Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality

[ZhugeKongming]

Because unless you're going to assume a strictly agnostic position on everything thus killing all debate and inquiry, you're going to be substituting modern ideas and views with mental exercises based on spotty examples and generous dollops of unfounded assumptions, that's why. Claiming that is a better method really is pretty extraordinary.

Substitution of modern ideas is just as much of an unfounded assumption, and worse, it's based on a myopic view of the world which universalizes the chronologically and spatially local. If I don't accept that Western ideas and values are laws of the universe, why should I accept the same of modern ones? Especially when they usually coincide?

 

[unmerged(59077)]

Substitution of modern ideas is just as much of an unfounded assumption, and worse, it's based on a myopic view of the world which universalizes the chronologically and spatially local. If I don't accept that Western ideas and values are laws of the universe, why should I accept the same of modern ones? Especially when they usually coincide?

Well - current ideas are generally padded with terabytes of documented evidence from many sources compared to prior ones which can collectively fit on a 1998 hard drive. Other than that, yeah, one's as bad as the other.

 

[Sun_Wu]

Depends on the context of the argument. In any case, the Imperial Novel is a direct precursor to the later Islamic one and a few were well-known in Medieval Europe anyway.



Lies! Lies and filthy lies!

The awesomeness of my position is that I have no mono-thesis! I'm simply seeing disagreements every which way. I don't pretend to systematise expression of desire in literature. I'm no Foucault or Alan Bray, I'm just trollin the internets.

Nonetheless, saying "things back then were totally not how they are now, and this is how I think they were" seems a bit more of an extraordinary claim than "things back then were probably similar to things we see now and we don't have enough agreement in the sources to build a contrary picture".



What....is....a grey bandana? Should I get one?

Why did you pick two guys who died of AIDS? Do you have something to share? :unsure:

Sometimes the details we have seem that culture then was substantially different from how it is now, for example 16th century love letters in England between guys, (I think Bray wrote a book on same sex desire in Elizabethan England, though granted his position might have changed just a little after converting to Catholicism) whereas now Englishmen are rather lacking in emotional expression in comparison.

Hanky code for bondage, I used it in reference to what seemed like psychological masochism. (Learned about it accidentally when I visited San Francisco, probably the gayest city on Earth in every sense of the word.)

I don't really see what's extraordinary about not assuming that modern ideas and views are laws of the universe which can be projected backwards to the beginning of time.

e: If the sources don't give us a coherent and unified whole, my conclusion would be "people are complicated" rather than "the past is the same as today."

Wait, isn't "people are complicated" the same as today?

The future is the same as the past is today.

Well - current ideas are generally padded with terabytes of documented evidence from many sources compared to prior ones which can collectively fit on a 1998 hard drive. Other than that, yeah, one's as bad as the other.

Look, there's probably petabytes of lolcats alone.

 

[ZhugeKongming]

Well - current ideas are generally padded with terabytes of documented evidence from many sources compared to prior ones which can collectively fit on a 1998 hard drive. Other than that, yeah, one's as bad as the other.

And what exactly about those terabytes of documented evidence leads you to believe we should disregard actual primary source material and instead play speculative pop historian?

 

[unmerged(59077)]

And what exactly about those terabytes of documented evidence leads you to believe we should disregard actual primary source material and instead play speculative pop historian?

The fact that those vocally devoted to primary sources are engaging in more speculation and selective reading than I do because despite the claim to respectability their understanding is just as thoroughly invented and seen through a modern lens while pretending that their understanding somehow separates their area of study from the reach of overlapping modern scholarship...and I'm mostly tripping over my own feet playing devil's advocate right now, coming off totally better

It's a sad state of affairs.

Sun: no AIDS, no bondage, no hankies. I only get off on sweet sweet moral clarity. Also, no cats. Dog person.

 

[Sun_Wu]

The fact that those vocally devoted to primary sources are engaging in more speculation and selective reading than I do because despite the claim to respectability their understanding is just as thoroughly invented and seen through a modern lens while pretending that their understanding somehow separates their area of study from the reach of overlapping modern scholarship...and I'm mostly tripping my own feet playing devil's advocate right now, coming off totally better

It's a sad state of affairs.

Sun: no AIDS, no bondage, no hankies. Only sweet sweet moral clarity. Also, no cats. Dog person.

But isn't there so much stuff that is wrong on the internet? Imagine them using Fox News as a sources hmy:



Then can we be friends?