We rejoin the debate at 17:15 with Michael Brown providing a response to Matthew Vines’ claim that we are in a “new interpretive environment”. Brown replies:
“[1]That’s the whole fatal flaw of Matthew’s argument. It’s saying that God himself did not understand the concept of sexual orientation, which is outrageous. [2] And that he inspired the writers of the scripture to write things that would be terribly harmful to same sex attracted people….”
Please note that Brown did not utter the numbers in brackets. I have added them for ease of reference.
Let’s begin with [1]. Brown claims that Vines is taking the position that God did not understand the concept of sexual orientation. He adds that this is “outrageous”. I agree, it would be outrageous, if Vines had taken such a position. After all, within mainstream Christian theology God is understood to be both omniscient and maximally wise so it would be very controversial to deny this.
However, I find no evidence that Vines ever took such a position in the debate. Instead, it seems clear to me that the point at which he differs with Brown is not the divine nature but rather the interpretation of scripture. I assume that Brown is not intentionally attempting to misrepresent Vines’ position and replace it with a straw man. Assuming that is the case, I am forced to conclude that Brown does not have a very clear grasp on Vines’ position.
That’s one of the reasons I really don’t like debates like this. Their format is such that they encourage participants to seek ways to score rhetorical points in a never-ending cycle of one-upmanship. As you can imagine, this works against the participants (or the audience) developing a fair and nuanced understanding of “the other side”.
Now let’s turn to [2]. In this passage Brown raises the objection that Vines’ position entails that the writers of scripture wrote “things that would be terribly harmful to same sex attracted people….” Frankly, I don’t see how this is any kind of argument. After all, as I already pointed out in “Apologist Michael Brown responds to Part 1 of my review of the Brown-Vines Debate,” the writers of scripture wrote wisdom sayings on corporal punishment that would be terribly harmful to children (including Fanosie, the young man that William Webb described as being traumatized as a child because his parents followed biblical mandates on discipline).
Brown’s dilemma at this point is clear: either he embrace the physical beating of children in keeping with Old Testament teaching, or he recognize that God inspired scripture writers to write things that ultimately were harmful. If he takes the latter horn of the dilemma, then he must abandon his argument that God would never allow harmful ethical or wisdom teaching to appear in the Bible.
As Brown continues, he attempts to discredit Vines’ position by pointing out that it has largely taken form after the so-called sexual revolution:
“So God inspired people to write the opposite of that to hurt people for three thousand years until somehow the aftermath of the sexual revolution when our sexual morality is in massive decline all around us we discovered this new thing called sexual orientation.”
This looks a lot like the standard conservative “everything is going to hell in a hand basket” rhetoric. Once you believe that everything is getting worse, then of course you’ll be suspicious of any new “insights” that are derived in the modern age, including Vines’ new insight on homosexuality.
Unfortunately for Brown, the claim is clearly false. Not everything is getting worse. In many areas things are getting better as well. And that’s not all. As I explain in my article “Why do conservative Christians think everything is getting worse?” a little reflection substantiates the conclusion that overall things are getting better rather than worse. Here’s an excerpt from my article:
After hearing [students in my seminary class say] that things were getting worse in Canadian society, I presented them with a challenge based on John Rawls’ “original position” thought experiment. I put it as follows:
Imagine that you could choose to be born into Canadian society in the year 1800, 1900 or 2000 while not knowing what your gender, ethnicity or socio-economic status would be. Which year would you choose to be born into?
While I didn’t call for a formal vote, the response of the class seemed unanimous. Contemporary Canadian society — for all its great faults — is still on the whole a far more just society today than it was one or two hundred years ago. In many ways we are a far more compassionate and civil society than we once were. Now extend the thought experiment. What about being born in Canada in 1800 or Assyria in 800 BC? To ask the question is to answer it. In almost all cases ancient societies were far more brutish than modern societies.
Let’s think about this with respect to ancient Israel. The ancient Israelites approved of polygamy, public stoning, beating children, genocide, and slavery. They married off girls so young that we’d be inclined to consider it pedophilic. They had no conception of mental illness such that a person beset with an epileptic seizure or schizophrenic episode would have been treated as demon possessed and ostracized from the community. They believed that in at least some combat instances it was morally appropriate to slaughter the men, women, and boys of a defeated society whilst keeping the virgin girls for the Israelite soldiers.
Does Brown think we’re wiser as regards the nature of marriage, criminal justice, child rearing, military conflict, slavery, the proper marrying age, mental illness, and so on? If he says yes to at least some of these cases (and I certainly hope he does!) then he has to consider the possibility that there might be further cases of advance that Brown himself has yet to recognize, and maybe, just maybe, Vines has found one of them.
