Month: October 2017

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Rosaria Butterfield

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New paperback & Kindle book: In Consideration of Rev. Dr. Mel White on Christian Homosexuality by Ken Ammi

“I am gay, I am proud, and God loves me without reservation”

—Rev. Dr. Mel White

My new book In Consideration of Rev. Dr. Mel White on Christian Homosexuality is now available in paperback & ebook versions at CreateSpace and Amazon.

Here is the description:

A point by point consideration of Rev. Dr. Mel White’s publication “A Biblical Response to the Question People Often Ask…‘How can you consider yourself a Christian when you are also gay?’ What the Bible Says-and Doesn’t Say-about Homosexuality.”

Some currently relevant issues to consider are why do some claim that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality?

Because we now have a better understanding of original languages, the grammatical, historical and cultural context and finally realized that for millennia Jews and Christians have been wrong since they did not realize that the Bible approves of it?

Because the politically correct cultural movement de jour demands that homosexuality not be condemned and that politics, laws, society, theology, etc. be changed in order to fit with the homosexual movement’s worldview?

Why are homosexuals so over represented, and positively so, in various forms of media?

Because they are such a vast majority that it makes statistical sense?

Because there is a concerted effort to deconstruct, redefine and re-educate society so as to have it abandon Judeo-Christian principles?

Rev. Dr. Mel White was once a ghost writer for Christians such as Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, etc. but once he came out as homosexual he decided to attempt to get people to believe that the Bible does not condemn but actually approves of homosexuality.

This book represents just about every pro “gay Christian” claim along with a biblical reply to each claim.

Paperback: 70 pages ISBN-10: 1546923403 ISBN-13: 978-1546923404 Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.1 x 9 inches

Find it at CreateSpace and Amazon

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psycho

Is homosexuality a choice?

A personal philosophy which has served very well is: before thinking about an answer/counterargument, think about the question/argument. Doing so often results in the realization that the question/argument is fallacious in the first place, is unfounded, etc. Thus, it often results in not having to bother offering an answer/counterargument because the original question/argument is invalid and defeats itself.

To the question, “Is homosexuality a choice?” let us explore two answers which are “No” and “Yes.”

No:

Proponents of homosexuality prefer this answer because it provides a desired effect to the effect of that it removes personal responsibility for one’s actions as it implies that one cannot be condemned for their actions.

This is why the “gay gene” is sought since if it is proven that homosexuality is genetically predestined the “No” answer would be established.

This is also why many people seek a gene for their particular and/or peculiar actions, desires, etc. Alcoholics seek the alcoholic gene. The obese seek the obesity gene. And on it goes. This raises an interesting and complex question: presumably finding the alcoholic and obesity genes would not only result in the alleviation of personal responsibility for alcoholism and obesity but would provide a solution namely, the genetic manipulation and those genes. In other words, those genes could be treated, removed, deactivated, etc.

Now, if a gay gene is found will it likewise follow that homosexuals will submit to treatment, to having the gene deactivated? Will pro-abortion/pro-choice proponents approve of abortion based on the finding of the gay gene within the unborn clump of cells?

And what if a homophobe gene is found? Or a pedophilia one? Or a violent murderer one? Keep in mind that the title of Woody Harrelson’s movie “Natural Born Killers” came from a statement made by Harrelson’s father who in real life was a convicted hit man who claimed to be a “natural born killer.” Even Atheists claim that we are all natural born Atheists—see article on that issue.

Applying the aforementioned personal philosophy we note that the premise behind the “No” answer is the “…born this way” premise which asserts just that, “I was born this way therefore, you cannot condemn me.” Is the premise valid? Why is being born a certain way license to carry out certain (allegedly inborn) actions, attitudes, etc.?

In order to get the idea behind this objection to the premise think of the various ways in which we are born: we are born bedwetters, we are born crying until we get what we want, we are born selfish, reluctant to share, greedy, etc. Are these and other naturally inborn things to be socially acceptable into adulthood, to be encouraged, celebrated and indorsed?

Another (troubling) aspect of the “No” answer is that if you are engaging in homosexual (or any) sexual activity and did not choose to do so then you are being raped. This simple logic is why, in a manner of speaking, those who appeal to the “No” answer prefer a genetic predestination which forces them towards certain forms of sexuality and against which resistance is, allegedly, futile.

Yes:

If homosexuality is a choice then a person can be asked to answer for themselves, their own chosen actions and can therefore, potentially, be asked to change their choice, be condemned for the choice they have made, etc. This is why it is not preferred.

But why not say “Yes” and follow with “…but you have no right to condemn me anyway”? This brings us to the worst possible pro-homosexuality argument one could possibly make. This argument is actually the most popular one as it is essentially the only one available.

The argument is that most of society and/or the world have now come to accept homosexuality as normal, natural, moral, etc. and so homosexuality can no longer be condemned.

Before responding, note the reason why this is the only argument available: the reason is the difference between morality and ethics. Yes, these terms are, unfortunately, used interchangeably but in reality the concepts behind them are not:

Morality refers to the mores which are mere descriptions of that which people do.

Ethics refers to the ethos which actually prescribes that which people ought to do.

But why is the “Yes homosexuality is a choice but is now socially acceptable” argument the worst possible argument. Because it is beholden to majority opinion, it is tentative as it dies the death of the zeitgeist which turns into a poltergeist when popular opinion changes. Thus, perhaps today it is true that most people do not condemn homosexuality but what about tomorrow, next week, next month, next year? They are premising their argument on what is actually no premise at all since premise implies foundation or stability and the whims of majority opinion is not premise, foundation nor stability.

We have considered the “No” and “Yes” answers and will now dig into whether or not homosexuality is a choice—in reality and aside from popular positions and their desired implications.

So, is homosexuality a choice? There is a way to get even the most militant pro-homosexual activist to admit that it is, indeed, a choice.

Here is one such method. First, you make an inflammatory statement which correlates homosexuality with pedophilia or bestiality.

The militant pro-homosexual activist will point out your fallacy which is that there is a huge difference between homosexuality, pedophilia and bestiality. That difference is that homosexuality denotes two consenting adults (side note: why just two and why adults—is this not restrictive?) whilst pedophilia and bestiality imply some form or level of authoritative manipulation as the child and animal do not—with informed forethought and knowledge—consciously consent.

This is perfectly logical. Now, did you see how they trapped themselves? Anyone? Anyone?

The claim was that the difference is that homosexuality denotes two consenting adults. What is consent? It is permission for something to happen or agreement to do something. Consent, by definition and necessity, implies choice. Therefore, homosexuality is a choice.

Now, let us back up one step and make a very important distinction: we must distinguish between impulse and action. You see, perhaps someone is born with impulses towards homosexuality (some would agree that this is/can be inborn and that it is called original sin). However, carrying out an impulse into an action is a whole other story. A homosexual may look at a same gendered person and feel an impulse of sexual attraction towards them. However, in order to engage in the act of sex a very large series of decisions is made: the decision to approach them, their decision to respond favorably, the decision to find somewhere to be amorous, the decision to travel there, the decision to remove articles of clothing, etc., etc., etc.

Lastly, let us simply note something which appears to be generally true. Take, for example, the a Fundamentalist Christian (since no one seems to care that Islam, Judaism, the Baha’i Faith, etc. also condemn homosexuality) and you are likely to find a person who is not so much concerned about two consenting homosexual adults. No, they are concerned about the militant homosexual activist worldview.

They may be concerned about, or rather for, individual homosexuals but they know that all they can do for them is love them, witness to them and pray for them.

Coming out of the close is one thing but kicking down your neighbor’s door and demanding acceptance, if not endorsement, is quite another.

For example, concocting some system of ensuring certain rights to committed same sex couples is one thing but redefining marriage is another.

Or, consider a previous article Are homosexuals accurately represented in the media? wherein it was noted that homosexuals are grossly overrepresented on TV. You can barely go a few minutes without encountering a homosexual character (and this is referring to good ol’ broadcast TV and not cable, satellite, etc.). Moreover, it is not exaggeration to note that all of these very many homosexual characters (or real life talk show hosts) are represented positively: they are funny, educated, clean cut, healthy, etc.

Conversely, in a majority Christian country how many Christian characters (or talk show hosts) are there? Well, first we must note that there are some pseudo-Christians such as Oprah Winfrey (meaning that she uses the term/word/label “Christian” but her beliefs are utterly non-, un- and anti-Christian).

What about those characters? The very, very few that there are, are exclusively portrayed negatively. Some, sadly, reflect a form of “social club” Christianity who “go to church” and then the rest of their lives are Jesus-free. Others are the vilest, nasty, hateful, ignorant, obnoxious, etc. Consider, for example the shoe The Office in which the openly Christian character is so disgustingly immoral that even her co-workers are shocked (see here and here for details). Many shows are simply and outright anti-Christian or contain recurring anti-Christian themes. For example, The Simpsons only besmirch one religion: Christianity. Such was the case when Maggie, the baby, took an IQ test and got a good score. The tester said, “Not bad for a Christian.”

What happens to some homosexuals is that they move from loving a same gendered person and actually turn homosexuality into a worldview. How so?

Ask a homosexual activist which political party to support of for which politician to vote and they will answer to the effect of: the one that supports/accepts/endorses homosexuality.

Ask them what is right and wrong, what is good and evil, what is ethical and unethical and they will answer to the effect of: whatever supports/accepts/endorses homosexuality.

Ask them which is the true theology, which holy book is the actual word of God and they will answer to the effect of: the one that supports/accepts/endorses homosexuality.

Or consider “Gay Pride”: imagine basing your self worth, your identity, etc. on the gender of personage with whom you have sex.

You see how homosexuality becomes the lens via which they view and discern the whole world and its every issue (for more on this Do Target stores support homosexual agendas?).

Thus, homosexuality is a choice, homosexuals can and do admit this or can be made to admit it, appealing to majority opinion can turn around and bite you and most people have a problem with militant homosexual activism and not two same gendered people who love each other and a in a committed relationship.

For more see:

Morality / Ethics

conversion

sex abuse

Demons in Augustine of Hippo, part 8

Herein we continue, from part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, considering info on Demons in Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD). The fuller complete result consists of quotations of those sections within the text that refer to Angels, Cherubim, Seraphim, Devil, Satan, demons, serpent and dragon. The point is not to elucidate these references but to provide relevant partial quotations and citations. See my section on Angels here, Cherubim and Seraphim here, Satan here and Demons here.

Demons in Augustine of Hippo’s The City of God, Book X.

Chapter 1 But as even these philosophers, whether accommodating to the folly and ignorance of the people, or, as the apostle says, “becoming vain in their imaginations,” Romans 1:21 supposed or allowed others to suppose that many gods should be worshipped, so that some of them considered that divine honor by worship and sacrifice should be rendered even to the demons (an error I have already exploded), we must now, by God’s help, ascertain what is thought about our religious worship and piety by those immortal and blessed spirits, who dwell in the heavenly places among dominations, principalities, powers, whom the Platonists call gods, and some either good demons, or, like us, Angels—that is to say, to put it more plainly, whether the Angels desire us to offer sacrifice and worship, and to consecrate our possessions and ourselves, to them or only to God, theirs and ours.

Chapter 8 They did these things by the magical arts and incantations to which the evil spirits or demons are addicted; while Moses, having as much greater power as he had right on his side, and having the aid of Angels, easily conquered them in the name of the Lord who made heaven and Earth.

Chapter 9 …being that both classes are the slaves of the deceitful rites of the demons whom they invoke under the names of Angels…And therefore, although he distinguishes Angels from demons, asserting that the habitation of the latter is in the air, while the former dwell in the ether and empyrean, and although he advises us to cultivate the friendship of some demon, who may be able after our death to assist us, and elevate us at least a little above the Earth—for he owns that it is by another way we must reach the heavenly society of the Angels—he at the same time distinctly warns us to avoid the society of demons, saying that the soul, expiating its sin after death, execrates the worship of demons by whom it was entAngeld. And of theurgy itself, though he recommends it as reconciling Angels and demons, he cannot deny that it treats with powers which either themselves envy the soul its purity, or serve the arts of those who do envy it…And from this he concludes that theurgy is a craft which accomplishes not only good but evil among gods and men; and that the gods also have passions, and are perturbed and agitated by the emotions which Apuleius attributed to demons and men, but from which he preserved the gods by that sublimity of residence, which, in common with Plato, he accorded to them.

Chapter 10 But here we have another and a much more learned Platonist than Apuleius, Porphyry, to wit, asserting that, by I know not what theurgy, even the gods themselves are subjected to passions and perturbations; for by adjurations they were so bound and terrified that they could not confer purity of soul—were so terrified by him who imposed on them a wicked command, that they could not by the same theurgy be freed from that terror, and fulfill the righteous behest of him who prayed to them, or do the good he sought. Who does not see that all these things are fictions of deceiving demons, unless he be a wretched slave of theirs, and an alien from the grace of the true Liberator?

Chapter 11 It was a better tone which Porphyry adopted in his letter to Anebo the Egyptian, in which, assuming the character of an inquirer consulting him, he unmasks and explodes these sacrilegious arts. In that letter, indeed, he repudiates all demons, whom he maintains to be so foolish as to be attracted by the sacrificial vapors, and therefore residing not in the ether, but in the air beneath the moon, and indeed in the moon itself. Yet he has not the boldness to attribute to all the demons all the deceptions and malicious and foolish practices which justly move his indignation. For, though he acknowledges that as a race demons are foolish, he so far accommodates himself to popular ideas as to call some of them benignant demons. He expresses surprise that sacrifices not only incline the gods, but also compel and force them to do what men wish; and he is at a loss to understand how the sun and moon, and other visible celestial bodies—for bodies he does not doubt that they are—are considered gods, if the gods are distinguished from the demons by their incorporeality; also, if they are gods, how some are called beneficent and others hurtful, and how they, being corporeal, are numbered with the gods, who are incorporeal…
And on this account, he says, some suppose that there is a race of beings whose property it is to listen to men—a race deceitful, full of contrivances, capable of assuming all forms, simulating gods, demons, and dead men,— and that it is this race which bring about all these things which have the appearance of good or evil…why it is that a man addicted to any vice should utter threats, not to a demon or to the soul of a dead man, but to the sun and moon, or some of the heavenly bodies…by nature, but by their own corruption, and who simulate gods and dead men, but not, as he said, demons, for demons they really are…men create upon Earth powers capable of bringing about various results, all that is only the mystification which these demons practise on those who are subject to them, for the sake of furnishing themselves with merriment at the expense of their dupes…they were the work, not of powers which aid us in obtaining life, but of deceitful demons…they cannot be either gods or good demons, but are either that spirit who is called the deceiver, or mere fictions of the imagination.

Chapter 16 As for those miracles which history ascribes to the gods of the heathen—I do not refer to those prodigies which at intervals happen from some unknown physical causes, and which are arranged and appointed by Divine Providence, such as monstrous births, and unusual meteorological phenomena, whether startling only, or also injurious, and which are said to be brought about and removed by communication with demons, and by their most deceitful craft…But, further, if it be the case, as their pride and deceitfulness rather indicate, that they are neither good Angels nor the Angels of good gods, but wicked demons, who wish sacrifice to be paid, not to the one only and supreme God, but to themselves, what better protection against them can we choose than that of the one God whom the good Angels serve, the Angels who bid us sacrifice, not to themselves, but to Him whose sacrifice we ourselves ought to be?

Chapter 21 The power delegated to the demons at certain appointed and well-adjusted seasons…And these fables mystically signified that Juno was mistress of the air, which they suppose to be inhabited by the demons and the heroes, understanding by heroes the souls of the well-deserving dead. But for a quite opposite reason would we call our martyrs heroes,— supposing, as I said, that the usage of ecclesiastical language would admit of it—not because they lived along with the demons in the air, but because they conquered these demons or powers of the air, and among them Juno herself, be she what she may, not unsuitably represented, as she commonly is by the poets, as hostile to virtue, and jealous of men of mark aspiring to the heavens.

Chapter 26 Such arrogance belongs to proud and wretched demons, whose disposition is diametrically opposite to the piety of those who are subject to God, and whose blessedness consists in attachment to Him…Do you still doubt whether these are wicked demons; or do you, perhaps, feign ignorance, that you may not give offense to the theurgists, who have allured you by their secret rites, and have taught you, as a mighty boon, these insane and pernicious devilries?

Chapter 27 How much more tolerable and accordant with human feeling is the error of your Platonist co-sectary Apuleius! For he attributed the diseases and storms of human passions only to the demons who occupy a grade beneath the moon, and makes even this avowal as by constraint regarding gods whom he honors…For these most impure demons, pretending to be ethereal gods, whose herald and messenger you have become, have promised that those who are purified by theurgy in the spiritual part of their soul shall not indeed return to the Father, but shall dwell among the ethereal gods above the aerial regions. But such fancies are not listened to by the multitudes of men whom Christ came to set free from the tyranny of demons…But those theurgists, or rather demons, who assume the appearance and form of gods, pollute rather than purify the human spirit by false appearances and the delusive mockery of unsubstantial forms.

Chapter 32 And no wonder; for Porphyry lived in an age when this universal way of the soul’s deliverance—in other words, the Christian religion—was exposed to the persecutions of idolaters and demon-worshippers, and Earthly rulers, that the number of martyrs or witnesses for the truth might be completed and consecrated, and that by them proof might be given that we must endure all bodily sufferings in the cause of the holy faith, and for the commendation of the truth…They deny that these are the predictions of great men, or are to be considered important, and they are right; for they are founded, either on the foresight of subsidiary causes, as to a professional eye much of the course of a disease is foreseen by certain pre-monitory symptoms, or the unclean demons predict what they have resolved to do, that they may thus work upon the thoughts and desires of the wicked with an appearance of authority, and incline human frailty to imitate their impure actions…
For the incarnation of Christ, and all those important marvels that were accomplished in Him, and done in His name; the repentance of men and the conversion of their wills to God; the remission of sins, the grace of righteousness, the faith of the pious, and the multitudes in all parts of the world who believe in the true divinity; the overthrow of idolatry and demon worship, and the testing of the faithful by trials; the purification of those who persevered, and their deliverance from all evil; the day of judgment, the resurrection of the dead, the eternal damnation of the community of the ungodly, and the eternal kingdom of the most glorious city of God, ever-blessed in the enjoyment of the vision of God—these things were predicted and promised in the Scriptures of this way; and of these we see so many fulfilled, that we justly and piously trust that the rest will also come to pass.

In the next segment, we will consider more on Demons in Augustine of Hippo.

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