Adventist Media Response and Conversation

Friday, September 27, 2019

Response to Karisma1980

This is the response to the comment made on this blog post

It is nice that Andrew Dykstra has a friend to stand up for him. The verse is most notable by its absence, also I did not claim he ignored it he did ignore it. But you would have to talk with him as to why it was not mentioned. I could give a theory but as you noticed I did not. Nor did I mention anything about equal marriage whatever that is

I can see very well you are not using the rule of gracious interpretation for my article. There is no such thing as implied ad hominem. It is either stated or it is not stated. You don't have implied attacks against a person, it happened or it did not happen. As for a strawman how can there be a straw man argument by including non-normative sexual desires in the category of "all non-normative". To be "a straw man argument someone attacks a position the opponent doesn’t really hold. Instead of contending with the actual argument". If he says "all non-normative people" and I argue that that category holds a whole lot of unpleasant things, I am arguing against his stated position. You are simply claiming what he says is not what he really thinks. Maybe it is not what he thinks but it is what he wrote!

The title of my article is also addressed to the editors of the article. A decent editor would have told Andrew that his use of "all" as in "all non-normative" is a huge mistake as is the use of "all" in most generalizations (hasty generalization), any argument that uses all can be defeated if one exception can be found. If you logic fails your position fails. In this case, a good editor could have fixed the problem by simply striking "all" and saying many non-normative. Now, that would be the easiest method but the article does not even define non-normative so the reader has to define it for themselves and the dictionary definition is: "not normative, not based on norms" Kind of a huge category there!

Did I attempt to clarify what Andrew meant by "all non-normative" No as if he was not going to define non-normative in his article why should I expect him to define it for me? So I took his words at face value. I did not assume that he did not say what he wanted to say.

Now that you think that "informed consent" is the norm for "all non-normative" people I would have to ask you why you think that. I would say rape is non-normative, necrophilia is non-normative, pedophilia is non-normative, none of those seem to require consent. The idea that there is one norm of informed consent found in all non-normative people is kind of silly. However, you did not say all non-normative people feel the need for informed consent you said Andrew and other LBGT Christians feel that way. Is that your definition of non-normative, or the more problematic "all non-normative" people. Further, you say bestiality is out at the start...so you feel it should not be included in the non-normative category? Are you saying that Children rapists do not fit into the non-normative category? I sincerely doubt any Psychologist would exclude them from being non-normative, why or what gives you the credibility to tell us that those things are normal contrary to medical and societal opinion.

The only way you have a case is if you defined non-normative other than meaning what the definition is, not defined by having a norm. However, you are correct Andrew did not imply "that these three further states were part of his insight" He specifically stated it using his logical fallacy of "all non-normative people" as he said: "represent all sexually non-normative people"

Of course, all this ignores that his insight is developed using eisegesis rather than exegesis and it ignores that the texts were referencing people without sexual capacity through mutilation or the supreme will power (or the rare born that way). At least for LGBT that is rarely the case and not even close to applicable to the context.

Now if Marygrace would like to tell me the specific absurdity in my article, I wait eagerly...oh and if she does maybe tell me how I am a hater and how she can feel so free to use real ad hominem attacks.

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