u/dons90

it sounds like it really does boil down to “because god said so” then

At the root of it yes, but that's not the entirety of the argument of course. Naturally as Christians, we do believe that God exists in the first place, and that He set rules in place with genuinely good reasons, not just being a control freak.

So yes, we'd eventually meet a sticking point in our debate because it does require some acceptance of other fundamental beliefs, namely: that God exists, and that morality comes from a higher source than humanity.

I believe that subjective morality is preferable to objective morality because it allows for nuance rather than blanket commands

I can agree with that perspective to a point. I think that sometimes we tend to look at the Old Testament commands and view God as a control freak with no nuance. However God has been stated to be extremely forgiving and understanding. The current approach since NT times isn't for people to change themselves and come to God, but rather, coming to God and allowing Him to change them.

We can presume from this that despite God having a picture of what is His ideal, He judges nuances in all situations. This nuance is called grace and mercy.

I don’t think it’s immoral in the slightest

Well in that particular framing it sounds very idealistic. Perhaps this happens often too. But don't undervalue the significance of the impact that simply having more sexual partners causes.

Quick example: if one person had 5 partners, and another had 50, and all sexual experiences were good, what would be wrong with the 50? I would argue that the person with 50 is likely worse off because of that bonding factor that I mentioned earlier. There are subtle bits of harm that I didn't mention. These would be the things that would make it not just emotionally wrong, but potentially morally wrong (assuming knowledge of these effects), because you're willingly engaging in behavior that doesn't create any meaningful or lasting bonds, and negatively impacts each other's ability to bond with someone in the future, or potentially creates conflicting memories in each other's minds.

Just a quick personal example. I can still remember my previous sexual experiences with prior partners, as distant as they may be. They thankfully don't impact my current relationship, but is it a good thing to be remembering those moments relative to my current relationship? Food for thought.

Yeah that's a fair point regarding the morality aspect, I didn't highlight it as much here, I was mostly focused on answering your question on why it's bad.

Ultimately from a Christian believer's perspective, what is right or what's wrong morally is defined by God. If we view it from a completely relativist perspective, then we'd probably say, "as long as it's consensual sex and you two have the same expectations, then nothing is wrong".

The question would become, is there an objective morality from which we derive a broader "right or wrong" argument. I think that without God in the picture, the line becomes a bit more muddy.

We can see objective reasons to be careful with sex in general based on the reasons I've outlined, and I think it's because of these and other factors that God would tell us that sex outside of marriage is wrong.

Edit: And just to answer "who is hurt by that?". Sometimes those very people. They don't always set out to hurt each other, but that doesn't prevent hurt from occurring either in the moment or in the long term.

Not the OP but I'll share my thought process on it. I agree with the previous comment's argument about why sex in a loving marriage is good.

Now as for why consensual sex outside of marriage would be bad, I would point to these particular factors:

1. Higher numbers of sexual partners is associated with a higher risk of divorce or being unable to remain within a committed relationship long term. There are a few studies on this, and while it's not a hard rule across the board, it's understandable that if you find it hard to commit to people, and you're willing to trivialize the bonding effect of sexual intercourse, it stands to reason that it's going to be harder for you to find a reason to remain with someone long term.

2. STDs. The undeniable truth is that the more sexual partners you have is the greater your risk of contracting a STD in the first place. Even being the most careful person, the dangers are microscopic so if you make any mistakes, you can end up with a big problem.

3. Heartbreak. It's very common for people to enter into a sexual relationship, only to then 'catch feelings', and one of a few possibilities happens:

   a. One partner is not as interested in the other, leaving the other person heartbroken.

   b. They decide to start something serious, but then realize they are completely incompatible outside of intimacy. Intimacy doesn't fix character incompatibilities.

   c. They may stick together for too long despite being incompatible, leading to a lower overall relationship satisfaction. That could lead to things like resentment, cheating, etc. in the future.

4. Children. Since we're talking about sex, we can't forget that a lot of kids are born because of accidents. That's a very bad outcome because kids deserve to have both parents especially if the circumstances are controllable. What ends up happening though is that the child grows up in a single parent household because one partner wasn't actually planning for all this and decides to abandon their responsibility.

There are other factors, but let me know what you think about these.

Congratulations! Hoping things turn around for me soon as well. Just need that one "yes"

Bro she clearly doesn't love you. The words aren't loving. The actions aren't loving. You have to set an ultimatum and stick to it, or just leave outright. Let her know that you aren't going to live the rest of your life in misery.

Yeah absolutely, I agree there. But I was disagreeing with the idea of just blurting it out to everyone so soon.

This is not helpful in the slightest. Exposing her to everyone if he is considering reconciliation is not an option. He can always reveal it when they separate if that's what he wants to do.

I know this sub tends to heavily recommend breaking up, and I'd say it's fairly likely in this instance. However I'll give a bit of perspective against the grain which you may want to consider.

Is this the wrong thing to do? Should I be separating?

Once an affair goes physical, it can be very hard or sometimes impossible to forget that those physical boundaries were crossed. In your situation I'm guessing this meant sex, which can be hard for us guys to overcome. It goes beyond just simple forgiveness, and more of: "Can I see a future where I can do regular things with my partner including intimacy without these thoughts causing me extreme discomfort?"

Some people may not be able to do that at all. Some, like myself, are willing to try to recover from it. Some do recover from it and are able to put that into a different mental bucket that doesn't keep hurting them for the rest of their lives.

If the physical boundaries weren't broken down by sex, then it makes this easier. I personally wouldn't be able to continue if it was due to that constant mental image.

How do I overcome the trauma from this betrayal? I don’t even know how long it’ll take to get over this.

I'd recommend reading "Transcending Post-Infidelity Stress Disorder (PISD): The Six Stages of Healing". It's going to involve you understanding the root causes of the betrayal, learning to accept the reality and eventually forgive for your own peace of mind. Therapy may be needed too for you, but if you're choosing reconciliation, then therapy has to be mandatory for her. Based on general estimates, 2-5 years is needed regardless of whether you end the relationship or not. Ending it won't erase the trauma you've faced.

A small part of me has thought about staying

You have to genuinely look at your partner and based on the understanding of why they did it, see if that is something fixable, and whether you can entertain the idea of a future with her. This is entirely up to you. If the work needed seems too difficult for little gain, don't do it.

However, since you're remaining with her for a period of time, I'd suggest using this time to at least try with therapy and see if there is any genuine change that can be produced.

Ultimately, you're not wrong for wanting to leave her, and you wouldn't be wrong for wanting to stay either (since she is showing a lot of signs of remorse, honesty and possibly change), but this is the time to focus on what will make you feel better both short and long term.

This unfortunately is too far gone for therapy to repair while you're in the relationship I'd say. One guy may have been enough of a challenge, but a repeat offender who is only sorry that she got caught and didn't see what was wrong with it before? Even worse, she tried to justify it by saying she lost attraction to you, even though you have a genuine reason for it. She's flaky.

If a couple is trying to save a relationship after an affair, it's wise to identify the reasons why the relationship is worth rebuilding in the first place. Identifying if it was done out of compartmentalization or genuine malice, the extent of the boundaries crossed, if they didn't have strong enough boundaries, if they still have a higher desire for their SO than the AP, and if they're being as transparent as needed for the SO to get full trust and comfort.

So this is extremely conditional of course, and in a large number of cases, the answer will unfortunately be to just separate soon after. However, not every single situation needs to be treated the same.

The Jews refused to accept Him because they did not believe in the very prophecies from the Old Testament. I'm not sure where your specific beliefs are at, but there is more than enough evidence to indicate that Jesus was who He claimed to be, assuming of course that you believe in the credibility of the Bible.

We don't know that anyone actually witnessed miracles and if they were real miracles. We just have later stories written by people who were not there.

If you're going to try to find conclusive proof of something that happened 2000 years ago before the age of photos, digital media, etc., you're going to have a hard time doing that. And it's even worse now since we have AI that makes us question almost anything we now see.

What we can do is take the words of eyewitnesses, identify the consistency of the literature and see if these are just extremely contradictory to the point that it destroys the entire argument, or if on the flip side, they're too similar and were likely following a particular script in the hopes of the belief catching on.

Also what exactly would've been their motive in creating this narrative surrounding Christ?

but we don't know what they believed when they died

Sure let's just introduce a random element of doubt as to what they possibly could've believed despite spending their lives preaching one thing, and defending it to the point of facing persecution. Really good argument.

Religions are just old, large and well organized cults

Fair enough. Won't really press this particular point. I know that Christianity obviously began as something we'd call a cult, and then grew from there.

Yes you're right that factors such as popularity, longevity, persecution, and martyrdom do not prove a religion is true.

However sincerity isn't irrelevant either. It matters whether people died merely because they trusted a leader’s private claims, or whether they were among the original proclaimers of an event they claimed to have experienced. Heaven’s Gate members died based on their leaders’ interpretation of unseen aliens and an expected future event. Their deaths show devotion, not firsthand knowledge that the claims were true.

Christianity’s central claim is different in kind: Jesus was publicly executed and then His earliest followers soon and persistently proclaimed that He had appeared to them alive. The question is whether the early evidence for the resurrection is stronger than the evidence for Heaven’s Gate’s claims. I believe it is of course.

Christianity’s survival despite opposition is not proof of the resurrection, but it is evidence that the movement was not a simple matter one could trivially hand-wave away as a passing cult.

According to later legends.

Are you going to discredit the thousands of Christians that died at the hands of the Roman Empire during the dark ages? Are those legends now too?

We don't actually know they saw countless miracles, and it's mostly just Peter, who is confirmed by Paul who is confirmed to have continued after Jesus died.

Respectfully, the accounts of the gospels, and the further confirmation by Paul counters this claim of yours. Sure, I can omit the word 'countless' if that's what you're trying to contest. But the main point still remains that they not only witnessed Jesus preaching and teaching, but performing miracles, and thus genuinely believed He was the Son of God.

Uhh, in the stories they do say he uses power from satan or somesuch.

You're right, there is one specific instance in Matthew where Jesus was driving out a demon from a demon-possessed man, and the Pharisees believed He was doing this through demonic power. However Jesus showed clearly how nonsensical that was. Jesus couldn't use a demonic power to drive out a demonic force because they were from the same 'kingdom' or 'power'. He also asked that if He was driving out demons by demonic power, who were the pharisees driving out demons by?

The texts are written by believers way after ... People who were educated

You mean like Paul?...I'm sure it's widely known and agreed that Paul wrote a good portion of the NT. However if you're trying to discredit the accounts of the gospels, that's quite the mistake because any biblical writings in those times that were in contention or heavy scrutiny didn't make it into the Bible. Let's not downplay the efforts of the early Christian leaders and apostles in determining the canonical literature.

You're focusing on a very small subsection of the overall point I've made. Remember that I qualified it with a few things. Jesus was a prophecied figure from the Old Testament. The people witnessed actual miracles over the course of multiple years in multiple locations with plenty of opportunities to call it out as fake or witchcraft. They all died believing that He was the real deal. Even the religious leaders and scholars at that time were very much aware of Jesus and only sought to persecute Him because He was becoming too influential to the masses. 

Cults rarely have such a large body of evidence and historical significance to suggest that they are teaching anything true. The fact that this particular belief system didn't just die out in the first century but continued all the way to our modern day world, with believers in every single nation on earth puts it at a level far above a simple 'cult' wouldn't you say?

Gonna be honest, this is the hardest one to disprove overall.

willingness to die for a belief only proves the sincerity of the believer's conviction

You've said it yourself.

If they sincerely believed that Jesus was the Son of God, they followed Him, worshipped Him, connected Him to prophecies written hundreds to thousands of years prior, and spread this throughout the world at that time; your attempt at discrediting them is made weaker by this realization.

Sure, there are many who can sincerely believe a lie. But it's not like they simply read documents and came up with a doctrine on their own. They witnessed the things the man did in person. If they were willing to die despite seeing countless miracles in person and dying sincerely believing that these miracles happened, then what's your counter claim against this? You could claim the miracles were a hoax, but how would you come by this assumption? Even the very people who were against Jesus at that time did not claim that Jesus hadn't performed a miracle, but they tried to pin him for doing things that they thought were wrong, like healing on the sabbath or something. They could've easily called him a sorcerer or something else.

So honestly, you kinda have the burden of proof in showing a fair line of reasoning as it relates to why these people would die for something they truly believed which was of a supernatural level, and was not isolated to a few people in a small area at one point in time.

Yeah pretty much

As in when I shower or wash my hair? By that time it's dried. After I apply it, I usually get some direct airflow over my hair to speed up the drying process. Using foam topical at the moment. I may consider switching to oral to make the consistency easier, and I'm naturally a fairly hairy guy so it's not hard to manage.

Amazing bro. I hope for similar results with mine. I'm not yet using fin. My dermatologist only recommended min 2x a day and keto shampoo twice a week so that's what I'm currently sticking to, but I suspect I may have to consider fin in the future.

1. The Bible frequently references supernatural events. There are actually multiple times within the Bible that an animal 'spoke'. The lack of preserved historical records from those times to now doesn't necessarily disprove the Bible's account of these events, as we understand that the Bible is actually that historical record (taken from real historical manuscripts).

2. Fair point, I will agree that you can't only take the rules of the document in question in terms of evaluating its factualness or reliability.

Well we can obviously find patterns within the writing, but it's still a stretch to say that this is poetic. The pattern is that God created something different each day. He started with the bigger things, and finished with the finer details.

Even if the authors did not mean for it to be taken literally, there's no real break in the literary style that would suggest that this part is just poetry and the rest is history. Given that there are: genealogy ties from Adam to Jesus, a promise made to Abraham (Adam's decendant), and so many other consistent details right throughout Genesis, it's very hard for me to believe that the author(s) didn't want us to take these details literally.

Right, but I'm still having a difficult time seeing why this is poetic exactly? I'm not even asserting that creation necessarily happened literally in this specific way, but the way that it is presented to us leaves little to the imagination regarding the order of events. It also doesn't seem to be written in a poetic style per se unless we're taking very broad poetry into account.

Well that's fair. However, if you're taking my perspective of God being real for the sake of the argument, then you also have to take the other details into consideration. So sure, you can complain in light of the fact that I've asserted that God is real, but before you make those complaints, it would be wise to understand why the things you're complaining about actually happen.

Based on what? Again, the Bible itself has poetic books, as well as prophetic books. Can you identify any part of Genesis that is obviously written in a poetic or prophetic literary style?

But what you're doing is valuing human life over everything else. Yes, to us, human lives are extremely important. One of self-preservation you could say. But are we forgetting that in the Biblical context, God is the one that gives us life?

I'm not saying that our lives aren't important though, because it is shown that pain and death are not a part of God's original design. However, what I'm suggesting is that perhaps human death isn't the be-all and end-all of the discussion. In other words, just because human beings die, doesn't mean that the worst has come to pass.

Also please bear in mind that we cannot simultaneously reject God, yet complain when He doesn't prevent evil from occurring.