What C-16 represents to me is a threat of similar compulsions being placed on me by my states, and the popularity of this growing to a point where fiat sentiment overcomes human reason. I have no beef, per se, with C-16, it is the responsibility of Canadians to dispose of their little fascist mommy's boy and be free again. The same will be our responsibility with such tyranny comes to America, which again, is a genuine threat at this point in history, without question. — Garrett Travers

Let's look at this from the 100 mile overhead view so you can maybe understand my questioning these objections.

We have a group of people who generally are ostracized and ridiculed and thought of as sexual deviants. Their behavior is considered sinful and immoral by large segments of the population as it violates specific rules about gender roles and sexuality in our society.

Against that backdrop, objections are raised not as to the immorality of the behavior or as to how it simply violates societal norms, but as to the outrageous burden they place on average folks living day to day. Where we used to have very clear grammar rules, we now have to worry about "him," "her," and "their," when we didn't have to before.

So I drill down on this question about language burdens, and I'm told it's not the specific words that really cause the problem, but it's in the abstract, where I shouldn't have a governmental body telling me what to do as it relates to speech. The transsexual pronoun issue is just one example from that abstract concern.

I then drill down further on that question, and I'm told it's really not an issue in the abstract because it's conceded that your jurisdiction doesn't impose such prohibitions. You then explain the issue is actually in the hypothetical because you fear the cancer of Canada might spread southward and you'll then be burdened by having a government tell you how to speak. That is, today we find ourselves on the precipice, teetering back and forth, and unless we snuff out this pronoun mind control, we might as well hand over our First Amendment free speech rights to the KGB banging at the door.

My response to this is that I agree that free speech rights are worth protecting and I would object to burdens being imposed by the government with respect to it. I am however extremely suspicious when someone claims that it is the transsexual that poses our greatest risks to free speech. It makes me wonder whether this group is being singled out as the greatest threat to our free speech because they actually are, or whether it's all a pretextual effort to further attack this historically attacked group.

Scientists didn't lobby government to write a code in law claiming that Pluto must be accepted as a planetoid, or one would face rammifications administered by a monopoly on force. You know, like how Bill C-16 did? Like how the attempt to instantiate hate-speech laws has engulfed the social-reconstructionsist platform? That's specifically the difference: force. — Garrett Travers

There is no law dictating that you are required to call transsexuals anything. You can be as offensive or inoffensive as you like. The US has no hate speech laws. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/07/no-theres-no-hate-speech-exception-to-the-first-amendment/

If your beef if over a specific Canadian bill, then maybe you have point there. I really don't follow what Canada does or know how over-reaching their free speech limitations are. I'd be opposed to limiting all sorts of bigotry and stupidity because I do think the right to free speech includes that.

This is specifically because the only thing we had to go off of, again, were consitently observable, emergent characteristics of the male phenotype. All species have this detection ability, and employ them functionally, by and large. — Garrett Travers

The reason we call people male or female in the vernacular has nothing to do with their genes. It has to do with how they look and act.

So, no it isn't. And if you keep accusing people of this kind of ill-will, I'm going to show you what I think of people who would seek to use shame to overpower and dismiss reason and established science. — Garrett Travers

Of course it is. Gender roles have played and continue to play significant roles in our society and a blurring of who is male and who is female has caused the outrage. Maybe your outrage comes from the technical word changes and you'd be just as mad if we started calling bowls "cups," but I think more is at play in this battle over gender identity than just words.

And yes, it did ignite furor in the physics community, but the physics community is known for employing reason and adversarial co-operation in the pursuit of truth and homeostasis within paradigms of science. See what I'm saying? — Garrett Travers

It ignited interest and debate. There is no moral consequence to how planets are named or designated. There is when it comes genders. That's just part of the Western tradition and the norms for our society.

As far as XY, that's half correct. I am referencing XY, but only in relation to consistent, and reliably observed emergence of XY phenotypical characteristics. Thus, to expect me to do something different isn't just absurd, it is outrageous, and it is particular the perception of that expectation that has ignited furor. — Garrett Travers

Men were called "men" long before we knew anything of chromosomes. My guess is that you wouldn't know a male chromosome if you saw it, and if tomorrow you learned that half the men had XZ chromosomes and not XY ones, you'd consider yourself educated. What this means is that you likely call men "men" because they look like men and act like men. You don't call MtF transexuals "women" because they don't look that way to you. If medical science could do a better job, you might change. That is, if the person had a functioning uterus and all other sexual organs and looked indistinct from any other woman, maybe you wouldn't have any objection.

What ignited furor was the supposed immorality of men acting as women and the societal expectation that it be accepted as normal. The passion did not arise over esoteric word usage and the furor that emerges when one is asked to use a new word. I don't remember such outrage when people were asked to stop calling Pluto a planet.

Well no, the violation of reason begins with the violation of the law of identity. A male is a male forever, as determined by the male's genetic composition. "She" will always maintain the final authority over her own usage of words and the manner in which they are employed. However, I will maintain the exact same authority in the opposite direction. And her pronoun does begin to have an ontological valence at the very moment that the individual in question places an expectation of a particular kind of usage of language on the part of others. Especially a usage that violates a persons individual paradigm and coherent understanding of a concept, or word. If that isn't a factor, there is no issue. — Garrett Travers

Language is not mandated by ontology. Language is determined by use. There is no male "essence" that can be reduced to anything, including chromosomes. If a person walked about and looked in every way like a man, you would call him a man, even should you later learn of some strange chromosomal variation. This is to say that you don't use the word "man" to reference an XY constitution, but you use it to reference a host of factors, many of which are not entirely consistent from case to case. The usage of the word "man" finds itself evolving.

When I was growing up, we learned the pronoun "he" was to be used to designate the third person objective because there is no neutral personal pronoun in English. You would say, "One should always eat his green beans." Why this reasonable person had to be a man was a matter of convention, but it's since been changed. If you want to maintain it, have at it, but you'll sound antiquated by some, sexist by others. The words you use are like the clothes you wear. They communicate how you wish to present yourself.

Then you should let these people know that such a manner of usage is expected on their part to not only be employed by them consistently, and not ambiguously, but inquired of others as to whether or not they are also voluntarily willing to participate. Otherwise, it is authoritarianism lite. Keep in mind such a standard is, in fact, a fallacy of ambiguity, so the responsibility for keeping the peace as regards usage is that of the person using language differently than established usage on the part of majority of the population. — Garrett Travers

I'm not arguing for prescriptive word usage from either side, but I am pointing out that be aware of what you wish to convey when you choose your words. If you are aware that a person wishes to identify as female and you insist upon using a male pronoun to refer to her, you will not simply be communicating your desire to adhere to traditional standards, but you will communicating your lack of respect for the person you're speaking to. You can tell her to take no offense and that you're simply a traditionalist, but I don't see that really working.

Looking for intent is speculating about the content of someone's mind (non physical I would/symbolic?) Not analysing the crime scene. — Andrew4Handel

Sometimes people admit to others their intent.

Murder is usually defined as unlawful killing. — Andrew4Handel

It can be, or you might create a term for an unethical killing. That is, it is possible to condemn a particular type of killing without laws while finding other forms accepted.

That seems the ancient use. Cain's murder of Abel was condemned prior to any law being given.

Let me rephrase, cancelling as political correctness gone rogue, doesn't exist. I prefer public accountability instead. — Benkei

You're just trying to cancel cancel culture.

The right's position is that the left bullies them into silence through public shame, personal condemnation, and ostracism if they don't adopt the left's ideology. From the left, I can see why you don't care what consequences befall the wicked, but it does seem the best such a tactic will do is silence them from your ears. What that means is that they won't change their mind and will just move their conversations to the privacy of their own homes. Every now and then you'll hear their mutterings and you'll call them out again, which will just either make them more careful later or they'll start telling you to fuck off and they'll find themselves a leader.

And then we get Trump.

I do think the right has marketed their position well with the "cancel culture" designation, and I do understand why you'd like to erase that from the vocabulary by declaring it non-existent. The problem is that it works, and it works because trying to stomp someone's views out, regardless of how morally repugnant you find them, doesn't work that well against 10s of millions of people.

I'm much more positive about this whole thing than you by the way. The miles and miles and miles we have traveled in the correct direction can't be overlooked. Gay people get married in Alabama today. That was unfathomable when I was a young adult. Trans people are getting elected to public office. Conservatives conserve, they protect the status quo, they drag their feet, but there's value in that too, but they do come around when right is right.

All in good time.

Here's a perfectly good reason not to visit StarBucks and to let your grievances known by spamming them. If enough people will join, media will call it "cancel culture" again. But really, fuck Starbucks. I don't need to listen to them explain away their corporate greed, we need them to stop this and have them pay their employees a living wage. — Benkei

In your OP, you gave examples of (near) universal agreement. Slavery, for example, is something we can all condemn. I'm willing to boycott those who enslave.

I'm entirely unoffended by how much a purveyor of luxury items (your mocha latte or whatever you coffee drinkers drink) pays its CEO though. If you boycott, I don't think that's cancel culture. I just think you're fighting a distinctly first world fight, a bourgeoisie revolution of sorts.

I find cancel culture offensive in instances where people are discarded instead of tolerated in the hopes of reforming, from Rogan to Whoopi. Perfection isn't a human quality. It's just all so sanctimonious, casting stones, as if we're not all in glass houses.

But, gay signals and gaydar work well enough most of the time. — Bitter Crank

I alluded to this in a different context in this thread, but I do think humans have very strong innate social skills that allow us to navigate our complicated social world, not the least of which is the ability to locate potential sexual partners. All those unidentifiable clues come together easily for some and are impossible for others. I've heard women complain about what else they have to do for the guy to notice them, and I've seen guys asking me whether they think a girl likes them after the girl has practically thrown themselves at the guy.

I was just in a restaurant with my wife the other day and we saw our waiter stroking the hair of an attractive waitress as they talked by the cash register. My wife and I both quickly exchanged glances, and I said, "must be his bestie," which she agreed. We had both registered previously he was gay and we were figuring out why he'd be getting so cozy with the attractive waitress.

This is also why it's so difficult to alter our gender identification. The slightest clue will let us know that man in the dress is not a woman. We're just way too good at noticing little clues.

They make themselves look like a woman in order to get the social and economical benefits that women have.

Some examples:

In poor Asian countries, many young men transition into women because this way, they can more easily find work as female(-looking) singers, dancers, and prostitutes.

A petite, balding man is generally not considered attractive as a man; but if he transitions into a woman, he makes for an average or even above average good-looking woman with the psychological, social, and economical perks that come with that.

If a woman is stuck in a lowly job or doesn't climb up in her career, nobody bats an eyelid; but expectations are higher for men. So some men, afraid of career failure, transition into a woman where career failure is not so heavily stigmatized.

Male-to-female athletes: those men couldn't cut in the men's league, but they can outperform women. (How about female-to-male athletes??) — baker

Other than in the harsh reality of living in abject poverty in a third world country where men find their only option for survival is to physically alter their gender in order to enter the sex industry so they can offer themselves up to Westerners, your other examples are pretty much nonsense.

Setting that aside, determining one's motives for gender reassignment surgery doesn't require armchair psychoanalysis and speculation into their mental states, but it only requires that you ask them. Unless you're committed to there being universal conspiratorial fraud among the sisterhood of transsexuals where they all provide false reasons for their desires for transition, I think we have to take their word for why they wish to transition. The surveys don't indicate they're doing it because they're old and bald and don't get the winks and stares they once did, so they now want to install some pretty breasts on themselves to get attention.

I can say that this thread has shaken out some pretty crazy and entertaining posts, and I do thank you for your contribution in that regard.

By consenting to such a procedure, they express their disdain for social norms, and they want their disdain to be respected by those who hold to the social norms. — baker

I think the social norm they disdain is that normally they are disdained and they ask not be disdained. They want not be considered abnormal, which sounds normal enough to me, but it's also contrary to what you argued above, which is when you said that they relish being different and enjoy the freak show they throw in your face. That is, they alter their sexual organs just to make your head spin, which they wouldn't do if there weren't people like you. It's all about you I guess.

Let me switch gears just a bit so that I can tease out more of your opinions. Is what you say of transsexuals applicable to gay people? That is, do men have sex with men and act effeminately in order to gain attention and do they then try to normalize their behavior by creating laws allowing them to marry and not be discriminated upon based upon their sexual preference?

How do you and Hanover know that my claim is "not to be taken seriously, but are meant as mockery and are contemptuous."? How do you know a trans-gender person isn't doing the same - mocking social roles in a society where it is a law to wear clothes and that we have agreed that certain sexes behave in certain ways so that we can tell who is who when playing mating games? — Harry Hindu

I know you don't think you're a dark sith. But, if I'm wrong, convince me otherwise. Swear to it. Put your personal integrity on the line and tell me you do. Show me examples of how you've lived your life that way. Give me names of those who can verify this for me. Prove your seemingly absurd claim and shame me for my rush to judgment

You act like deciphering intent and motive is all that difficult. We each do it 1000s of times a day. For someone so interested in human nature and what it entails, the abilities of social animals in social settings seems to be something you think non-existent.

I know the solipsistic consequences of infinite doubt. That's the slippery slope you reference and it's not interesting or enlightening.

I trust the man who tells me he prefers men despite the lovely argument I could offer him that he's just choosing to act that way to be shocking.

The same holds for the man who identifies as female or the female who identifies as male. To the extent you can accommodate their situation without damaging another's, tell me why you need to intervene.

Sometime between the Babylonian exile and the Second Temple. But Maimonides thought it necessary to make such ideas clear. — Fooloso4

The temple housed God, so the incorporeality question wasn't fully resolved, but obviously the tension had begun regarding that issue.

The decisive factor here is that they believed that God is very powerful. — baker

That's deriving a theme from the story, but it doesn't show the historicity of the events. The point I've made is that there are inconsistent accounts in the Bible that render historical accuracy impossible, so unless you're willing to posit the ancients were incapable of identifying those inconsistencies, you have to conclude the purpose of the stories was not to convey factual accuracy, but it was to convey a particular theme, exactly as you've noted.

Read the account of how Saul meets David. David plays the harp for him and they know each other well and then a chapter later he hears tale of this man David and insists upon meeting him, not knowing who he is. Interesting amnesiac event.

They aren't "quibbles." And they aren't arcane, sophisticated mathematics. They are just about the most basic possible statistical and probabilistic judgements. Let's say I have a box. You can't see inside the box so you don't know if there's anything in it. I tell you there are somewhere between 1 and 1,000 marbles in it. I reach in and pull out a black marble and show it to you, then put it back in the box. Now, can you tell me how many black marbles there are in the box? All you can tell me is that it's at least one and no more than 1,000, assuming I'm telling the truth. If I reach back in the box and pull out a marble at random, what is the probability it will be black?

We can't tell the likelihood of pulling out a black marble out of the box and we can't tell the likelihood that other possible universes will have life in them. — T Clark

I don't agree with your math. Let's reduce your number from 1000 to 2 to make this clearer. You know one marble is black. You also know there is only 1 or 2 marbles in the box. What we therefore know about our box is that it has one of the following combinations:

1 black marble
2 black marbles
1 black marble and one not black marble

There are three scenarios, one guarantees black, two guarantees black, and the third guarantees a 1/2 black and 1/2 non-black. I'm going with 5/6 chance for black based on the information provided.

How that plays out with 1,000, I don't know, but the analysis could be done.

My statistical analysis could be wrong above, but that's not the point. The point is that there is a statistical analysis that can be done here.

I'd also say the likelihood of there being life on another planet approaches 100% as the number of other planets approaches infinity.

I think it is an open question if when Maimonides denied the physicality of God and interpreted all physical aspects of the divine, whether this elevated the status of the "holy" or whether something primitive and fundamental was lost. — Fooloso4

Where do you date the theory of the incorporeality of God? Philo is 1,000 years before Maimonides, but it might be sooner. I point this out because I think it's a pretty ancient concept.

Because the meaning of words changes over time, this can lead to confusion if we don't know the etymology and cultural history. The change is not necessarily from the literal to the metaphorical and vice versa. Sometimes, the referent changes. For example, the thing that used to be called "soap" two thousand years ago in India is not what used to be considered "soap" for the past several hundred years in Europe (ie. soap in the form of hard bars), and again, the word "soap", with the relatively recent popularity of liquid soap, now has a different range of referents. — baker

That's not why. The reason the text has inconsistent accounts of the same stories is because it was pieced together from various writings by a single editor. That's the prevailing theory among religious scholars and there's substantial support for that theory.

Do give three examples where you think an ancient text was intended as metaphorical by the ancient writers. — baker

The creation story (story #1 dealing with the 7 days of creation). The creation story (story #2 dealing with the Garden of Eden). The ark story (story #1 dealing with 2 of each animal coming aboard). The ark story (story #2 dealing with 7 clean animals coming aboard and 2 unclean animals coming aboard).

That's four stories if you want to get started there. It's clearly etiological folklore.

It is sometimes said that one must read sacred texts with faith, and that if a faithless person reads them, such a person will not profit from them. — baker

I don't know what you mean by "profit from them." There are people with PhDs in religious scholarship who don't believe the texts are sacred. I don't think they would agree they've not profited from their efforts.

And I can dress like a Dark Sith Lord and demand that you address me as "My master". What is so special about sex/gender that people can identify as a sex they are not, but identifying as something else you are not, well that's just crazy? — Harry Hindu

The critical difference between your example and that of a transsexual is that your claims of dysphoria are in bad faith. In fact, they're not meant to be taken seriously, but are meant as mockery and are contemptuous.

So, there's that.

Transsexuals are dysphoric, meaning they're at unease with their physical state of being because their mental state tends to the feminine, and so they attempt to bring alignment of their mind and their body. There is (again) a critical distinction to be made. They are not delusional, but are dysphoric. If they were delusional, a man might actually think he was indistinct from a woman and then go about calling himself what he clearly was not. That would be like if you thought yourself a Sith, the problem wouldn't be a dysphoria, but it would be a delusion, meaning you had lost touch with reality.

To the extent there is actually a person out there who is dysphoric and so intimately identifies as a Sith that he insists upon being referred that way, then you might have an analogous situation, but the thing is, that's not really a thing. It's just the joke you wanted to tell, and so you told it.

Anecdotal evidence as found on social media has no validity. The accounts are not verified and they provide no statistical validity because there's no way to determine if the outliers are over-represented.

If you're interested in the actual studies, as opposed to searching for data supportive of your conclusions, you can start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detransition

I'd also point out that your argument from the data isn't entirely coherent because your specious moral argument makes it ultimately irrelevant to you.

That is to say, if your objection is to the primitive state of medical science, then the solution would be to promote advances in those medical technologies as opposed to condemning transsexuals.

Society should have a say in medical ethics. — Andrew4Handel

What makes it unethical for a person to knowingly consent to the procedure?

This study of 214 patients evaluated 20 years after their surgery states, "One hundred eighty-one (85 percent) patients in our series were able to have regular sexual intercourse, and no individual regretted having undergone GAS."

That is, after 20 years, zero regrets.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsurg.2021.639430/full

There is a difference between someone wearing women's clothes to deceive someone into thinking they are female and someone wearing feminine clothes to conform or not conform. — Andrew4Handel

They seek no gain from making you believe they're a woman. Unless they wish to date you, they can dress as they want, or does just the thought of their dress piss
you off?

A woman is a biological immutable reality with a womb, ovaries and in whom we all grew as babies, not a societal trend. A woman is not a cervix haver or people carrier. It is not an imposition to state biological reality. — Andrew4Handel

But appearances are changeable, and so a man that wants to look like a woman can do that and she can call herself "she" and her friends can do that as well, and you can cross your arms and refuse, and they can call you a dick and you can say "fine," and they can say "fine" back. That's where this goes. I'm just wondering why that's your preference.

I went bald in my mid twenties and have never attempted to rectify that. I was born with undescended testes and then I discovered I only actually had one testicle and that has since went back up inside my body leaving me with an empty scrotum. (I Don't no whether I am infertile). I mainly hung around with girls in primary school/kindergarten and I don't like sport and mechanics or guns. I am hardly a male stereotype or rampant conformist. — Andrew4Handel

Thanks for telling me about your nads. Mine are bold and made of brass. A true sight to behold.

So allowing a man to beat women in swimming is no longer a harm because it increases the overall good feeling in a trans persons brain. It is insane and it is being forced on us. I grew up in a religious cult I am well versed in brainwashing and psychological manipulation. — Andrew4Handel

You are aware it's possible to be supportive of the trans community without supporting trans MtF competing in biological female sports?

And sorry about your cult experience. I'm getting a lot of side info here in not sure what to do with. Maybe harness those feelings of being an outsider and empathize with others who feel ostracized. I'm just asking you appreciate you're attacking not some massive political force trying to command your thoughts, but what you're actually doing is beating up on our most vulnerable and fragile.

Reread the articles and links to the extreme distress people face after having genital mutilation. I can provide loads more links and don't ask me to accept this. Fistulas, adhesions, UTI's arterial bleeds etc — Andrew4Handel

You've read the horror stories and have decided you wouldn't have this surgery done regardless of how you identify. That's a fair call, but not everyone is like you and others choose otherwise. Why do you get to choose for them?

This the only ideology where people are allowed to try and force people into sharing someone else's mental states. — Andrew4Handel

Surely you're not this dense though and you realize that your mental state is not formed a priori. What that means is that there is no pre-societal norm for what constitutes male versus female behavior. That you cut your hair a particular way, wear particular clothes, engage in certain societal roles, and do whatever it is that you think is male oriented behavior is not something that exists outside societal dictates. It is not inherently morally right or wrong to act like a red, white, and blue American girl or boy. It's just a social norm for the here and now.

What this means is that if I live in a society where the social norm is for men to wear pants and not skirts, then that ideology is forced upon me. I am forced to share the mental state of that community. You can't claim a trans person is imposing her beliefs on you anymore than you are trying to force your beliefs on her. All you can say is that the two of you have different world views, neither of which are more moral than the other.

The big difference however between you and the trans person is that your norms dominate society and you've never been asked to consider any views other than your own. Well, today is a new day and your norms are no longer implicitly accepted.

What a happy world it was when everyone thought and acted just like you. The good old days, right?

I think we can draw a distinction between the question of whether transsexuals should be fully respected and embraced in our community and whether the current surgical procedures available to them are efficacious. I would consider rejection of transsexuals based upon moral grounds inappropriate. They, sort of like everyone else here, are people too.

So, the question then seems to hinge upon whether the surgery does what the doctors say it will and whether the recipients are satisfied with their decision. To the extent someone undergoes gender reassignment surgery fully aware of the risks and rewards and they are satisfied with the results, I can't see how anyone would have standing to object.

If you scoff at a man in a mini-skirt and find the visual absurd and laughable, just admit to that bias and stop with the talk about whether this or that cosmetic procedure is or isn't reasonable. The truth is that the acceptability of women in mini-skirts and men not is a social custom of no ethical consequence. The fact that a woman can wear men's slacks and that not be considered degrading, humiliating, or sexually deviant is all social construct and has nothing to do with nature or morality.

This is all to say that unless you have a real moral reason why men must act as traditional men and women as traditional women and all you wish to do is remind us of your adherence to traditional Western mores, then what else do you have to add to this conversation other than telling us of the obvious complications that accompany various surgical procedures?

That would seem to make them "holy" not because of what they are, but because of how they came to be interpreted centuries after they were written by people in different circumstances under different influence. — Ciceronianus

From what I gather, the term "holy" is incoherent to you in any other sense though.

That is, if holy only means that which is consecrated by God, and you reject such a thing can occur, then we must define the term how we use it.

I'm actually an admirer of the Rebbe and the Lubavitch movement, especially their positivity doctrines (tracht gut vet zein gut!). For a hasidic sect, they are vey welcoming, which is a very different case with some others. I do think it's unfortunate that a small number within that community have gone down that path and declared the Rebbe the Messiah. It detracts from the real message, but this is a thread about Jesus, so I won't annoy anyone here with the teachings of the good Rebbe, but I do think it is in his spirit to portray events in their most positive light.

I think it is an open question if when Maimonides denied the physicality of God and interpreted all physical aspects of the divine, whether this elevated the status of the "holy" or whether something primitive and fundamental was lost. That as a result we became something less human. That in the process we literally lost touch. What it meant to be made in God's image made us strangers to both what it means to be human and to be a god. The sacred was diminished when the tangible and immediate experience of being alive were downplayed in favor of an imagined transcendence. — Fooloso4

I think the evolution of the religion required a move towards the incorporeal. There are just too many theological problems with positing an actual location of God. Interestingly though, the Mormons believe in a corporeal anthropomorphic god, so if you actually do think there was a loss with this theological change, there are still religions out there for you.

Critical to religion holding value is personal acceptance of the tenants and I don't think many of the modern mindset could actually actually accept the ancient perspectives of God.

The problem is that the more one disregards them, or interprets them, or treat them as metaphorical, the less "holy" they seem to be. — Ciceronianus

But what you say hasn't been borne out. What has happened is the opposite, which is that the more they've been interpreted, the more they've been venerated. Jewish interpretation of the Torah has been imaginative for thousands of years and it continues to define a culture.

Take a look at the midrash, if you're interested: https://jewishcurrents.org/midrash-the-stories-we-tell/

It's a lawyer's nightmare to be sure, where documents that talk about snakes and gardens are later learned to actually be foretelling of the rising of Christ thousands of years later. What cures this problem is that the interpreters are a select group and what they say perseveres. It's not terribly different from Constitutional analysis and how we treat that document as sacred, but we've long passed worrying about only the words in that document.

We say what we say and then we link it back to a divine command from some sacred ancient past writing for a mark of legitimacy. I don't find that troubling. Anchors keep us from drifting out at sea.

The emperor wears no clothes, but the truth is there was never such an actual naked emperor, so even that time honored saying isn't rooted in reality.

This thread seems to have taken on a life of its own, and I think the theme you mention has become a part of it. But when I commenced it, I was noting what I felt to be the fact that sophisticated Christian apologists, theologians, or philosophers, though they include Jesus in their thought and work, do so in a way which I think ignores or is sometimes contrary to the Jesus depicted in Scripture--what he supposedly did and said. I wondered why, in that case, they included him in their work, and by implication whether their philosophy or theology should be considered "Christian," or whether it really isn't Christian at all, or only nominally so. — Ciceronianus

If one takes a minimalist approach to the historical accuracy of scripture, believing the aim of the work is predominately theological, then the details of the literature become of less relevance. That is, if one admits (and many do) that the facts and details of the works are only mechanisms to make points, then objections as to historical or factual inconsistency become irrelevant.

By way of example, the books of Judges following Deuteronomy tell of all sorts of historical details, describing Saul, David, and Solomon and all sorts of wars they engaged in. What is attributed to those extremely failed characters is inconsistent with who they appear on the pages, but from a thematic perspective you can summarize their tales as examples of divine justice being imposed on the sinners and success being bestowed on the believers. It's a theological book about justice and divine intervention onto the world, not a historical work of any significance, clearly spun to present a desired narrative.

So, if you're looking for factual truth in the Scripture, or even of a search for factual truth among the apologists and theologians, you're looking for something the religiously motivated are not looking for. They are looking only for the themes and theology and they too are spinning those narratives in a way that makes them applicable to today's world.

Why they chose the Bible as their mechanism for such mental gymnastics likely has a historical basis, but I'd argue their odd enterprise has been successful in finding meaning in the world.

It's frequently referred to as the Jesus cult.
— frank

What are your sources of religious scholarship that inform what you imagine to be your superior knowledge? — Fooloso4

Just to be sure you guys aren't talking around each other, there are two meanings of the term "cult" in the religious context. The first is one where we talk about an overly abusive religious leader who takes advantage of his adherents like a Charles Manson or David Koresh.

The second occurs in the context of religious scholarship and it is not pejorative. It refers to the rituals, prayers, sacrifices, and construction of monuments within a religious context. The cult of Yahweh for the ancient Jews would include their method of prayer, sacrifice, and building of temples.

This is the type of assumption I’m critiquing. It just doesn’t make sense. — Noble Dust

Read this: https://jergames.blogspot.com/2008/07/four-assumptions-created-bible-lecture.html

Modern day literalism is very much a product of our scientific mindset. We record data accurately and it makes no difference whether there is any underlying meaning to what we report. If we were artists, we'd be realists. Our ancient ancestors were not such realists. They were overwhelmed creatures trying to figure out how the world worked.

Taking folklore literally is the great failing of fundamentalism, which is a modern invention. Only in today's world where ancient folklore gets confused for modern science would people actually go out and look for the remnants of Noah's Ark.

Speaking of which, how could the authors of the ancient texts have taken the text literally when it is entirely inconsistent, consisting of two entirely separate stories?

The BBC host for this story was very excited that "a man could bear a child." — Bitter Crank

How did the baby navigate the penile canal?

What does this mean? This is the kind of thing I'm talking about in this thread. — Noble Dust

There are different perspectives one can assume when interpreting these stories. I'm not as well versed in the NT as the OT, but take the Adam and Eve story. To the traditionalist (a believer in the holiness of the text), it tells us (if Christian) all sorts of hidden truths and even contains the need for Jesus, who will die for our original sin and find us a path to heaven. To the modern religious scholar, he likely sees a patchwork of texts sewn together from an ancient culture that says nothing about Jesus, The Fall of Man, or many of the other things we've read into the story. You then have this odd breed of fundamentalists, a modern group likely reacting to scientific progress, who insist that the story is about literal snakes and magic apples that existed at a certain spot on the planet and they go out looking for evidence of it. They refuse to yield the floor to science and double down on their literal claims.

I think the best interpretation of Genesis is that it was understood by the ancients as etiological folklore, offering an explanation for where the world came from, why men paired up with women, why snakes had no feet, why people have to work so damn hard and things like that.

I think the worst way to interpret it is as if to pretend it were written today and then impose our views on it. The written word back then and all the stories they told were doubtfully for the same reasons we use them today, which is to accurately document and archive information for the public record. These folks were trying to figure out how their world worked and they came up with all sorts of fantistical tales, none of which they really took literally. If they meant for them to be taken literally, they wouldn't have had multiple different stories describing the same events.

Man. Wtf? I felt awkward reading this. It was a damn strange post. — dimosthenis9

Tnx!

How about just posting the solution at this point so that we can see if the solution provided is truly the only answer entailed by the question?

I've refused to solve it, so I've solved it, just like everyone else who hasn't participated.

I've typed no characters to solve this, there are therefore zero characters I've type in response to it, and there wasn't a first character in my non-response.

To those who say my refusal to respond is a response, I say I'm not responding, but I'm just talking about stuff that I'm thinking about and not trying to solve this puzzle.

Mine is a good response, but not the response anyone was looking for, so there's that problem of course.

But the inference of Purpose is a debatable opinion. Simple erratic causation, like billiard balls bouncing around due to an earthquake is clearly accidental. But when those balls go straight into pockets, we may reasonably look around to see where the impetus came from. In the game of pool, the Prime Cause of that progression is obvious : the man with a stick, and a smile or frown on his face. — Gnomon

And what does this mundane pool analogy tell of the eternal? It tells us God is of limited intellect, he too was created, and he engages in meaningless play, doing those things he chooses to pass the day away.

The telological argument can at best tell us that those complex events around us were created by something, but it says nothing about the origins of existence, omniscient creators, or of the purpose of our existence.

Our creator could just be an average dude hitting balls into pockets for no deeper reason than he's bored, passing the time waiting for his father to pick him up for soccer practice.

Schizophrenics have real delusions so are you going to affirm a paranoid schizophrenics delusion that they are being hunted by the mafia because it is a firmly held belief? — Andrew4Handel

Since I have never been deluded into thinking that MtF transsexuals believe they were born with vaginas and that they are actually biological females, helplessly wondering why others don't share their delusion, I can't respond to any of your nonsense.

They view gender as a mental designation. That you use the term differently is obvious, but your attempt to impose your usage on them and then to suggest they must mean what you mean when you use the term is an absurd equivocation fallacy.

If I call dogs "cats," that doesn't mean I think dogs meow. The question becomes what the user of the word wishes to convey with its usage.

Go, Dog. Go!

If the black woman nominee isn't confirmed, has Biden lived up to his pledge or must he continue presenting only black women to the Senate? Would there be any point where a supporter of the diversity pledge might balk and say enough is enough or does the applicant pool remain as previously promised until one is approved?

There is a certain absurdity here, but I'm used to it. A couple things I do know: just because you're a black woman doesn't make you a liberal and the appointment of a black woman isn't going to remedy a whole lot of anything.

What the left needs is someone consistently left if they want to counter those consistently right.