From: simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Simon Clippingdale)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Homosexuals anywhere are wrong
Date: 28 Jul 92 16:22:14 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Warwick University, England

In article <sbuckley.712260813@sfu.ca> sbuckley@fraser.sfu.ca (Stephen Buckley) writes:
>Simon Clippingdale writes:
>
>> Where an end to this speculation about what exactly is and is not in God's
>> image? Well, we *do* know something, if indeed _The Bible_ is true, about
>> God's image. If you're made in God's image, Terence, when do you next plan
>> to massacre entire populations, children and pregnant women included, as
>> The Good Lord did in Hosea? Or did that part of God's image get lost in the
>> image-transcription process? If so, how do we know that homosexuality didn't?

>  it is only through deliberate misinterpretation of the bible to conclude
> that to live in god's image is to massacre entire populations etc.  your logic
> that leads to that conclusion seems to go like this:  if the bible is true,
> we should do everything in it, therefore we should massacre people.  the most
> obvious flaw in that logic is to overlook HOW the bible advises us to live.
> [...]

Well, folks round here keep insisting that human morality only exists
because (they contend) Man is made in the image of God. Some theists
further use this angle to suggest that atheists are incapable of moral
behaviour, or at least can have no firm foundation for their morality.

So if Man is indeed made in the image of God, one is compelled to ask
what aspects of God Man may be expected to inherit as a result. Usually,
of course, God is given the credit for the nice bits of human morality
and Satan or Man himself get the blame for the nasty stuff.

This seems to me to be at best arbitrary, not to mention circular since
it involves a meta-moral judgement of what are the nice bits and what
are the nasty bits, and our moral judgement is supposed in this scheme
to be inherited from God through that In_His_Image business.

So what I'm getting at is this: what does In_His_Image mean, if anything,
with regard to actual human behaviour and morality? I feel that it is
arbitrary, circular and meaningless if you say that anything *we* consider
bad, such as the slaughtering of innocents, is somehow to be excluded
from this inherited Image, but anything *we* consider good is included.

> in some cases it shows us how to live and in other cases it shows us how
> not to live. the context contributes to the meaning. further, if god wants
> to massacre, say the egyptian soldiers in exodus, doesn't he have the right
> to do so? also he does explain why he does so. further in trying to live
> a holy life, i use christ as a role model: god living as a human. i do not
> believe that being in god's image and wanting to live a holy life allows
> me to do what god did. i am not god and i do not have the freedom to do
> as he did/does.

Sure. I only want to know what "being in god's image" here implies for
your morality and behaviour: in what ways do you differ from what you
would have otherwise been (without the injection of God's Image)?

>> Have you considered the possibility that the whole shooting match is
>> crap from start to finish? Just a thought.

> yeah, i have considered that it's all crap. the overwhelming despair that
> plagued me for a decade of thinking that led me to consider that it's not
> all crap.

Proof by desire-for-it-to-be-so. Not really very convincing, if I might
say so. Would you believe anything which it felt good or comforting to
believe, irrespective of its truth or otherwise??

Cheers

Simon
-- 
Simon Clippingdale                simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk
Department of Computer Science    Tel (+44) 203 523296
University of Warwick             FAX (+44) 203 525714
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Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc