The use of God, has a practical value. Sometimes having an answer, any answer, is better than no answer at all.

There is a decision loop that folks get into. Sensation provides data to our minds, which we compare to our models of reality. We also compare this data to our desires as well, and note differences. Using the model of reality in our skull, we figure out an action that we think will bring about what we desire. Often, we may recognize many alternative actions.

We pick one, take that action. That action generates consequences in the real world, which are then sensed by the actor, providing a feed back loop.

Sometimes the internal model is incomplete or parts of it are not well understood. This can cause a jam up in the loop, freezing a person's actions.

"Because God said so" smoothes over that blockage, and allows the loop to continue. It provides an answer. The answer may be wrong, but that is revealed later on in the real consequences of the action. (Which allows us to modify the model, re-interpret God's word, etc.)

"Because God says so" is also an argument ender. Instead of endless debate over a question, appealing to the highest authority ends the argument, silences opposition (well it USED to)

A threat of eternal damnation may not be the right answer, but it does not have to be in order to prevent an action. If the threat works, then no one takes the proscribed action, and its ill effects are not suffered. Good effects are not suffered as well, but that is secondary.

The idea is that morality is the ethos of one happy family with Daddy as its inspiration, paragon and motivation to avoid shame. Anyone who rejects the idea rejects the inspiration, paragon, and motivation and must therefore be immoral. And there's no allowing that one can get inspiration to be moral in some other manner, since that would shatter the unity given to the family by His inspiration.

That's the idea. So, the explanation you're looking for, I think, is this fallacy: "He is a unifying inspiration to us. Therefore, anyone who rejects His inspiration rejects unifying inspirations of any kind and cannot show any solidarity with others or morality at all." There is an underlying equivocation over the work "unifying". He unifies, but so do other inspirations, such as plain old wanting good people to fare well.

Stephen,

If you had grown up a Spartan citizen, two things would certainly be true of you: (1) you'd kick ass, and (2) your relations with other men would be a bit different (although you'd still not care much for leather and boas). Sparta is exhibit A in the mountain of evidence that human sexuality is in large part socially constructed. Public policy note: Spartan civilization was destroyed after its loss to Thebes at a time when there were only approx. 1200 Spartan warriors left -- and you thought German demographics look bad . . . .

"What is it about some Christians that makes them think simple human decency is impossible minus the threat of the wrath of God?"

I think you're misreading Warren's beliefs: As a Catholic - recently a convert from the Anglican church - he believes in original sin, curable only through the grace of God. The threat of the wrath of God is more of an Old Testament thing, though certainly not excluded from his thinking.

This latest piece of Warren's may spend an uncomfortably greater amount of space on the "gay lifestyle" than typical for Warren: I think that he's much more disturbed by the breakdown of "traditional" marriage and family than by the freedom and practices of homosexuals. As for the rest of his reasoning, you can read it for yourself, in this and previous essays, and you are of course quite entitled to disagree with it, but it strikes me that you may have to get over some anti-religious prejudice and other unexamined presumptions in order to hear what it is he's trying to say. To imply that he's arguing merely from some unquestionable "revealed truth"-or-else handed down by a vengeful God, rather than from a thoughtful analysis of human history, is unfair to him.

"If Warren thinks history is his guide, I can provide him with an endless list of atrocities committed in the name of his god -- usually with the same justifications he uses for his assaults on homosexuals."

A shallow and irrelevant argument: You'll never know what other lists of atrocities might be available in a world in which Warren's God was unrecognized.

While I don't quite subscribe to all of David's arguments I nevertheless have to concur with Colin on his assessment of yours.

Is simple human decency possible minus the threat of the wrath of God? To an ordinary Christian like me, yes it is, not because of the wrath of God but because of the grace of God.

I will spare you the theological treatise and summarise it thus for now: as someone whose last ambition in life was to become a Christian, I look back and ask myself, do I thank God that I was as good as I thought I was? Or do I thank God that I wasn't as bad as I could have been?

A final thought: 'human decency' as you put it, is an admirable ambition. It will make you feel better, and even make the world a better place to live in. I for one, try not to discourage anyone of any religious view point who aspires to be a 'decent human being' even if I might disagree with their definition or their understanding of its outworking. But in doing so, I try to remind them - and myself - not to get blinded by self-righteousness. Because the truth is: being decent won't save you.

I don't see the problem.
Warren is correct in his descriptions of places and times where the homosexual bond is the norm.
He did not, DID NOT, say prison is the norm.
He said that in prison homosexual bonds may be the norm.
Your baggage has smeared your reading glasses.

Colin beat me to it. It is probably largely due to the fact that you grew up in a country more-or-less guided by Christian mores. Socrates grew up in ancient Athens, and we know he had male lovers in addition to having a wife and children; this was the norm at the time. If you believe the Bible, people were constantly having intercourse with their own sex. In fact, it seems as though other than the Hebrews, no one had any problem with this.

Christians believe that acts that benefit others can certainly be done by non-believers, but that's not the point. The Christian belief is that if you don't know the correct reason (to glorify and obey God) for your action, then it is no reflection on your own character and is simply a matter of chance that your action was good instead of bad. It's like when I hit my TV when it fuzzes out: I'm fixing the picture, but I don't really know how, and could conceivably be making the problem worse.

Don't listen to those guys, Stephen. The notion that the correct reason to act morally is in order to glorify God can be refuted quite easily. "My reason for not killing you and stealing your stuff is because I want to obey and glorify God" is clearly not a statement of genuine moral reasons. If God commanded the one who makes that statement to steal and kill, he'd do that instead. And the statement also implies that the speaker has no fundamental respect for others, since his reason for showing regard for their interests is not that he respects those interests but because somebody wants him to act that way. "I'd kill ya', but I won't since God told me not to." That's not moral reasoning. So, Robert has things in reverse. It's a matter of chance when a religious basis gives good guidance. We can find religions in which it certainly fails.

So, not only is the Christian basis for morality not the only basis; it isn't even a basis. It can't be. Only a fundamental respect for others' interests can be. "My reason for not killing you and stealing your stuff is that I want others to fare well, without ulterior motives, including religious ones. In other words, I do what I do because it's right." That's a moral reason, and its available to atheists and theists alike. I even think God agrees that we should do what's right because it's right. I think He'd be disappointed if he found that we'd being doing what's right just because He told us to do it.

Picking nits here:

So, not only is the Christian basis for morality not the only basis; it isn't even a basis. It can't be. Only a fundamental respect for others' interests can be. "My reason for not killing you and stealing your stuff is that I want others to fare well, without ulterior motives, including religious ones. In other words, I do what I do because it's right."

Because, well, why is not killing you and stealing your stuff part and parcel of morality?

I suppose you could argue for it based on C.S. Lewis's invocation of the 'Tao', his look at moral commonalities among a variety of religions -- Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Northern Amerindian, Taoism, etc. But there are a lot of high-stakes practices about which various TradVal groups gave wildly different answers. Your husband has died -- should you jump onto the funeral pyre? Marry your brother-in-law? Be primarily supported your original family, your husband's family, both in common, society in general, or should you be self-sufficient entirely and boy wasn't all this stuff about how to treat widows totally sexist? Hey, why is sexism wrong in the first place?

Even if you can resolve all this (How? By treating what comes into and out of real morality by majority rule? That's a pretty big unsupported moral judgement), you'd still be faced with the question of why you're basing morality on the 'Tao' in the first place?

--Jeffrey Boulier

"No social order will long endure that is founded on lies about the human condition." Agreed!

So let's clear up a few lies.

Once again, Warren misstates the ancients. First, he gratuitously reads into the ancient Jewish laws a factor not present in them ("The Jews set themselves against the homosexuality").

Then, he drags the Romans into this same imaginary posture: "the pagan Romans set themselves against the homosexual customs of the Greeks." Innumerable Roman emperors (Caesar, Trajan, Hadrian, to name just three) would have been fascinated to know that they were doing this -- especially considering that they enjoyed homosexual lovers without ever thinking in terms of labels like homosexuality or heterosexuality.

And from where comes the notion that a failure to condemn homosexuality is a "lie about the human condition" which dooms social orders? Rome survived many centuries without "sodomy laws." The Dark Ages began shortly after they were enacted.

Does Mr. Warren think that homosexuals are demanding (as part of the plot to "shatter the mold") that heterosexuals undergo reparative therapy? His entire premise seems to be that homosexuality will engulf and destroy heterosexuality, that soon we'll all be gay -- and we will degenerate into "savagery."

The problem is, history does not show that!

I guess that's why he wants to rewrite it.

As much as most people don't want to hear this, homophobia is not hardwired.

There have been societies in the past that practiced varying levels of homosexuality. there is one in particular, an aboriginal society in Asia, that I read about that stands out.

***warnining*** modern American society defines the following as sick and perverse.

In this society, it was considered normal for pre-pubesecent boys to fellate the pubescent boys. The idea was that the young boys would absorbe the essence of the older boys, helping them to become men. The pubescent boys would grow up further, and then marry women and live the rest of their lives as heterosexuals.

Wjat is interesting about this society is that there was only a small percentage of males that had a problem with some aspect of this life. In other words, the vast majority of men (90%+) were able to switch from performing homosexual acts, to receiving homosexual acts, to being hetersexual, without any pause. This demonstrates that there is only a small percentage of people, on both sides, that are hardwired one way or the other. That is why the gay percentage of american society is so low, only the truely gay are willing to practice it.

So yes, I think it is entirely possible that the judeo-christian ethic established hetereosexuality as the norm in the western world.

I'm sorry, I have a small penis and get upset with other people easily.

And I'd be screwing the pooch, too, if only those damn Progressives would get busy and repeal those nasty laws against bestiality.

There might not be any state laws specifically about bestiality in your state. Most states have legal codes in databases, try FindLaw for yours.

So you may only have as a barrier to your asserting your manhood to the annoyance (or delight?) of the pets and livestock in your state, whatever passes for your personal morality.

Did he actually write that long-established norms take a long time to establish? Where is the ditor?