Those who believe in God often rely mostly on what they don't know to support their claims about, well, pretty much everything.
If a Christian insists that "homosexuality has never been accepted as 'normal' by any society ever," notice that the underlying assumption is that the person making the claim "knows," and presumably with God like infallibility, 'every society that has ever existed - ever!"
Never mind the fact that we know absolutely nothing about the vast, vast majority of societies and people who have lived since humanity arrived on the world stage some 5 to 7 million years ago, or that biologists have concluded that all of humanity started out as hermaphrodites, which means humanity necessarily started out as "homosexual" by virtue of being both sexes at the same time.
Nor should we concern ourselves with ample amounts of research and study that has discovered that in a number of societies that we DO happen to know about, from Africa to Asia, that actually proves such a claim incorrect.
The really far reaching claim of such an assertion, however, is not simply that it suggests a god like omniscience of all of humanity that has ever lived anywhere since the very beginning of time, but even worse, it likewise assumes that even if such a claim were true, that it necessarily means that homosexuality must be immoral.
This is not only a non sequitur, since if true it would still not prove that there is anything objectively "immoral" about homosexuality. After all, even if everyone "believes" something is immoral does not necessarily prove that that thing is immoral, anymore then the fact that everyone believing that things like public crucifixions and slavery are "moral" makes them so. other wise
What's more, the boastful claim that "everyone knows" something is known as the "consensus fallacy," or argumentum ad numerum, and rests on the idea that the majority is always right. This, then, enshrines the 'tyranny of the majority' as the arbiter of morality, except when the are engaged in burning witches or committing genocide against the Jews in Germany (it's fine when the Jews are committing genocide for God in the old testament, however, over and over and over again).
But what is really entertaining about the omniscient fallacy is not only that those who so often rely on it do so without ever realizing they are, but that they use it as their justification for doubting everything BUT their own beliefs.
If anyone brings any evidence, no matter how much, even if it was enough to fill the entire universe, the "omniscient fallacy" - which is driven by our confirmation bias, of course, so it is therefore something everyone is equally susceptible to, not just Christians - leads the Christians to the conclusion there is no evidence anywhere in the universe of information out there, that could ever, ever, ever, suggests they could be wrong about their "beliefs" concerning God, especially when it comes to their beliefs about morality.
Christians are doubting Thomases of everything but their own Christianity, in other words, even though there is literally just as much, or often far more evidence, for EVERY OTHER IDEA that humanity has ever had - including the idea that there is absolutely nothing wrong or immoral about homosexuality - than for their own beliefs about God, Jesus, or Christianity.
IF we find homosexuality among countless numbers of different people and different species, for example, this proves absolutely nothing to the Christian, who instead chooses to believe that all they need to know about sexuality comes from a book filled with stories that are not only virtually impossible to verify, but stories that would be flatly rejected by such Christians as completely preposterous, if anyone had ever asked them to accept them as undeniably true, in any other book or context BUT their own, deeply cherished religion.
If a Christian insists that "homosexuality has never been accepted as 'normal' by any society ever," notice that the underlying assumption is that the person making the claim "knows," and presumably with God like infallibility, 'every society that has ever existed - ever!"
Never mind the fact that we know absolutely nothing about the vast, vast majority of societies and people who have lived since humanity arrived on the world stage some 5 to 7 million years ago, or that biologists have concluded that all of humanity started out as hermaphrodites, which means humanity necessarily started out as "homosexual" by virtue of being both sexes at the same time.
Nor should we concern ourselves with ample amounts of research and study that has discovered that in a number of societies that we DO happen to know about, from Africa to Asia, that actually proves such a claim incorrect.
The really far reaching claim of such an assertion, however, is not simply that it suggests a god like omniscience of all of humanity that has ever lived anywhere since the very beginning of time, but even worse, it likewise assumes that even if such a claim were true, that it necessarily means that homosexuality must be immoral.
This is not only a non sequitur, since if true it would still not prove that there is anything objectively "immoral" about homosexuality. After all, even if everyone "believes" something is immoral does not necessarily prove that that thing is immoral, anymore then the fact that everyone believing that things like public crucifixions and slavery are "moral" makes them so. other wise
What's more, the boastful claim that "everyone knows" something is known as the "consensus fallacy," or argumentum ad numerum, and rests on the idea that the majority is always right. This, then, enshrines the 'tyranny of the majority' as the arbiter of morality, except when the are engaged in burning witches or committing genocide against the Jews in Germany (it's fine when the Jews are committing genocide for God in the old testament, however, over and over and over again).
But what is really entertaining about the omniscient fallacy is not only that those who so often rely on it do so without ever realizing they are, but that they use it as their justification for doubting everything BUT their own beliefs.
If anyone brings any evidence, no matter how much, even if it was enough to fill the entire universe, the "omniscient fallacy" - which is driven by our confirmation bias, of course, so it is therefore something everyone is equally susceptible to, not just Christians - leads the Christians to the conclusion there is no evidence anywhere in the universe of information out there, that could ever, ever, ever, suggests they could be wrong about their "beliefs" concerning God, especially when it comes to their beliefs about morality.
Christians are doubting Thomases of everything but their own Christianity, in other words, even though there is literally just as much, or often far more evidence, for EVERY OTHER IDEA that humanity has ever had - including the idea that there is absolutely nothing wrong or immoral about homosexuality - than for their own beliefs about God, Jesus, or Christianity.
IF we find homosexuality among countless numbers of different people and different species, for example, this proves absolutely nothing to the Christian, who instead chooses to believe that all they need to know about sexuality comes from a book filled with stories that are not only virtually impossible to verify, but stories that would be flatly rejected by such Christians as completely preposterous, if anyone had ever asked them to accept them as undeniably true, in any other book or context BUT their own, deeply cherished religion.
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