Capitalists don’t give a shit about you.

As I said in response to Mark’s question a couple weeks ago (#172), it does seem to me that God’s motivation in creating is truly loving. I’m not sure I’d agree with you, Nancy, that true love doesn’t expect anything in return. A wife who truly loves her husband, for example, rightly expects him to treat her with respect, not to belittle or abuse her. Surely such expectations are wholly consistent with her truly loving him!

Yes, but if he doesn’t respect her and does abuse her that’s just too bad apparently.  It’s only an expectation after all. It’s not like the wife has a right to demand that her husband not abuse her and that he treats her with respect.  For, if she demanded such a right she would displease God by stepping out of place.

But let that pass.

Yes, because that’s just a little exercise in religiously motivated sexism and not the outrageous claim you’re looking for.

I think what you mean is that true love is unconditional, and the Bible does teach that God’s love is unconditional. Does that imply that He expects nothing in return? That doesn’t follow. For God could have other properties that would issue in obligations for those He has created. You’ve forgotten that God is also perfect justice, as well as perfect love. As a result we have certain moral obligations toward God to fulfill, such as to worship and love Him as the locus and source of supreme goodness.

So let me get this straight: God, who has created the moral structure we must follow, has decided that it is a moral obligation to worship him, otherwise we’ll be damned because he is also the justice system he created the laws for?  Does anybody see the problem with the idea that God created the moral obligation system that makes us morally obligated to follow God?

I think popular Christian piety very often overlooks the fact that we are morally obligated to believe in God. We often tell unbelievers that God loves them and offers them a relationship which they may freely accept or reject. That’s true as far as it goes, but it does not go nearly far enough. What is missing here is the fact that because of Who God is, we have a moral duty to believe in, love, and worship God with all our mind, heart, and strength, and when we fail to do so, we are morally guilty before Him and so fall under the righteous sentence of His justice. If God simply winked at sin, then He would not be perfectly just and so not perfectly good.

The problem still stands, God’s moral system is created by God, meaning if God doesn’t exist there is no moral obligation to follow God’s will.  An unbeliever would have no moral obligation to love God. Furthermore, I should think that God would have to demonstrate that we should follow his command by demonstration that they are moral commands.  Being that the Bible quite demonstrates that God is a sexist prick, I would consider us to have a moral duty to reject God, even if he did exist, for we have created ethical systems that are more just.  He is not perfect justice if he is law, judge, jury, and executioner as he is no more than a tyrant.

By ignoring the fact of our moral obligations toward God, popular Christian piety invites the response, “What kind of love is this? ‘Believe in me, or I’ll send you to hell!’” That retort is entirely appropriate for a being whom we have no moral obligation to love and obey.

Except that retort is still perfectly valid.  God created the moral obligation, demands we follow the moral obligation, and will punish us for failing to follow the moral obligation.  There is no moral obligation to follow God outside of God.  Ergo, God will send us to hell if we don’t believe per his moral obligation.  Ergo, tyrant.

But when we understand the fullness of the nature of God, then we see that while we have the ability to reject God’s love and so separate ourselves from Him forever, that does not imply that there are no consequences of such a choice. Because such a choice is profoundly evil, a perfectly just God must punish it. Just as we might say that while I have the freedom to speed down the highway at 100 miles per hour but do not have the liberty to do this because it is against the law, so I have the freedom but not the liberty to disbelieve in God.

The difference is that we have the choice to change the law in regards to speed limits as we live in a democratic society.  We can elect officials to represent us.  We have a say.  Even more so, the representatives of the law (police) exist.  They are not justice. The police do not make the law.  Ultimately, we as a society are our own law, judge, jury, and executioner. Thus, responsible to ourselves.  There is no choice among tyrants.  The only option available in this scenario is accept tyranny or be punished.  That scenario is a more profoundly evil choice. Even a benevolent tyrant is still a tyrant with no claim of authority beyond his own force.  Moral justification of authority cannot result out of having that authority.

Now in light of that, let’s think about your questions:

In creating the world, did God not expect anything in return (as in response to Him)? No, He did expect in return that we would love and worship Him as the highest good. (By “expect” we obviously mean here, not “anticipate,” but “require.” The question is, do we have certain moral requirements or obligations toward God, and the answer is clearly, “Yes.”) In fact, the first and greatest commandment of the Jewish law, according to Jesus, was, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12. 30).

As in, “Believe in me, or go to hell.”  A requirement is not a moral obligation.

That’s good of you, Nancy, to be willing to give your salvation for the sake of those whom you love. Paul said the same thing about his fellow Jews who had rejected Messiah Jesus (Romans 9. 1-5). Be assured that God loves them even more than you do. When we once understand both the depth of God’s love as shown in Christ’s sacrificial death and our moral obligation to love and worship God as the paradigm of goodness itself, then as you say, why hesitate?

So now, we’re saying that worshiping God is the ultimate good because God loves us?  I believe then, in the words of the great philosopher, Sting, “if you love somebody, set them free.” If God so loved us there would be no demand of us to acknowledge his existence.  To demand so is not perfect love.

Not even getting into the Church’s stance, what is frightening is that this action is another example of the idea that gays are dangerous to children.  Now maybe it’s just me and my privileged upbringing in middle class America, but I’ve not once had a teacher try to convert me to the gay lifestyle.  Quite frankly, it’s rather ridiculous that this sort of thing has to be brought up.

So, here’s the story, be outraged, etc…  I’m pretty sure you know what to do.

Out of the three big female villains, Ursula is the least complicated of the villains.  She’s a hideous, overweight sea-monster.  She has no vestiges of youth and there is nothing about her that could conceivably be considered pretty.   In fact, age is a pretty common factor when it comes to Disney villains, outside of the three main female villains, most, if not all of the villains in the series are older.  So what is developed is a connection between youth and goodness and between age and evil.

This relationship plays out with both Lady Tremaine (Cinderella) and the Queen (Snow White).  These two characters also introduce the idea that older women are vain, bitchy, and, when faced with competing beauty of youth, extremely jealous.

In short, Disney Princesses not only enforce the idea of beauty through a direct example, but continue the work by portraying older, less attractive women as evil.   There’s a warning to our children, if you grow up, you’re an evil, catty, bitch.

And this is without considering just how god-awful all their modern day programming is.

This is what making America better looks like.  It’s not about a a fringe movement of a political party that thinks it is having its rights tramped upon when it does not win a democratic election.  It’s about a pluralistic society with equal rights for all.

Instead, we need to be thinking about marriage’s role in sustaining the existence of the human species. When we do that, we’ll see the fundamental wisdom of the decision of the majority of California voters.

No, we sure as hell won’t see the wisdom because marriage has had fuck nothing to do with the continued existence of the human species.  It has less to do with marriage than the, “exclusive benefit of couples in love, who wanted to share a life and a household,” that you claim the plaintiffs were suing for.  If you’d taken the time to ever read one iota of literature you’d realize that marriage has a whole hell of a lot more to do with treating women as property for economic and status reasons.  I do so invite you to read Toward an Anthropology of Women and write this horseshit again.  Ten minutes of historical research on google would tell you how absolutely stupid your assertion that marriage is important to the survival of the species is.

Now, I don’t pretend to be the smartest person ever, but I kind of think that there’s only one thing really key to the survival of a species, reproduction.  As for humans, that means popping out babies, and even the Palin’s prove you don’t need to be married to do that.

However, being that f’ing stupid wasn’t enough for you.  No, you just had to go and prove yourself an absolute horse’s ass.

Marriage is about defending women

As if the above literature wouldn’t have proved how absolutely insane that statement is, you decided to just contradict your own point:

Among the many different versions of marriage in human history, very few of them have supplied the high-minded qualities that the plaintiffs feel is their right. The vast majority of marriages in the past, perhaps a majority even now, were dictated by families, clans, holy men or magicians, and enforced on the bride and groom by social pressure, enforced if necessary with brutality and violence.

Right, because marriage has, traditionally, had fuck nothing to do with love or protecting women and a whole lot more with economics and patriarchal control. That’s what makes your entire article so asinine.

In primordial terms, marriage only exists at all – in all of its permutations, pleasant or barbaric – because of the nature of human heterosexuality.

Uh, no, not at all.  First of all your very consideration of what heterosexuality is permeated on western culture, which, well, happens to not be the dominate form of culture throughout history.  And, once again, economics, economics, economics.  How many times am I going to have to point out the economic component of marriage?  When people are arranging marriages for status reasons of children that haven’t even been born yet, you’re going to have a very hard time trying to convince me that, “we need to protect female sexuality in order to assure ourselves of a future.”

Marriage is a necessary defense of a woman’s sexuality and her human liberty from determined assault by men who would turn her into a slave, a concubine – something less than fully human.

Yeah, like how many cultures treated marriage to a high degree.  Instead of group assualt she had a dedicated assailant, her husband.

That’s why so many – even the most secular, gay-admiring, civil-rights-conscious among us – feel that something more is going on with the movement to turn marriage into a device to give couples self-esteeem – or, in Walker’s terms, status in society.

Having met some of the most secular, gay-admiring, civil-rights-conscious among us, I’d have to say, bullshit.  You can’t even read an anthropology book, don’t even pretend to know what the far left is thinking. As for status, again, consult a Marxist theorist.   They’ll give you a run down on marriage as a status symbol.

We are merely voicing a sensible desire to preserve an institution that recognizes and protects the special status of women.

How about we just pay women equal wages, promote better child-care legislation, work against patriarchal notions of society, and I don’t know, actually legislate for women’s rights.  You know, maybe that would help protect the “special” status of women.  Wait, by “special status” you mean “inferior and submissive to the authority of men,” don’t you?

Asshole.

In his book, O’Collins criticises Pullman for “picking, choosing and changing” what he wants from the gospels, altering the story “over and over again in the interests of his own ‘truth’ or ideology”, making historical errors and conducting poor historical research.

Right, because picking and choosing truth and ideology was already handled at the Council of Nicaea. Pullman should know that and write accordingly.  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had the best agents and so they got in the book.  Sure, the writing’s crap, but so’s Twilight and it got published.

It’s quite the commentary on the publishing industry at the moment.

(via skepchick)