Podcasts

Robert Gagnon debates gay activist Jayne Ozanne on Bible vs homosexuality

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Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign
Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign

I am tempted to say that this is the best podcast I have ever heard on the Unbelievable show. Do anything you have to do in order to listen to this podcast.

Details:

Prof Robert Gagnon has become a well-known voice advocating the traditional biblical view on sexuality. In a highly charged show he debates the scriptural issues on sexuality with Jayne Ozanne, the director of Accepting Evangelicals who came out as gay earlier this year.

The MP3 file is here.

If you can only listen for 15 minutes, then start at 49 minutes in and listen from there.

The following summary is rated MUP for made-up paraphrase. Reader discretion is advised.

Summary:
Intro:

  • Speaker introductions
  • Gagnon: scholars who support gay marriage agree that the Bible doesn’t support it
  • Gagnon: scholars who support gay marriage agree Jesus taught male-female marriage
  • Ozanne: I went to the hospital because I was sick from trying to suppress my gay desires
  • Ozanne: Doctors told me that I would die if I didn’t act on my gay desires
  • Ozanne: I decided to reinterpret the Bible to fit with my gay desires
  • Ozanne: According to my new interpretation, Jesus actually supports my gay desires

Segment 1: Genesis

  • Ozanne: In Genesis the Bible says that Adam needs a woman to complete him
  • Ozanne: I reinterpret this to mean that Adam needed a “complementarian human being”
  • Ozanne: Genesis doesn’t say whether Eve was complemented by Adam in that chapter
  • Ozanne: It’s not critical that men are complemented by women, a man could complement a man
  • Ozanne: Genesis 2 doesn’t talk about children, it’s all about adult needs from a relationship
  • Gagnon: Genesis 2 has never been interpreted that way in all of history
  • Gagnon: Genesis 2 language specifically implies a human being who is opposite/different
  • Gagnon: Genesis 2 language translates to complement or counterpart
  • Gagnon: Genesis as a whole teaches that the sexuality is for male and female natures
  • Gagnon: The extraction of something from the man that is given to the woman is complementarian
  • Ozanne: I think that people can be complementary outside of male-female Genesis language
  • Ozanne: I don’t want to discuss specific words and texts and Greek meanings
  • Gagnon: the text has always been read and interpreted to support male/female complementarity
  • Gagnon: the male-female nature argument is made because the two natures are complementary
  • Ozanne: the text was interpreted by patriarchal males who treated women like property, it’s biased
  • Ozanne: what is important to me is how Christ interprets Genesis (?? how does she know that?)
  • Ozanne: I am passionate about my interpretation of Scripture which supports my gay desires
  • Gagnon: just because a person is passionate about their interpretation it doesn’t make it right
  • Gagnon: I am not arguing for the male-female view based on passion, but on scholarship, evidence and history
  • Ozanne: both sides are equally passionate about their interpretations (?? so both are equally warranted?)
  • Ozanne: the real question is why God “allowed” two different interpretations of Scripture

Segment 2: Is homosexuality a sin?

  • Gagnon: Jesus affirmed traditional sexual morality, which forbids homosexuality
  • Gagnon: Jesus teaches that marriage is male-female, and limited to two people
  • Gagnon: No one in history has interpreted the Bible to say that homosexuality was not immoral
  • Ozanne: Jesus came to bring life, and that means he supports homosexuality
  • Ozanne: I was dying, and embracing my gay desires allowed me to live, so Jesus approves of me
  • Ozanne: God says “I am who I am” and that means he approves of me doing whatever I want
  • Ozanne: There is an imperative to be who I am, and that means embracing my gay desires
  • Gagnon: Jesus argued that the twoness of the sexual bond is based on the twoness of the sexes
  • Gagnon: Jesus did not come to gratify people’s innate desires, he called people to repent of sin
  • Gagnon: Jesus did reach out to sinners but he never condoned the sins they committed
  • Gagnon: Jesus’ outreach to tax collectors collecting too much and sexual sinners is the same: STOP SINNING
  • Ozanne: I don’t think that Romans 1 is talking about homosexuality
  • Ozanne: I think it’s talking about sexual addiction, not loving, committed gay relationships
  • Ozanne: Paul was condemning pederasty in Romans 1, not loving, long-term, consensual sexual relationships between gay adults
  • Gagnon: nothing in the passage limits the condemnation to pederasty
  • Gagnon: the passage was never interpreted to be limited to pederasty in history
  • Gagnon: rabbis and church fathers knew about committed two-adult same-sex relationships, and said they were wrong
  • Gagnon: the argument for marriage is based on the broad two-nature argument, with no exceptions
  • Gagnon: the condemnation is not limited to exploitative / coercive / lustful / uncommitted relationships
  • Gagnon: even pro-gay scholars agree the passage cannot be interpreted Ozanne’s way (he names two)

Segment 3: The showdown (49:00)

  • Ozanne: I don’t care how many pages people have written on this
  • Ozanne: God says that “the wisdom of the wise I will frustrate” so you can’t use scholars, even pro-gay scholars, to argue against my passionate interpretation
  • Ozanne: I am not interested in the text or history or scholarship or even pro-gay scholars who agree with you
  • Ozanne: what decides the issue for me is my mystical feelings about God’s love which makes my sexual desires moral
  • Ozanne: you are certain that this is wrong, but your view does not “give life” to people
  • Ozanne: your scholarship and historical analysis is “a message of death” that causes teenagers to commit suicide (= you are evil and a meany, Robert)
  • Ozanne: “I pray for you and your soul” (= opposing me will land you in Hell) and “I hope that listeners will listen with their hearts” (?? instead of their minds?)
  • Ozanne: you can prove anything you want with research, even two mutually exclusive conclusions, so you shouldn’t rely on scholarship and research since it could be used to prove my view as well
  • Ozanne: instead of relying on research, you should rely on your heart and your feelings about God’s love to decide what the Bible teaches about sexual morality
  • Gagnon: you are distorting the gospel in order to make your case
  • Gagnon: attacking my “certainty” is an ad hominem attack to cover your dismissmal of the scholarship and history
  • Gagnon: you distort the gospel to make it seem like Christ just wants us to get what we want, when we want it, with who we want it with
  • Gagnon: Christ calls us to take up our cross, to lose our lives and to deny ourselves
  • Gagnon: you have a notion of what “fullness of life” is, but it’s not reflective of the gospel
  • Gagnon: Paul’s life was much more troubling than yours, mine or anyone else around here
  • Gagnon: Paul was beaten, whipped, stoned, poorly sheltered, poorly clothed, poorly fed, shipwrecked, and anxious for his churches
  • Gagnon: on your view, he should have been miserable and angry with God all the time
  • Gagnon: but instead Paul was constantly thankful and rejoicing to be able to suffer with Jesus and look forward to the resurrection
  • Gagnon: I have suffered too, but the suffering we go through never provides us with a license to violate the commandments of God
  • Ozanne: “the ultimate thing is what people feel God has called them to”
  • Ozanne: My goal right now is to tell young people that homosexuality is fine so they don’t commit suicide
  • Ozanne: the view that homosexuality is wrong is “evil and misguided”
  • Gagnon: the greater rates of harm in the gay community are intrinsic to homosexual unions, not caused by external disapproval of homosexuality

Segment 4: Concluding statements

  • Gagnon: gay male relationships on average have more sex partners and more STDs
  • Gagnon: female relationships on average have shorter-length relationships and more mental issues
  • Gagnon: the greater rates of harm are because there is no complementarity / balance in the relationships
  • Gagnon: everyone has some disappointment or suffering in their lives that hurts them, and that they are tempted to break the rules to fix, but we should not break the rules in order to be happy
  • Ozanne: both sides are passionate, so no one can be right, and evidence proves nothing
  • Ozanne: only feelings about “what God is doing” can allow us to decide what counts as sin or not
  • Ozanne: the main thing that is at stake here is to make people like us, not to decide what the Bible says about sin
  • Ozanne: my message to people is to do whatever you want, and ignore mean people who don’t affirm you
  • Ozanne: we should be more opposed to mean people who make non-Christians feel unloved than about doing what the Bible says
News

Is Darwinist P.Z. Myers right to say that the appendix is vestigial?

2 Comments
Apologetics and the progress of science
Apologetics and the progress of science

First, let’s hear prominent atheist P. Z. Myers, who believes in Darwinism, explain why he thinks that the appendix is a useless vestigial organ leftover from an unguided, random process of evolution:

The appendix in humans, for instance, is a vestigial organ, despite all the insistence by creationists and less-informed scientists that finding expanded local elements of the immune system means it isn’t. An organ is vestigial if it is reduced in size or utility compared to homologous organs in other animals, and another piece of evidence is if it exhibits a wide range of variation that suggests that those differences have no selective component. That you can artificially reduce the size of an appendix by literally cutting it out, with no effect on the individual (other than that they survive a potentially acute and dangerous inflammation) tells us that these are vestigial.

Got that? You can cut out the appendix and it has “no effect on the individual”.

Now let’s look at the peer-reviewed science, so we can get the truth of the matter.

My good friend Joe Coder told me about this article from the Melbourne Herald Sun.

Excerpt:

MELBOURNE scientists have discovered new proof that the appendix — the often-removed organ once thought to be redundant — can be crucial to digestive health.

Researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have shown how a group of immune cells team up with the appendix to protect the gut during infection.

They work together during bouts of food poisoning and other bacterial illnesses, and also help boost the immune systems of cancer patients.

Lead researcher Professor Gabrielle Belz, a laboratory head from WEHI’s molecular immunology division, said about 70,000 Australians have their appendix removed every year — making it one of the most common surgical procedures.

“Popular belief tells us the appendix is a liability,” Prof Belz said.

“However, we may wish to rethink whether the appendix is irrelevant for our health.”

Prof Belz said surgeons no longer removed the appendix “at the first drop of a hat”, reserving surgery for more serious cases of appendicitis.

The new research, led by Prof Belz and leading French immunologist Prof Eric Vivier, has shown that innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) shield the appendix from harmful bacteria.

This allows the small organ to act as a safe haven for “good” bacteria, which could then “reseed” the intestines and restore the health of the digestive system.

Prof Belz, whose research was published today in Nature Immunology journal, said ILCs offered an added layer of immune protection for healthy people.

But they were vital in fighting bacterial infections in people with compromised immune systems, such as cancer patients, Prof Belz said.

“This is particularly important because ILCs are able to survive in the gut even during (cancer) treatments, which typically wipe out other immune cells,” she said.

Prof Belz said that ability of ILCs to withstand chemotherapy also opened up “new avenues of investigation” for cancer treatment.

This expands on a previous study reported by the Washington Post.

Excerpt:

The appendix “acts as a good safe house for bacteria,” said Duke surgery professor Bill Parker, a study co-author. Its location — just below the normal one-way flow of food and germs in the large intestine in a sort of gut cul-de-sac — helps support the theory, he said. Also, the worm-shaped organ outgrowth acts like a bacteria factory, cultivating the good germs, Parker said. That use is not needed in a modern industrialized society, Parker said. If a person’s gut flora dies, it can usually be repopulated easily with germs they pick up from other people, he said. But before dense populations in modern times and during epidemics of cholera that affected a whole region, it wasn’t as easy to grow back that bacteria and the appendix came in handy.

Evolution News comments:

[…][A] few months back David Klinghoffer reported that researchers in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology found:

Individuals without an appendix were four times more likely to have a recurrence of Clostridium difficile, [a pathogen common in hospitals,] exactly as Parker’s hypothesis predicted. Recurrence in individuals with their appendix intact occurred in 11% of cases. Recurrence in individuals without their appendix occurred in 48% of cases.

In other words, the appendix performs important immune-related functions. Thus, the appendix is not there to occasionally explode. With the appendix increasingly considered to be an important organ that you wouldn’t want to lose, researchers have also found that antibiotics can cure many cases of appendicitis (see Eriksson et al., 2006  ).

Look, everyone has to decide whether they want to believe in religion or whether they want to believe in science. I understand that some people want to assume a religion of naturalism, and then try to fit reality into that pre-supposed dogma. But I don’t think that’s the right way to develop an accurate view of reality. We should follow the scientific evidence wherever it leads, and we should seek the truth – no holds barred.

Positive arguments for Christian theism

 

News

Is Donald Trump’s claim about Muslims celebrating 9/11 in New Jersey accurate?

5 Comments
Donald Trump should stick to Miss Universe pageants
Donald Trump at a beauty pageant

Now, nobody is going to say that this blog or its author are soft on radical Islam. But that doesn’t mean that every accusation against Muslims is automatically correct.

Donald Trump says that Muslims celebrated after the 9/11 terrorist attack in New Jersey. Is he right?

Well, here’s the fact-check from the non-partisan The Hill.

Excerpt:

As Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump continues to offer newspaper clippings and soundbites he says are proof of his claim that he saw “thousands and thousands” of Muslim Americans cheering the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in the streets of New Jersey, the TV network responsible for the rumor is stepping in to debunk it.

Digging deep into its archives, MTV News uncovered the Nov. 17, 2001, clip credited with launching the “celebrating Muslims” claim and re-released it in a short video titled “Trump Is Wrong About People ‘Cheering’ 9/11 In New Jersey — Here’s The Evidence.”

In the footage, a young Patterson, N.J., resident named Emily Acevedo is seen describing a group of teenagers — “13, maybe 14 at most” — chanting and banging sticks and stones on public property in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. “They were saying ‘burn Amerca’ and, you know, all these things about America.”

[…]Revisiting the events of that night 14 years later, Acevedo tells MTV what she saw was “not anything different than what would’ve happened on any other summer night, on any other day where school was let out early.” She said she did not recall saying in 2001 that the teens were chanting “burn America.”

“I don’t recall them or hearing the kids say ‘burn America.’ If anything, they were problably saying ‘burn something’ but not ‘burn America.’ “

Why can’t Trump admit that he was wrong about this?

Trump did a radio interview with moderate Republican Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday night. I think the interview was a good opportunity for Trump to explain his knowledge of foreign policy. So how did it go?

The MP3 file is here.

And here is a sample from the transcript:

HH: Let me switch over to national security. I always ask you this question, Donald Trump. Are you ready to roll out your national security advisory team, yet?

DT: Well, I’m meeting with people. We’re going to let you know over the next two or three weeks who they are. I think they want to be known, but I’m meeting with people. I have, you know, I feel I have a very good grasp of national security. You know, and you and I have not discussed this, but I wrote a book, The America We Deserve. And in the book, I mentioned Osama bin Laden.

HH: We did. We did talk about that once.

DT: Okay.

HH: And you were way ahead of the time.

DT: And you know, a lot of people are saying well, Trump mentioned that in his book before the World Trade Center came down, two years before the World Trade Center came down. I said you’ve got to get him, and he was a guy that was just a nasty guy talking big stuff. And I said you’d better get him, you’d better watch out for him. I didn’t like him, and you know, it was mentioned. I talked about terrorism before terrorism was terrorism.

HH: But I’d like to know your generals.

DT: And that got some current from some people.

HH: I’d love, you know, like Ben Carson has General Dees, and other people have different generals advising them. Have you got any two-stars, three-stars, four-stars that are going to sign up with Trump?

DT: The answer is yes. Oh, yes, I do. Yes, I do.

HH: And when do we get them, because I want to talk to them.

DT: I would say within the next three to four weeks.

HH: Terrific.

DT: And I’m working with them, and I’m, you know, I feel I have a very good grasp. One of them said wow, you really understand foreign policy, and you really understand military policy. A general told me that. He was shocked, actually, if you want to know the truth, because he assumes that I’m, you know, really great at real estate, and really good at deals, but I really do have an understanding of that, and I know what to do. And I see what’s happening, and I listen to some of our so-called experts on television, and it makes you nauseous to listen to them, because they don’t know what they’re talking about. So you know, I think it actually could end up, you know, every poll shows that I’m the best on leadership, I’m the best on the economy, I’m the best on the borders, and you know, and the best on terrorism. Some people have me as the best on the military. I think the military is going to be a very strong point if I win. I think the military is going to be a strong point, Hugh.

Hugh has been asking him that question for months, and the answer is always “soon, soon”.

WhenI look at Trump’s record, and I don’t see actions that cause me to believe that he is interested in foreign policy. He acted on some TV shows, but he hasn’t got the credibility on these issues that I am looking for in a President. The Presidency is not an entry-level job. There is no time for training. We already had 8 years of someone with no experience and no ability who could talk a good game, and that cost us dearly. Let’s pick someone who actually has experience in these matters. Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio would both work for me, but I much prefer Ted Cruz.