From: kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu (Dr Nancy's Sweetie)
Subject: On the Worth of Apostates' Arguments (was sponges)
Organization: Rowan College of New Jersey (nee Glassboro State College)
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 17:53:10 GMT


In a previous article, somebody asked about the arguments used by people who
think that homosexuality is compatible with Christianity.  Ann Carlson wrote
referring to some books, one of which was by Bishop Spong.  In reply to that,
Robert Weiss produced a review of another book by Rev Spong which quotes him
as saying various heretical things.

At this point, I weighed in saying that all this other junk is irrelevant.  If
Bishop Spong's arguments about homosexuality are sound, then his arguments
about other things -- and his own beliefs about other topics -- do not matter.
_Ad hominem_ fallacies won't change the validity of his arguments, either for
good or ill.

Several people have responded saying that we shouldn't listen to anyone who is
apostate, and that if he rejects the Bible's teachings then he isn't an
authority on what it says.

However, suppose Rev Spong had written an essay arguing that gentile
Christians are not required to follow the Old Testament dietary laws.  Would
we say that this essay is not worth reading?  Of course not; if he made a good
argument for a position that we believed, we would accept that argument as
valid no matter he'd said about other issues.  (Would any of us start to
follow the OT laws -- like not eating pork -- just because Rev Spong said we
didn't have to?)

Rev Spong is capable of drawing proper conclusions based on the Bible
regardless of what he thinks about it.  Claiming that the arguments are no
good solely because of his opinions on other matters is simply wrong.

 --

There is, of course, another side to this.  GJ McCaughan wrote saying that if
one is trying to decide whether to read Bishop Spong's book on homosexuality,
it is reasonable to consider his other books first.  If Rev Spong's last book
was full of mistakes, or if it made assumptions you do not share, then this
book may well be of no use to you.

For the situation where somebody is standing in a bookstore looking at the
shelves, Mr McCaughan is exactly correct.  Everybody does this all the time,
and HAS to: there are only so many hours in a day, and only so much money to
spend on books.  You have to have some heuristics for deciding whether a book
will be of interest to you and worth your time.

But that's not exactly the situation I was responding to: somebody
specifically asked for references to arguments about homosexuality.  He said
he wanted to hear the reasons why some people believe that homosexuals should
be allowed in church.  He has already decided that he is interested in the
topic, and that he wants to hear from people who disagree with him.

Mr Weiss was saying that Rev Spong's books are not worth reading, and to him
perhaps they aren't.  But to someone who has already asked for references, the
objection "his other book said dumb stuff" is of no use.


Here's my own parallel: I skip about half of the Christia posts every day.  If
the first screen is all included text, or if I can't tell what's included text
and what's new text, I skip the post without finishing it.  If the text has no
sensible punctuation -- if it is a collection of sentence fragments separated
by ellipses -- I skip it.  If the post is a reply to something but has no clue
about what it's a reply TO, I skip it.  I figure that if it isn't worth
somebody's time to write a sensible, coherent essay, then it isn't worth my
time to decipher what gets posted.  (In practice, this cuts the time to read
Christia by about two-thirds.)

However, if somebody posts an article on a topic I find interesting, I won't
followup saying "Joe Blow normally writes incoherent junk, so this article is
probably incoherent junk too.  Therefore, his argument is no good."

If someone wants to say that "there is no valid argument for accepting
homosexuals in church", then he has the intellectual obligation to examine all
the arguments presented and critique them.  If one wants to refute arguments,
it is not enough to say "No book by so-and-so author is worth reading, because
this other book he wrote is all wrong".  If all one wants to do is trim his
reading list, that's acceptable.  But the poster who was referred to the book
by Rev Spong was trying to _expand_ his reading list.


Darren F Provine / kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu
"I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they
 instinctively feel is right; the excuses, the justifications, the things
 you're supposed to argue about, come later.  They're the least important part
 of the belief.  That's why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the
 other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place."
 He looked at Erens.  "You've attacked the wrong thing."
                                           -- Iain M. Banks, _Use of Weapons_
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