Lyell Claims Earth Is 6,000 Years Old! or, False Argument #21: Bible Teaches Interfaith Love Is Sin

Alright, so I had stayed up until the morning yesterday writing and backlogging what I feel are three interesting and different posts for the upcoming week, on the decision that I was going to take a 10-day break from posting and blogging.

So what happened?

Well, I woke up this morning and after getting into the swing of things, popped over to DA where what I read in the first few sentences just happened to comprise perhaps the biggest example to date of an exegetical post of Ebonmuse's that completely misses the mark.
So I was overcome with an irresistable force to write, and barfed out the following.

All for the better, I suppose. It didn't take long, and I had been wondering what I would stumble across for #21 in the series. Although admittedly skewering a fish in a barrel, this fits the bill perfectly.

The title Love Is No Sin leads one to believe that the Bible classifies love as a sin. It does not, and more importantly, nor does it teach that interfaith love is a sin. Worse for your argument, but certainly better for reasonable believers, is that the Bible happens to command the exact opposite, that specifically in an interfaith relationship, love should be preserved.

So when I heard,

…religious people are forced to break off relationships with the ones they love because of beliefs which teach them that their love is a sin.
…it's little wonder that these sects would want to keep their members isolated and relating only to each other.

I have no possible reaction other than that in the context of the Bible, this is completely, irrevocably false and seriously leaves me wonder about the scholarly integrity of the author. Although not as bad as other times I've busted him, he is essentially up to the same old tricks here. Why include only the pieces of scripture that one feels proves one's point, to the complete omission of verses that would directly challenge or possibly even overthrow one's point? Many at DA likely do not know the Bible that well, and as a person of authority, Ebonmuse is misinforming them for no other good reason than his personal distaste for the Bible and theism. In that vein, he is doing to literally hundreds of thousands of presumably truth-seeking people what YEC'rs do to students on account of their personal distaste for science and atheism: Sheltering impressionable minds from truth about the opposing view.

Ebonmuse says,

A blanket ban on interfaith dating, however, is a cruel and unjustifiable law born out of fear.

I don't know what Bibles they read over at the site he linked to, but I'm glad no such ban exists in the Bible, and I'm honestly disappointed that a writer and thinker of his cailber would repeat such blatant and preposterous misinformation to hundreds of thousands of people. Is atheism and freethought about truth-seeking? Or truth-telling? I say they should be about truth-seeking.

Whip out the Book and note that the words marriage, wife, husband, etc. do not occur AT ALL in 2 Cor. 6:14-17. Those verses ARE NOT marriage- or relationship-specific verses. I feel the woman who runs the site completely missed this point and Paul's verses on marriage, and you stumble right along behind her.

Now, I can only imagine that somebody is bound to invoke what I deem The Context Trope (TCT), which is a fallacious argument that occurs when skeptics and atheists maintain that particular context is not important in proper exegesis of scripture. To them I reply: Being in context of gradualism vs. PE in a discussion of LUCA is most certainly important, no? Accounting for the difference between the Proterozoic and Cenozoic in a discussion of paleontology is most certainly important, no? What Ebon have done to the foolish Christian who left a comment that his post on Iron Bands was wrong because Iron Bands were actually from the Cenozoic? Get my drift?

2 Cor. 6:14-17 is not a specific command pertinent to either dating, marriage, or interfaith relationships! What does the Bible happen to say in the specific context of dating and marriage, and more specifically, interfaith relationships?

In the exact context of interfaith relationships, Paul says:

"If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her husband…" (1 Cor. 7:12-14)

IOW, Paul, you know, Saul of Tarsus, the same guy making the statement Ebon claim distills to "beliefs which teach them that their love is a sin," actually tells interfaith couples the exact opposite of what Ebon claims. This is tantamount to claiming Lyell's Principles in Geology claims the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

Side note:

Entire sites are devoted to this passage; the cited one says sternly, "If you are involved in a relationship with an unbeliever, and are not married, I would urge you to think very seriously about ending this relationship. God's Word must be obeyed."

I don't care about what some random lady with an outdated webpage says and this author often interjects some random "Christian" authority in his exegetical posts. Do all "Christians" think like this? Has he accurately represented the range, or just made another blanket statement that lends well to hasty generalization?

Although an excellent writer, can we really trust Ebonmuse to give us an accurate rendering of what the Bible says? I think this and many other examples I have attempted to shine light upon demand an emphatic "No".

When I first discovered his site, I thought it was about objective and non-coercive, truly free-type thought, and don't get me wrong, Ebon's a great writer who can be one of the most pleasant writers to read. The guy is quite simply a master at connecting words. But the more I dig into the polemics of atheism as expounded at DA, the more I realize it's equally about persuasion via misinformation.

What should the objective reader who actually knows the Bible conclude? Ignorance? Willful misconduct? Bias? I don't know, but what I do know is that I'm now officially justified in the preliminary conclusion that Ebonmuse's Bible knowledge parallels Ann Coulter's on cladogenesis or Griffith's Experiment.