal an abortion

The sheer idiocy of people such as this is mind boggling. 

Before getting a prescription for Viagra or other erectile dysfunction drugs, men would have to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency, if state Sen. Nina Turner has her way.

The Cleveland Democrat introduced Senate Bill 307 this week. 

A critic of efforts to restrict abortion and contraception for women, Turner says she is concerned about men’s reproductive health. Turner’s bill joins a trend of female lawmakers submitting bills regulating men’s health. Turner said if state policymakers want to legislate women’s health choices through measures such as House Bill 125, known as the “Heartbeat bill,” they should also be able to legislate men’s reproductive health. Ohio anti-abortion advocates say the two can’t be compared.

This 'senator' is doing nothing more than playing a game of tit-for-tat. She is upset that a rival bill has been put for the state senate that would see abortion laws changed to restrict abortions when a heartbeat is detected in the fetus.

Now however you stand on abortion (I'm against) one cannot make the logical correlation between a man receiving a doctor's prescribed medication and abortion. Just as you can't make a logical correlation between a restriction on abortion and erectile dysfunction.

So rather than stand up in the state senate and make a case for the defeat of House Bill 125, this elected official spends her time playing childish games with people's lives simply because she can.

Hypocrisy and the NY Times

So there is a big furor happening in America now concerning the governments plan to have medical insurance cover birth control. "A provision of the 2010 healthcare reform law mandates that basic birth control services for women be included in as part of any employer-provided health insurance plan." 

Not surprisingly the Catholic Church stood up and said that they would fight this.

Not surprisingly this brought about criticism of the Catholic Church by various groups including the Freedom From Religion Foundation which ran the following ad in the NY Times:

Here is the ad's copy:

Dear ‘Liberal’ Catholic: 

It’s time to quit the Roman Catholic Church. 

It’s your moment of truth. Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs? Whose side are you on, anyway?
It is time to make known your dissent from the Catholic Church, in light of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ ruthless campaign endangering the right to contraception. If you’re part of the Catholic Church, you’re part of the problem. 

Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club? Why are you aiding and abetting a church that has repeatedly and publicly announced a crusade to ban contraception, abortion and sterilization, and to deny the right of all women everywhere, Catholic or not, to decide whether and when to become mothers? When it comes to reproductive freedom, the Roman Catholic Church is Public Enemy Number One. Think of the acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, unwanted pregnancies, social evils and deaths that can be laid directly at the door of the Church’s antiquated doctrine that birth control is a sin and must be outlawed. 

A backer of the Roman Catholic presidential candidate says that if women want to avoid pregnancy we should put an aspirin between our knees? Catholic politicians are urging that the right to contraception should be left up to states? Nearly 50 years after the Supreme Court upheld contraception as a privacy right, we’re going to have to defend this basic freedom all over again? 

You’re better than your church. So why? Why continue to attend Mass? Tithe? Why dutifully sacrifice to send your children to parochial schools so they can be brainwashed into the next generation of myrmidons (and, potentially, become the next Church victims)? For that matter, why have you put up with an institution that won’t put up with women priests, that excludes half of humanity? 

No self-respecting feminist, civil libertarian or progressive should cling to the Catholic faith. As a Cafeteria Catholic, you chuck out the stale doctrine and moldy decrees of your religion, but keep patronizing the establishment that menaces public health by serving rotten offerings. Your continuing Catholic membership, as a “liberal,” casts a veneer of respectability upon an irrational sect determined to blow out the Enlightenment and threaten liberty for women worldwide. You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop. 

If you imagine you can change the church from within — get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research — you are deluding yourself. If you remain a “good Catholic,” you are doing “bad” to women’s rights. You’re kidding yourself if you think the Church is ever going to add a Doctrine of Immaculate ContraCeption. 

It is disgraceful that U.S. health care reform is being held hostage to the Catholic Church’s bizarre opposition to medically prescribed contraception. No politician should jeopardize electability for failure to genuflect before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. (Question to ask your Bishop: Does he hold up an umbrella against the rain? Isn’t that just as “unnatural” as using a condom or diaphragm?) 

Your Church hysterically claims that secular medical policy is “an assault against religious liberty.” You are savvy enough to realize that the real assault is by the Church against women’s rights and health care. As Nation columnist Katha Pollitt asks: Is it an offense against Jehovah Witnesses that health care coverage will include blood transfusions? The Amish, as Pollitt points out, don’t label cars “an assault on religious liberty” and try to force everyone to drive buggies. The louder the Church cries “offense against religious liberty” the harder it works to take away women’s liberty. 

Obama has compromised, but the Church never budges, instead launching a vengeful modern-day Inquisition. Look at its continuing directives to parish priests to use their pulpits every Sunday to lobby you against Obama’s policy, the Church’s announcement of a major anti-contraception media campaign — using your tithes, contributions and donations — to defeat Obama’s laudable health care policy. The Church has introduced into Congress the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, ” a bill to place the conscienceless Catholic Church’s “rights of conscience” above the rights of conscience of 53 percent of Americans. That the Church has “conscience rights” to deny women their rights is a kissing cousin to the claim that “corporations are people.” The Church that hasn’t persuaded you to oppose contraception now wants to use the force of secular law to deny contraceptive rights to non-Catholics. 

But is there any point in going on? After all, your misplaced loyalty has lasted through two decades of public sex scandals involving preying priests, children you may have known as victims, and church complicity, collusion and coverup going all the way to the top. Are you like the battered woman who, after being beaten down every Sunday, feels she has no place else to go? 

But we have a more welcoming home to offer, free of incense-fogged ritual, free of what freethinker Bertrand Russell called “ideas uttered long ago by ignorant men,” free of blind obedience to an illusory religious authority. Join those of us who put humanity above dogma.
As a member of the “flock” of an avowedly antidemocratic club, isn’t it time you vote with your feet? Please, exit en Mass. 

Very truly,
Annie Laurie Gaylor
Co-President
Freedom From Religion Foundation

Following on this the groups "Stop Islamization of Nations" and the "American Freedom Defense Initiative" tried to place an ad in the NY Times pointing out the destructive elements of Islamic groups and their influence on American culture. To make their point, they copied the language and style of the ad that was run by the NY Times criticizing the Catholic Church.

Here is the ad and its copy:

Open Letter to "moderate" Muslims: 

It’s time to quit Islam. 

It’s your moment of truth. Will it be religious freedom, freedom of speech, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or imams and their wrongs? Whose side are you on? 

In light of the ongoing, ruthless, international jihad against non-Muslims, the 1,400-year record of institutionalized oppression of women, the 18,560 Islamic attacks across the world since 9/11, and the endangering of free peoples across the world, if you’re part of the Islamic jihad, you’re part of the problem. 

Why are you aiding and abetting Islamic leaders who have repeatedly and publicly announced a jihad to subjugate Christians, Jews, Hindus, and all non-Muslims, and to deny the rights of all women everywhere, Muslim or not?

Think of the acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, social evils and deaths that can be laid directly at the door of the Islam's antiquated doctrine that commands jihad and genocide. 

If you imagine you can change the mosque from within — get it to lighten up on Jew-hatred, hatred of women, hatred of non-Muslims, hatred of gays — you are deluding yourself. If you remain a “good Muslim,” you are doing “bad” to the rights of women and non-Muslims everywhere. You’re kidding yourself if you think the mosque is ever going to expunge the Qur'an of its violent texts that inspire jihad, or interpret them out of existence. 

Your mosque hysterically claims that freedom of speech and the truth about jihad and Islamic supremacism are “an assault against Islam.” You are savvy enough to realize that the real assault is by the mosque against human rights. A captured internal document of the Muslim Brotherhood declares that its goal in the U.S. is "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house." Is that an agenda you endorse? 

Obama has compromised, but Islam never budges. Instead, it is fully embarked upon a stealth jihad, using the Justice Department to force businesses and educational institutions to accommodate Islamic law -- the same Islamic law that denies thefreedom of speech, mandates death for apostates, and oppresses women and non-Muslims.

Why put up with an institution that dehumanizes women and non-Muslims -- fully 9/10ths of humanity? Ask your imam: Does he support Hamas? Hizb'Allah? The destruction of Israel? Does he condemn the slaughter of Christians in Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iraq, etc.? Does he vocally denounce Islamic honor killings, FGM, forced marriages, child marriage, polygamy? As a "moderate" Muslim, you tell yourself and the world that you have chucked out the violent doctrine and hateful, oppressive decrees of your religion, and yet you keep identifying with the ideology that threatens liberty for women and menaces freedom by slaughtering, oppressing and subjugating non-Muslims. 

There is a more welcoming home for you!

Join those of us who put humanity above the vengeful, hateful and violent teachings of Islam's "prophet." 

As a member of the “umma,” of an avowedly hateful, supremacist, and antidemocratic club, isn’t it time you vote with your feet? Please, exit en mosque. 

Very truly,
Pamela Geller
President, Stop Islamization of Nations, American Freedom Defense Initiative
Robert Spencer
Vice-President, Stop Islamization of Nations, American Freedom Defense Initiative

The ad's style and wording were specifically chosen to mimic an ad that attacked a Christian group, but replaced the Catholic Church with Islam. In so doing it was a fairly interesting method of testing their hypothesis that too many in the west, including such self proclaimed vanguards of truth and defenders of society as the NY Times. If the NY Times ran the ad, then the group would get its message out on an equal platform as the anti-Christian ad. If, however, the NY Times were to reject the ad, would it point to the very thing that the group was trying to make known?

Well, in fact the NY Times did refuse to publish the ad. Their stated reason was for the sake of the troops fighting in Afghanistan, so as not to put them in any further danger.

This of course rang hollow with many who couldn't help but point out the instances in the past when the NY Times ran articles that violated national security and knowingly put people in harms way. You can read about that more in depth here: REJECTED! WHAT THE NY TIMES WON'T RUN: COUNTER-JIHAD FACTS WHAT THE NY TIMES WILL RUN: ANTI-CATHOLIC SMEAR ADS. Included in their write up is a copy of the letter sent by the NY Times stating their reasons for rejecting the ad.

Now I'm obviously not the first, nor even the second, to write about this episode but I can't help but use what tools I have to help get this message out into the public.